So how shall I start my first meal story for The Weekend Chef? Probably at the beginning, I guess. It all started when Stephanie suggested I do a meal story, since I seem to know a lot about food. Well, in all honesty, I do know a lot about food – in the manner of trivia. I can tell you the different techniques and styles of cooking, but it is all theory. I have not done any form of serious cooking since I came back from the UK more than 10 years ago. So this little weekend do is going to be my first major attempt at cooking anything remotely resembling a presentable meal. After all, my idea of a meal is a large pizza and a bottle of carbonated soda. I am lazy when it comes to preparing food. Eating is another matter, of course!

Nevertheless, I was not about to shy away from this opportunity to contribute to The Weekend Chef, so a date was set and I managed to get a buffer of one weekend to make a mess of things before the real deal.

Now, the most difficult part was planning what to cook. In the UK, it was just a matter of opening the refrigerator and checking what I had to work with. This time I had to be organised. So I started out with the basis of what would eventually turn into the final menu. Of course, there was an ulterior motive behind this little cooking stunt. Mom’s birthday was coming up and being fresh out of ideas on what to get her, I figured a home cooked dinner would be a refreshing change. After all, she has been doing that for me for the last 30-odd years!

With that in mind, I set off planning a menu. I wanted something that was generic in appeal, nothing overly western or eastern but something in between. In the end I settled on a typical western arrangement of starter, salad, main course and dessert.

For the starters, I decided on a variant of nachos. The original nachos consist of fried tortilla chips topped with melted cheese and jalapeno peppers. For my version, I decided to use everyday cream crackers for the base instead.

For the salad, I wanted something different from the typical extra virgin olive oil and vinaigrette dressing, as well as give it a little Asian touch. And so, the vegetable salad with sesame oil dressing was born. Just in case the sesame oil was not Asian enough, I also used soya bean sprouts.

To retain the Asian theme, rice is a must. But instead of plain old white rice, I decided to go with fragrant rice topped with a fistful of raisins to liven it up. To accompany the rice, I originally wanted to do a citrus barbequed chicken but the first attempt did not work too well, as the chicken ended up too dry under the unrelenting heat of the turbo-broiler. So Plan B was put into action and I ended up with stir-fry citrus chicken, which was much better.

You would think dessert would be pretty simple, but not in this case. My first attempt was a honeydew soup with mint, but that did not work out too well. The contingency plan, which was gelato, worked nicely but did not fit with the rest of the menu. The third plan was what I went with in the end - a bowl of berries. The berries turned out to be a tad sour, so I drizzled honey over it. And then, it was perfect.

It was a maddening weekend of trial and error, but an interesting experience. At the end of it all, when it came time to perform in front of the cameras, I think I pulled it off well. But of course that was secondary, as all I wanted was to cook up a nice dinner for Mom and I believe I succeeded. At least this time she did not chase me out of the kitchen for making a mess!