Hot Soup in Iceberg 2!

Alright! 2nd week of Office Cooking had just passed and I have the pictures to prove it!

6th Night! We had a very ball-sy soup day. We had fishball, meatball, cuttlefish ball, and vegetable ball all in. Along with some chinese cabbage. All the salt in the balls went into the soup and it was pretty good. The only room for improvement was the plain beehoon which we weren't sure of how to cook it in a more tasty way. Since we only had 1 slow cooker to use, we resorted to microwaving the hot water with the noodles in it. Any suggestions on cooking this kind of rice noodle is highly welcomed.

7th Night! We failed. Or rather, I failed. Because I woke up late and only just in time for work and I was supposed to buy fish. YES, We wanted to cook fish in the office. BUT nobody could go out and get it last minute too because 2/3 of us had clients and things to do and somehow most of us overslept. So there goes our 6 night combo of continuous office cooking, which isn't a bad record at all I must say. We ended up going out to buy prata which was open overnight. Ah, an unhealthy break from our food. But oh well. It was a prata feast but I forgot to take pictures.

8th Night! I finally got the fish. Fish steak for dinner !(Or rather it was our midnight lunch, as I like to call it.) My colleague bought parchment paper and I learnt for the first time how to use it to cook fish. I thought it was only used for baking, but surprise surprise to me, it read 'suitable for cooking and baking' on the box. So there. For soup, we used up our leftovers of all the assorted balls, cabbage and my newly bought broccoli.

Preparing the fish

Peeking through the parchment paper after the microwave

Our soup du jour

 Our modest efforts at presentation... by covering the fish in tofu and some carrot sticks. haha

And voila! A fishy meal! With the plain beehoon again. :P

9th Night! Was a treat! My colleague bought roasted Chicken from Cold Storage and this time we put half of it in our soup to flavour it again. 

Side note: Apparently for some strange reason, Cold Storage didn't help to cut the chicken even upon request by my colleague. I always had the impression that it was part of their service. Their reason was that they were next to the raw food department, even though they were clearly separated by a wall. Hmm...

Anyhoo, it looked so yummy that I took pictures of all our individual servings so here it is.

 

Chicken is on the cutting board. I know, the cutting board and the table look like they're from the same piece of wood.

Ta DA!

This kinda concludes the week because 9th Night was a Friday. We actually started our first night on a Tuesday while Monday was the night was decided to take ownership of our food. 

BUT I had to work on Saturday and I was the only one eating that night so I did a simple soup for myself.

10th Night! A very simple chicken soup (for my soul) with basics of carrots, potatoes, onions and lots of chicken breast meat. I left it to slow cook for about 6 hours while I was working with clients. The beauty of slow cooking is that it doesn't require much supervision. It also doesn't over boil such that the water will overflow, as that would be too dangerous and messy to have in an office pantry. 6 hours of cooking time was probably way long enough for the chicken bits to float to the surface and mist the pot.  It probably would have done that in say, 3 hours, but I wasn't free to check it.

After that, I left it for another 6 hours while I went back to work and brought the rest home that morning for my family to eat for breakfast. They liked it and I think it actually tasted better after that extra 6 hours of cooking. The setting was left on Automatic/Medium and it was almost effortless.

That concludes Week 2 of Office Cooking! :)

They say that when you do something for 7 times continuously, it starts to become a habit. I hope this is something I can keep, which is, the effort to cook, at least simple things.

I've never read so many recipes in my life and my interest in food just took a new level. I have to say, I definitely wasn't a kitchen girl before this and this exercise is gradually growing on me. Food appreciation just went up a notch. :)

I even go to the office earlier just to prepare the food for my midnight lunch! So far my bosses have given their approval to allow us to cook this way and have suggested getting a larger cooker for more people to enjoy. Sometimes they even peek into the pot to see what's brewing for the night or one of my bosses even stealthily instructed my colleague while I wasn't around to season it in a certain way to enhance the flavour! So sneaky! haha. But am very glad everyone is having fun. Nightshift has never been so fun. :)