Hey guys, as former Oppertapper of the Koornbeurs, there’s one thing I know more about than the average Koornbeurser: Food.
I love food, but more importantly, I love to cook.
So here’s my “LET ME COOK” article on the stuff I cook when I don’t know what to cook. I’m not gonna add what specific seasonings I use, since that’s too much effort and I usually don’t even think when throwing stuff in there, but just assume most of this contains maggi.
- Ravioli
If an Italian saw me making it, they would kick me to the curb, but it’s tasty, and everyone who has tried it was a big fan. It’s ravioli with paprika powder, cayenne pepper, (vega) bacon bits, arugula, tomatoes, and sometimes mushrooms.
- Mapo tofu
Gotta be one of the easiest dishes on my rotation. It’s just frying some minced meat, throwing premade sauce in there, and adding some tofu. I make my ancestors roll in their graves by adding vegetables to it, but it doesn’t feel balanced if I don’t. The acceptable version is just adding some pak soy next to it with oyster sauce and drizzling some hot sunflower oil over it, but why would I do that when I can also add precut veggie mix and corn from a can?
- Japanese Curry
I love to just whip up a Japanese curry when I don’t know what else to cook since it’s just onions, potatoes, and carrots with (premade) sauce. HOWEVER, I can’t cook without throwing my own stuff in there so I always add peas and sometimes some sort of meat, but most of the time I throw a (vega)schnitzel in the air fryer instead of making katsu, since I REFUSE to go through the effort of making katsu for a quick meal.
- Roti with masala
You might think “HUH, but roti is so much work??”. Well, you’re wrong, cause when I’m too lazy to cook I won’t hesitate to buy premade roti and that’s 90% of the work. The masala is just mixing the power with onions, salt, and water and baking that for a few minutes (not too long, sonce it’ll get bitter) before throwing in the veggies, tomato paste, and celery. You do need to precook the potatoes, but that’s easy peasy. If you want to make chicken, it’s the same thing as the veggies.
- Fried rice
I have a simple fried rice recipe and it’s corn out of a can, tuinerwten, spam, eggs, soy sauce, and seasonings.
- Bruine bonen met rijst (BB met R)
I once made this as mensa and got multiple messages asking if it’s just beans with rice, but worry not my child, there’s more stuff in there. It contains brown beans, tomatoes, celery, a bit of ketjap, (vega)sausages and if you want chicken.
- Bami
When I just learned how to make this I ate it every week for a while, but it’s so simple. The rich bitch way is to buy expensive noodles from the Surinamese stores, but the poor man’s (Suriname-approved) way is to use spaghetti. The sauce is laos, onion, ketjap, sugar, tomato paste and celery. The (vega)chicken is pretty much the same sauce as the bami itself, so easy!
If you’re thinking it’s suspicious that my 3 Surinamese dishes on this list almost all use the same flavours, you’d be right. We know 5 flavours, but for some reason all the dishes taste completely different. I could go on and on, but I think this article is long enough as is. I would also like to announce that I once saw a musical about bruine bonen met rijst and I remember nothing about it.
Happy cooking everyone!