How I learnt to cook

When I was a student aged 12 in Class 7 back in 1979, we were sent for to a 'Technical school' the girls to learn cooking and house keeping and the boys to learn woodwork. The Class 8 Senior students also joined us for these classes and we all went to the 'Technical school' once a week in a bus. The school if I recall was located close to the Ocean in Laucala Bay, Suva, Fiji.

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I always enjoyed the cooking lessons, it was fun to watch the teacher demonstrate the recipe and for each of us to make it at our own desks. We all had to wear an apron to the class. My mother made me a calico apron with heart shaped pockets made out of a red gingham fabric and matching frilled eding on the bib. I thought the apron was so pretty and liked to wear it. We all wrote down the recipes in our exercise books.

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They also taught us how to clean up and do the washing. First, we had to fill a bowl with warm water and add detergent, then we soaked the dishes in the bowl and scrubbed them with a dishmop.After that we put the dishes on a dish rack and wiped them dry with a dishcloth.We were also taught how to scrub the table with a brush, soap and wipe it dry with a damp tea towel.

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Some of the foods we cooked were chocolate biscuits, cassava cake, rice/potato cakes and Yorkshire tea cake. The rice/potato cakes was made out of cooked potato and rice to which was added shredded carrots and onions and shaped into patties which were pan fried. The variety of Yorkshire tea cake we made was kind of a shortbread with strawberry jam and shredded coconut as a filling.

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This introduction into cooking at the 'Technical' whet my appetite for cooking and I soon began duplicating the recipes I had learnt at home and also trying out new recipes from cookbooks. My mother had bought a very nice British cookbook after arriving in Fiji with beautiful color pictures which I immeditately fell in love with. Some of my favorite foods that I tried out from it were Jam tarts, Asparagus Flan, Queen of puddings, Lemon Meringue pie and Custard Tarts.

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After I moved to Australia in 1985 at the age of 18, I bought some small recipe books from the Thrift shop and became interested in and made main course items such as: Fried Liver and onions,, Grilled Lamb chops, Roast Beef, Roast potato with Yorkshire puddings and Horseraddish Sauce and Southern Fried Chicken.

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In December 1985 I finished Year 12 and was awarded a T. E. (Tertiary Entrance ) score that enabled me to apply to Universities. I got many offers from out of State but I decided that Kedren Park Campus of the BCAE was best so I wouldn't have to relocate.

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I began my 3 year degree towards a Bachelor of Business (Accounting) in 1986 at Kedren Park. I was still living with my mom and brothers and I didn't have to worry about housekeeping or cooking. In 1987 my mother decided to take my youngest brother and go back and join my father who was working in the Marshall Islands. Before she left she gave me a tips on how to cook and do the banking and groceries. It was pretty easy to cook rice in the rice cooker and some curries on the stove. In fact I have always found that rice and curry is the easiest food for me to cook. I always needed to refer to recipe books whenever I cooked any other kinds of foods.

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I was nostalgic to try out some very traditional Sri Lankan recipes. My sources of recipes for Sri Lankan food that I had never cooked before were Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cook Book, Chandra Dissanayake's Ceylon Cookery and the Ceylon Daily News Cook book by Hilda Deutrom. All 3 books were owned by my mother, the Ceylon Daily News cook book being particularly ancient with a green cloth cover. I must mention here that Charmaine Solomon's cook book was a coffee table edition and had the most beautiful pictures that made you immediately want to try out the recipes.

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Luckily, there were a lot of Vietnamese shops close to where we lived at Hill End, Brisbane. It was a walk of about 20 minutes down to West End which was a small shopping area. I could also take the bus, but I preferred to walk there. Coming back my load would be so heavy.

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Most of the shops in West End were owned by the Greek community with a new influx of Vietnamese shop owners just coming in. The Greek owned vegetable shop had thampala (amaranth) leaves, which I used to buy. I loved my mallung (greens). At the Vietnemese shops I found kankung, brinjals, thampala (amaranth) and yams and I was able to cook those just like back in Sri Lanka. There was a travelling Sri Lankan salesman who used to come about once in 3mths in his van with Sri Lankan groceries. I always bought from him Sri Lankan spices, karawala ( dried fish), hal masso (sprats), canned foods such as kos ata (jack fruit seeds), breadfruit and delicacies like muscat.

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For my main supermarket groceries I had to walk all the way to the end of West End to Jack the Slasher supermarket, I made the trip every two weeks. Amongst other things I would buy things like frozen meals of turkey and roast beef and apple pie. My day to day cooking was Sri Lankan food which I was good at doing. Now and then I would get a craving for Aussie food and when the craving hit I would get out the frozen dinners and savor them while watching tv.

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I also used to buy frozen stewing hens at the supermarket. I liked to make chicken curry with the tough birds. Since the meat was so lean and muscular the meat was chewy but I preferred my chicken chewy rather than soft. However, my brother always complained about the meat being chewy.

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I bought a whole box of groceries at Jack the Slasher and also a box of fruits and vegetables at the green grocer next door. Both places would deliver the groceries to my door, which made it very convenient.

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SBS TV was a special TV channel in Australia that showed programmes from all over the world and in many languages with subtitles when needed. I was able to see a Sri Lankan Cookery programme conducted by Felicia Wakwella Sorenson brodcast from Hongkong. She made some of the staples of Sri Lankan cookery such as Chicken curry, prawn curry and Cabbage mallung. I was so happy to see Sri Lankan cooking on TV and wrote down all her recipes and tried them out with delicious results.

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In addition to Sri Lankan cooking I also ventured into Indian cooking and my main source for my recipes was the cooking programme by Madhur Jaffrey running on SBS TV at the time. I used to record her programs on the VCR and then write down all the recipes I liked. But soon I bought her cookbook which was part of the TV series and it had the most delectable pictures to accompany her recipes. In no time at all I was making samosas with peas and potato, parathas, and lamb with turnips. I also bought Doris Ady's Asian cookery book. She was a lady of Sri Lankan origin who had immigrated to Australia.From her book I was able to make gulab jamun which was one of my favorite Indian sweets.

Living away from Sri Lanka since I was a young girl of ten, I was always nostalgic for things Sri Lankan and eating our familiar native foods was a nice way to constantly reconnect with the motherland.