Of A Cooking Life Lesson

Yesterday, I decided I'd make something delicious. It was going to be a pork dish with some ginger and other ingredients, but mainly ginger. And let me just say, that it looked fantastic online. With that said, the same was not true of my cooking. You know, normally, I make things up, sometimes use recipes, and I almost always end up with something delicious, or at least edible. Last night's dinner was edible, and that's about where it stopped.

Someone had spilled something in the fridge unfortunately, coating most things in some sort of stick junk. I cleaned it up, but certain ingredients could not be salvaged. That's where dinner started.

From there, I looked at the remaining ingredients, and said, I can make this work. And it's true, I could, if I had one ingredient more. Unfortunately for me, I had no idea what that ingredient was. I stared at it, searched for it in dictionaries, Googled it, but to no avail. The ingredient simply would not turn up, and so, in classic Michelle style, I decided it must not be important. Any ingredient that doesn't turn up easily can't possible be useful. I figured it was one of those optional things. Unlike baking, cooking has optional ingredients. This is the point at which I should've figured my logic was less than logical. And here was the beginning of the end.

So I made my dish, added the ginger, added the few vegetables I had left over, and made my sauce to cover my pork in. I taste the sauce, and I realize, why, that's a tad salty (keep in mind it's mostly soy based with a little rice vinegar. So I add some stuff, and hope for the best, tasting it all the while. I finally finish my dish, and taste it, and it's....edible.

Three guesses as to what I left out. I went back to Google, still no dice. Asked SoJeong, she guessed it was some sort of stock, but she wasn't sure. Asked Tai today, and yes, it was chicken stock. I left out chicken stock. Do you know how important of an ingredient that is? I bet my dish would have been awesome if I'd had it.

In other news, I made some genuine American hamburgers with a touch of basil, rosemary, onion, and garam marsala with a side of the famous rosemary potatoes for dinner tonight. I even had some fresh pineapple. It was much better.

Source:
にんにく豚飯 (クックパッド)