Cooking Lesson in Cal

Haha, believe it or not, I just went for a cooking lesson held by the Cal Cooking Club. Yep, in UCB campus. On my god, the lecture theater was so crowded, by the time I reached the place 10 min late, we got to sit on the stairways. Ok digress abit. FYI, Cal is the nickname of UCB, as it the first and oldest of University of California, so UCB took up this nick and trademark it before other UC can take it, so the next time you see a Cal shirt on the streets, it doesn't just mean California, it's UCB!!! Bet you will see me with a Cal T-shirt, sweater or cap when I am back in Singapore. Those are the must-haves man.

Ok, back to our cooking lesson. They invited an alumni graduate, who is currently a chef in one of the restaurants in SF, to teach us how to make a nice dormitory meal using just a microwave and some cutlery as most dormitories here don't have a stove. So, the meal they taught us was "Yogi". So what the hell is Yogi? It's basically a flour ball, or dumpling as the Westerners call it, made from corn flour, potato, bacon, milk plus other ingredients including flower petals. Yes, you didn't read wrongly, it's flower petals. Flower petals remind me of the flower restaurant I ate at Eden Cafe back in Singapore. Haha. In fact, flower petals is quite a common ingredient in America food as most Americans have a garden in their backyard where they grow flowers and add them as flavorings or spices for their food. I can't really recall all the steps but it's basically mixing the milk with corn flour, cook the potato and bacon using the microwave, put them altogether and knead them into balls, using black pepper sauce as topping and Vola. There you have your Yogi balls. Waited for about 20 minutes to taste the Yogi balls. Hmm, not too bad but it's unlikely I would go through the effort to prepare Yogi balls in my apartment, too much effort plus I don't have a microwave either.

Oh, the Cal Cooking Club also has weekly dinning activities where they go to different restaurants in the Bay Area to taste different cuisines, yep pretty much what you call fine dining or in a more crude term, food hunt. The Bay Area is a wonderful place for food lovers simply because it has the most diverse and balance population in US, be it Asians, Americans, Europeans and maybe Africans? Well, I don't know of any African cuisines, but at least I can even find Singapore food here, what more can you ask for? Bet the RV4e guys would have join this club long ago if there's one in NUS. Wonder why isn't there such a club in NUS? Strange. Maybe HH and HF can be the founders of NUS Fine Dinning Club and add them to your resume, wouldn't that be wonderful? I bet alot of food-lovers are also drooling while reading this. Tag me if you are. Haha.