Fried udon — I made this once before a while back. This is round two. Last time had plenty of problems. First, it didn’t taste great: I used soy sauce instead of XO sauce. Second, way too oily and way too dark. Third, it took forever. So this time I learned from that: Kept the vegetable prep fast Synced the udon blanching with the stir-frying so everything moves together Bought XO sauce, went easy on the soy sauce, added the greens last. At least efficiency improved a lot — the whole thing took 15 minutes.

Lately I’ve been on a cooking kick, and my efficiency’s been creeping up, so I’ve started trying everything — the easy stuff and the not-so-easy stuff. This time it was udon. Flavor turned out fine in the end. The presentation… not so much. I used the pre-made udon from the supermarket. Obviously I can’t make the noodles myself — you can’t reinvent the wheel every day when you cook.

Tamagoyaki is apparently a simple Japanese dish; in China we just call it “yuzishao” — basically scrambled eggs. Except Chinese cooking is crude: crack them in the pan, stir, plate. The Japanese are fussier, so they insist on cooking the egg into a block and rolling it up…

Cooked again — last week was spent at a wedding in Luoyang, after all. This time the results were salted egg braised tofu & salt-and-pepper shiitake, recipes from Xiachufang.

Last week was my first time making these. Sticking to my plan of doing it at least 5 times, this week was round two… Plating looks a bit better than last week:

I used to cook, back when I was still in school. All things considered, it’s been years since I last cooked anything, and even back then I didn’t do it all that often — so starting again now is basically starting from zero. Anyway, I’ve decided to stop being a useless lump and pick the cooking skill back up. The rough plan is to nail a few basic dishes first, then go after the harder stuff. If the everyday stuff works out, I’ll try desserts.