Dinner for one

This week alone I've prepared my own dinner twice. Don't go feeling all sorry for me now, it's actually something I look forward to, as it's probably the only chance I get to cook, which would come as a shock to many. So, yet again, I will describe my Maggi mee cooking process.

I always gather all my ingredients before I start the actual cooking. No point letting everything boil into nothingness while you go searching for that elusive egg or two. And I have a habit of crushing up the noodles (I think this makes it easier to eat with a spoon - lazy me). And I separate the eggs (yolks one bowl, whites one bowl), the reason for which will be explained soon. So once I've got all the ingredients ready, I fill a pot with approximately 2 centimetres of water (depending on the size of the pot), which I know is very little (and not following the actual instructions on the back of the packet), but then again this is creative cooking we're talking about. I let the water heat up a bit, just till I can see little bubbles forming, and then dump in one packet of the soup mix. Again, the reasons for all these specifics will be explained soon. Patience, my hungry friend.

When the soup heats up a little more, and then I dump in the egg whites and turn the fire to its lowest setting. I do this so that the egg whites don't poof up and spread throughout the soup. I want the egg whites to stay in one solid mass. So then I just watch the soup and eggs until they solidify. Then comes the fun part. Moving as fast as I can (actually the speed of my movements don't really matter, I just think it sounds more dramatic), I dump all the previously crushed-up dried-up noodles into the pot. Ahhhh... The sound of the noodles as they hit the pot and sizzle up... Nice. This is where the barely-enough-to-cover-the-noodles 2-centimetre's-worth-of-water-now-evaporated-to-1-centimetre soup comes into play. I like my noodles to be dry, so by the time the noodles absorb the soup, there's really not much liquid left. Then I leave the noodles to fry up a bit. Sizzle sizzle smoke smoke. Nice. What happened to the egg yolks you're wondering? Well, truth is I don't like them all cooked up. Like them as raw as they can get. So I just leave them at the bottom of the bowl, roll them around with a bit of seasoning from the second soup mix packet, and gently spoon the steaming noodles over the raw egg yolks. Leave them to just heat up a bit, just warm enough not to taste icky and cold.

Then comes the eating part. Before I actually devour the whole thing up, I use up the remainder of the second soup mix packet to dust the top of the noodles. Salty, I know, but very delicious. And later when I eat the whole thing up, at the bottom of the bowl lies two beautiful treasures, the two warmish raw-ish egg yolks, which I poke and mix around with the last few spoons of noodles and there, yummy yum. Slurp slurp. What a beautiful, satisfying, totally enjoyable meal. I love cooking my instant noodles this way, but I've come to the realization that Maggi mee curry flavour is the best fit for this style of cooking. Better still if it's the Kari Letup version, so much more flavour and kick. Maggi mee can really be an art form if you know what to do with it. Not that I'm claiming I know how to cook, but I think I'm quite good at cooking up a pretty fantastic Maggi mee. And it never fails to put a big smile on my face. Nice, isn't it?