Tza Png

My 10-year-old niece cooked her first meal for us - Fried Rice (tza png in Hokkien and Teochew). She had insisted on cooking lunch and went marketing with her mommy at the wet market. Her mommy would have preferred to buy outside lunch actually, to save the hassle of preparing, cooking and washing up. Imagine how oily the place would get and her mommy liked her kitchen spick and span, sans dirt, oil, smell. But to encourage this little girl, she went ahead anyway.

Niece's fried rice model was naturally that of her babysitter's fried rice, which to her was the nicest home-cooked fried rice she ever ate. So she cooked a pot of rice in the microwave, cut crabsticks, seafood tofu, tuna and prawns, and also chopped garlic and onions. She also got ready an egg. I have not tried fried rice using these ingredients before, so I was wondering how it would taste like.

Her mommy helped her a little, and when frying time came, niece was all geared up, panicky stir-frying the rice and adding the ingredients one by one, and lastly throwing an egg in. The pan was quite heavy for her to lift. And the stove was a little too high for her. So she had to stand on a mini stool while frying. Heh. In a jiffy, it was done - our lunch.

The taste was different from the fried rice I usually have which consisted of pork, prawn, egg, corn, tomato. But it was palatable and not bad. It was not too salty or oily. You could not go too wrong with fried rice. It was a good first-time try and we were proud of our girly. She has always been interested and enthusiastic in helping out in the kitchen, especially when it was cooking stuff she loves to eat. In this instance, I think it was a good learning experience for her.