What's for dinner?

As a diehard foodie, I love experimenting (and eating of course) different types of cuisine. But on days that I feel lazy, sickly, moody, busy, or simply uninspired to cook, I always turn to my comfort food. I am a Singapore born chinese but my paternal grandparents migrated from Canton in China to Singapore many many years ago. So growing up, dinners were always typically cantonese style soup accompanied by 2 vegetable and meat or fish dishes. And rice of course. Gotta always have white rice.

When I first moved to Australia a couple of years ago, it took me a while to get used to the fact that rice would no longer be my staple food. I also had to learn how to cook as I didn't like the takeaways type of food. Chinese food was the first type of cuisine I tried to pick up simply because it was the most familiar to me. It was my roots. And although I can now cook the more exotic kind of cuisines like thai or indian, chinese food will always be my comfort food. The food that brings me fond memories of growing up.

A couple of nights ago, I felt like eating my good old chicken and mushroom claypot rice - a recipe that was created by my mother. I don't often cook chinese food for dinner because I don't think my husband fancies them that much. But he does like this dish and I cook this every now and then. And sometimes on days that I don't have much stuff in the fridge. The main ingredients are chicken pieces and shitake mushrooms. Super easy.

The picture doesn't really do this justice but believe me, it is a very, very delicious dish. And it doesn't take long to cook at all. But I'm not sharing this recipe today as I can't exactly tell you how much ginger juice to add, or how much chinese cooking wine to use for the marinade. Everything is by estimating and that was how my mother taught me. I have kinda gotten used to that and everytime I cook this dish, the taste turn out to be about right. My mother will be so proud of me :)

Comfort food - the food that brings you fond memories. It may not mean much to you who are living so close to home but to someone like me who is always living so far away from family, cooking a meal like this is very heartwarming. Believe it or not, a lot goes on in my mind whenever I prepare my comfort food. And I often do so with a smile on my face.
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