My foray into cooking and wine

I learned a lot of stuff growing up but being able to cook for myself in any sort of meaningful capacity was not one of them. I was at one point in time able to complete a mario game on Game Boy without dying once and accumulating over 35 extra lives by the time the game was finished, but I have no idea how to determine if a steak is still raw, medium, or now cardboard because i cooked it 4 times as long as you are supposed to out of fear of meatborne illnesses. I also know nothing about wine and should probably leave that alone as well.

My first attempt involved a cut of pork. Don't ask me what the cut was because I have no idea. It was big and it had a bone in it so I thought i was going upmarket. I looked online and saw that I should cook it in butter, which I did... probably way too much of it. The instructions said to cook on "medium heat" which is a term that I hate because what is low? Off? leaving it on the counter? Is "high" the maximum heat my range can put out?

This problem is compounded by the fact that my range top is digital and is in vietnamese which i do not read. It has a output range that goes from 200 to 2000 which I have no idea what unit of measurement this is. I figured 1000 might be medium.

After the butter melted I put the pork steak on there and 2 minutes later lava butter was flying all over the place. As i was instructed I turned the steak once and then waited another 2 minutes. The result was a chewy mess that was gross.

I chose a thicker cut of meat for my second attempt and this time I used a lot less butter. I also bought some Bisto to makes the horrible taste that I was expecting after my first run at this. This was slightly better but I feel as though I pulled this one out too early as the middle was very pink. I enjoy this color scheme as far as beef is concerned but I'm a little scared of it as far as other meats are concerned.

This one was less disgusting than the first but still not very good. The best part about it was the Bisto and that may end up being one of the best purchases I have made at a grocery store in quite some time.

A friend of mine has recommended that I get a meat thermometer because the online timings and also where they tell you to grab the steak with your hands is not information meant for beginners like me.

Mostly I think I should just get away from pork because there is a reason why it is always much cheaper at the markets.

Next we move on to wine.

My decision about what kind of wine to purchase is based entirely on price which is to say that since I don't know WTF i am doing, $10 is my upper limit per bottle. So far all the under 10 bucks purchases seem to be sauvignon blancs, and I would be lying if I said I had any idea what that means.

Thus far the wines have all been Chilean, and they all kind of taste the same. I like them and from the ones I have tried they are arranged left to right in order of how much I enjoyed them. There was another bottle of wine that was made in Vietnam but that simply tasted like a bottle of wine that you opened 2 weeks ago, forgot you had it and then found it in the back of the fridge and decided to drink it. There is a reason that it was $3 i guess.

So I suppose the lockdown that has been happening here in Vietnam has a silver lining of sorts because normally I don't ever contemplate cooking for myself but since all restaurants are closed I don't really have a choice at the moment. I can't believe that I am in the age that I am and never really learned how to cook anything. I am ashamed about that.

This has made me want to go to some sort of cooking school in the future because it is a bit shameful to be an adult and to know how to cook literally nothing.

Tonight's adventure will involve beef because I'm convinced that I can't cook pork steak properly in a pan on the range.