Our 7 year old microwave oven, kicked the bucket a few weeks ago, and we replaced it with one of those combo ovens with a steam function. So I gave a go at cooking steamed fish.

There were a few recipes on the Internet, just like open source, while you can follow stuff step by step, you should get an understanding of what the ingredients do, to become a a better cook. With cooking, this involves a bit of experimentation, and after a while you start getting the hang of things.

I started of from this recipe. I changed a few things though, by stuffing the fish with chopped ginger, garlic and shallots. To make the sauce inside the dish tastier, I also liberally covered the base with onions and shallots also. Ikan merah (Red Snapper) works well for this. Instead of salad oil, I replaced it with sesame seed oil.

The autocook microwave+steam feature undercooked it, so I make it a note to increase the weight next time by a 100 or so grams next time. So in total it's about ~20mins.

It turned out ok. For improvements on the next version, I think I would add some pickled green chillies (in vinegar) to the sauce to spice it up a bit.

Gourmet

While most of the focus on FOSS is on stuff like OpenOffice etc. one should not forget that, for a lot of normal home users that personal interest and hobby applications is what they could also use the computer for. For wannabe "Naked Chefs" or "Chef Wan", you can keep your collection in Gourmet. It also has nifty features like shopping lists and nutrition calculator. The former I find extremely handy.

For more on this, check this posting by a user who converted from Windows:

http://www.nabble.com/Great-program-p8020886.html

Compared to the programs I was using on Windows before going to Linux this is an amazing program. The windows programs that were purchased would crash continuously, didn't like it if the files got too large, lost recipes with crashes and hated pictures beyond a certain size.

Enjoy your meal :)