KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 — Growing up, I remember being the envy of my friends and relatives because my mother is the best cook among all her siblings.

Her Nyonya dishes always tasted a little better, her Bolognese sauce was far better than any restaurant’s. One day, an aunt came to me saying: “Lydia, your mother is such a good cook. Why can’t you cook? If you have just 10 per cent of her skills, you will already be the best cook among all your cousins.”

Maybe I took the skill of cooking for granted because my mother always prepared our meals for the family. But all that changed recently when our helper of 14 years ran away.

I then felt compelled to learn how to cook because hopefully one day, I’d be able to cook for my family and my mother can finally hang up her apron.

The simplest Chinese dish to me is fried rice so I attempted to cook what I finally named the CBB Rice which stands for Carrot, Bacon and Beans Rice.

I love how pork can be used as a flavouring so I decided to use bacon fat as oil. Prepping for the dish is the most important so start by having cooked white rice and dice some carrots and long beans. Don’t forget all the seasoning and condiments!

Because I wanted to experiment, I took a recipe I found online and tweaked it to my liking. The entire cooking process took about two hours because I’m quite slow at chopping vegetables.

The phobia of slicing off my fingers can be attributed to watching horror movies. Also, the weight of the knife is very important. If it’s too light, I find it hard to control the movement. If the weight is just right, I feel more confident and once I get the hang of it, I’ll pick up speed.

Oh how I envy chefs who can cut vegetables so fast it’s a blur to watch! One day. Some day.

For this dish, I decided to use a combination of sesame oil, pepper and salt for the seasoning. You don’t need much sesame oil because that stuff is strong! Also, you want all the ingredients to complement each other — not overpower one another.

To start off, mince the bacon into small strips. Use fatty bacon because that’s going to be the oil you’ll fry your ingredients in. One thing I learned about fried rice is that it will taste better if you fry everything separately. Many years ago, I attempted Golden Prawn Fried Rice and my mistake was to throw everything in the wok. It ended up tasteless and no amount of soy sauce could save the fried rice.

Also, the prawns were not fully cooked as a result of my mistake.

I love using my mother’s black wok because it has served my family well for many years — all the delicious Chinese dishes were made lovingly with it.

Fire up the stove, pour a tiny bit of cooking oil into the wok and throw in the minced bacon. Cook until brown. Make sure the fire is hot enough so that it will brown evenly. It’s hard to get the bacon burnt unless you leave the fire on without stir-frying.

At this point of time, you will smell its fragrant porky goodness. Your kitchen will smell like English breakfast. And that’s perfectly fine.

Remove the bacon from the wok, leaving the fat/oil behind. Turn the fire off and start frying a few cloves of garlic in the fat.

Once the fat smells garlicky, remove the cloves and put them aside.

Now it’s time to add a little bit more cooking oil then add in the (painstakingly) chopped vegetables into the sizzling wok. By now, your wok would be so hot that you would need a damp cloth to hold it by the handles.

Like before, remove the vegetables and set them aside.

Take out your cooked white rice and pour it into the wok, stirring in the fat into the rice. Add the seasoning: a combination of salt, pepper and sesame oil. If you don’t think it’s flavourful enough, use cubed chicken stock or MSG (although I don’t recommend that).

Finally, throw in the cooked vegetables and bacon, mixing the combination well. Some people prefer eggs in their fried rice. I didn’t use any because I wanted the bacon flavour to come through.

Before you turn off the fire, make sure you taste the fried rice! Using a teaspoon, I tried a bit of my CBB Rice.

It was delicious but it needed more salt. I decided to use some soy sauce instead. For Chinese dishes, I prefer soy sauce over salt.

Turn off the fire and the Carrots, Bacon and Beans rice is ready to be served!

Ingredients 6 slices bacon, cut into strips 2 cloves garlic, peeled 1 cup carrots, peeled and diced 1 cup long beans, diced 1 cup overnight steamed rice

Seasoning a pinch of salt 1 tablespoon sesame oil a pinch of white pepper soy sauce (optional)

Method

Heat the wok over a low fire. Fry the bacon until brown, then remove from the wok. Leave the oil.

Crush one or two garlic cloves and stir-fry until fragrant. Take out the garlic cloves.

Stir-fry the carrots and long beans until it’s soft and slightly brown the edges. Remove from wok. Add more cooking oil if required.

Stir-fry the rice. Pour the seasoning and mix thoroughly.

Add the stir-fried vegetables and bacon. Mix with the rice. If it’s not flavourful enough, add soy sauce to taste. Turn off the fire and it’s ready to be served.