I admit it. I *am* a terrible cook. Or, failed 'Chicken Cacciatore'

soupy mess

We ate at Holiday Inn a few weeks ago and I enjoyed a dish so much I decided to look it up. It's called Chicken Cacciatore, which is tender chicken in tomato sauce. I found a recipe with good reviews at allrecipes, and considered myself good to go.

What I appreciated about the dish is that the ingredients were all easily available. The only ingredient new to me was the white wine. Mushrooms and a can of tomatoes were easy to find in the supermarket.

I was quite excited to make this dish. I read through the recipe and followed instructions as best as I could. I had trouble with browning the chicken. I don't know if it was my stainless steel soup pan (I used that since I thought my regular skillet was too small) or the electric range or both, but the chicken refused to brown properly. I even made sure to fry in two batches but it didn't do the trick. I gave up when I thought the chicken skins were burning, not browning.

Later, I put in the whole 14.5 oz can of tomato in. Uh-oh. That was a big mistake. The tomatoes were actually enough for about 4 times the amount of chicken I was cooking. I ended up with a SOUP. What makes chicken cacciatore tasty is the SAUCE. Major FAIL :(

My confidence has gone up the previous weeks since I find myself to be a fair novice baker and the torta I made last week was good enough, but it has reached rock bottom once again. I'm trying to analyze what happened. I am quite successful as a baker since I follow recipes as strictly as I could (but always with some modifications), I read a lot about baking so I have extensive theoretical knowledge that help me come up with modifications successfully. I have read extensively about the techniques (how to cream butter and sugar, how to mix batter, what pans to use, the ingredient proportions to use....) so I know how they work and how to apply them.

In hindsight, I may have been too adventurous my despite my extremely limited knowledge of cooking. I always read that unlike baking, cooking is not an exact science so one is free to improvise. However, someone like me does not have the required knowledge, experience, or technique to make suitable improvisations. I realize now that my biggest downfall in cooking is that I have no regard for ingredient proportions. My mother and grandmother never measure anything, so I thought I could get away with it, too. However, this is only possible if you have had prior experience and an idea of how the ingredients will work together - I don't.

I still like blaming my electric range which I think heats up too much even on the lowest setting, but it is only half of the story. If I actually knew how to compensate for that (like what I do with my baking pans), I may still get a decent dish.

I always end up with crowded or soupy dishes, and that's because living alone, the amount I require is usually much less than the 6-8 servings usually seen in recipes. Now if only I followed the ratios more closely and didn't pour in the whole can, I might have been able to come up with something halfway decent.

I hope that next time, this blog will bring a success culinary story.

Baking Without An Oven. Or, the Japanese find ways for almost *anything*

I notice a lot of people want to try baking but don't have an oven. I feel their plight as for many years, I didn't have a one myself. When I got a boyfriend, I wanted to make goodies for him and searched for ways to bake even without an oven. Fortunately for me, I was in Japan at the time and the Japanese have a how-to book for every need you can possibly think of. Here are some of the things I've tried.

BAKING WITH A FRY PAN
The first baking book I bought had the title "Baking Cakes and Breads with a Fry Pan." The photos in the book looked all so wonderfully delicious, and they were all made with equipment I already had on hand - a frying pan! I tried the easiest but most scrumptious looking recipe, a cookie. Unfortunately, it did not turn out well at all. Even my American friend told me "I don't believe there is such a thing as a bad cookie, but that cookie is BAD." That discouraged me from baking with frying pans and I shelved the book. Though now that I know a bit more about baking, I might try another recipe from there again. After all, that time I could not properly control the heat of the electric range and didn't know how to properly measure and handle ingredients.


BAKING WITH A MICROWAVE OVEN
The second book I bought was "Making Pastries Using A Microwave Oven." The one recipe I tried from there was such a disaster I got discouraged from baking anything at all, period. The recipe was looked very simple and straightforward (peanut butter cookies - do I see a pattern here?) and I even checked that our microwave had the specified wattage, but the end result was so bad I threw everything into the trash. I should've trusted my instincts when I looked at the instructions to zap for 8 minutes and thought "whoa, that's way too long." I didn't even reach that long as I could smell something burning not even halfway through. I ended up with hard, crumbly pucks with sugar granules still clearly visible in them. Yecchh.


BAKING WITH A RICE COOKER
My third book was "Cakes and Breads with a Rice Cooker." As the saying goes, the third time's the charm. I initially baked my first ever chocolate cake in a regular rice cooker and came up with something edible, but with a burnt bottom. Upon careful rereading, I discovered that the rice cooker to use was was an IH model (Induction Heating). Yes, they are much more expensive than the regular kind but make very delicious rice. Since I was itching to bake something and sick of looking for the disappearing rice cooker (it was a shared dorm appliance), I bit the bullet and bought one. I came up with passable results and a splendid Pumpkin Cheesecake, despite the fact that at the time, my measurement and mixing methods were probably a disaster. I'd make cakes with my rice cooker again, but sadly, I can't use it here because its a 110v appliance


BAKING WITH A KALDERA (STOCKPOT)
I haven't actually tried this, but a cousin of mine bakes cakes and cupcakes using a big kaldera with soil padded at the bottom on the stovetop. She learned of this technique from a local baking class.


Funny enough, the books mentioned above actually got good reviews from Amazon Japan. So maybe there was just something wrong with me/my microwave/my baking karma for the day. I think I'll dig up my books and try baking with them again (though I am still wary of the microwave book).