The road to Liberation is hard

Last night, stars must have been aligned and the moon in the seventh house: I finally succeeded in making a really tasty pan of teriyaki chicken. The problem with making this particular meal is that a friend of mine used to cook it and I’d only ever watched her making it her way. I liked her version, and so shunned what the great and vast internet might be able to tell me on the subject. 

It is one of my many faults that I believe I can get the jist of how to make something by just sitting at an adjacent table and occasionally glancing towards the stove amid conversation or table laying.(Similarly on journeying to visit my sister’s house for the first time, I was convinced that I didn’t need to look at a map to find where she lived – I thought I’d just intuit it. As it happens, I did manage to drive around her town long enough to accidentally pass by the bottom of her street and so I felt vindicated in my confidence. This story will not have a happy ending.)

The process as witnessed in that kitchen up a hill eight months ago was the following: oil (can never remember if this was veg/olive) goes into a pan. Chopped up garlic, ginger and dried chilli are added to oil to flavour it. A spatual-ed nudging of the garlic and ginger to the side of the pan and then chicken (always on the bone) is put in skin-side down. At some point, a certain amount (I’ve had to experiment) of soy sauce is slowly added to the pan, and then spoonfuls (see prev. parenthesis) of sugar sprinkled over the lot. I missed the next bit but the chicken always emerged from the oven so, in light of the laws of physics, it must get put in there at some point before we eat it. Yes. I think that’s right.  

I have tried again and again to replicate the above, always producing something not quite right, not quite the same and on a number of occasions, bitter and burnt. This in turn would leave me feeling bitter and, in my eagerness to taste and see whether I’d managed it this time, often somewhat scalded on the tongueandwhilewe’reonthesubject how is it right and just in this world that the only way of checking whether the food you’ve just made is gross or heaven is to force yourself to try some boiling hot sauce that will burn your tongue and give you a questionable impression of the dish as a whole anyway and then you can't even enjoy the food if it's decent because your tongue's like a carpet??! Grrr.

Frustration, then, was mounting. But lo! chiaroscuro as sunlight hit the dark clouds of my culinary depression - I made a break-through. As is always the case, I made a small change or two. I resolved to remove the garlic and ginger from the pan after their aromafying of the oil as they tended to burn if the heat was to high but if the heat was too low, the chicken didn’t brown. Full steam ahead, chicken went in and I resolved not to be impatient but Just Let It Brown This Time. And it did – GLORY. Well most of it. I’ll get better at being patient I’m sure. Then I tried a new set of measurements and proportions for the soy/sugar. Five dessert spoons of soy (new kikoman soy sauce which is meant to be the best) and four of golden caster sugar YES it sounds a lot when you put it like that but you’d eat it in a restaurant wouldn’t you WOULDN’T you so just pipe down.

Heat under the pan went low as the soy went in since it tends to be petulant about over-heating (hence the burnt taste). Chilli and garlic returned to the pan. As soon as froth started happening aroundybout the chicken, it all went in a pyrex dish and into a high-heat oven. Boom. Rice. Purple-sprouting broccoli and lime, cos there weren’t no lemons in the fridge. Splendid. Better than splendid. Divine. Crispy, sweet, salty, chickeny, ricey, yummy goodness. This is the one dish I’ve repeatedly tweaked and now that I have the recipe, timing and method in my head (although it could still improve), I do feel a bit like its really mine, and more so than a meal from a recipe. 

Liberation after the long-struggle against the oppressor Cook Book!