Cooking Class

When I was in this all girls school from Form One to Form Three, we must take up cooking classes as a skill to be learned by girls.

I was from a small village and only know how to cook the traditional food or ‘kueh’,
Laksa, mee rebus, mee goreng (noodles), banana fritters and curry puff (traditional cakes).

Those days ,the menu that was being taught in school was always European menu. Sandwiches, carrot cakes, butter cake, spaghetti and all.

One day the teacher that taught us cooking told us that for the next day’s lesson , she wanted us to do “The Egg breadcrumbs fritters”.

My friend and I were all from the village. We were just wondering what is breadcrumbs.

“Breadcrumbs? Hey what is it? Bread, I know, but breadcrumbs.”

It’s very alien to us students from the village.

The next day, half of the class got chased out of the class by our cooking teacher for not bringing the bread crumbs to class. We have to stand on the corridor of the cooking class throughout the lesson.

We just stand outside.

The student nowadays are very lucky indeed, the syllabus of cooking class is more towards our own multiracial food and the ingredients can be bought easily at any supermarket in the city or just a small shop in the village.

CIKGUTANYA: I still don’t know how to use breadcrumbs in any way of preparing my kind of food for my family.