Experiment 9: Tricky Caldereta

Prelab:
Seeing that we only had chicken in the fridge and had run out of vegetables, there wasn't much of an option for cooking supper. Originally, I planned to try cooking adobo for the first time, but then I recalled that there were 2 recipes for this, grand mere R's recipe, and ma mere's recipe (which was supposedly her "mother's recipe" but for some reason wasn't the same at all). It would be tricky to do an often criticized dish in the household, so I decided not to do it yet.
Meanwhile, ma soeur said that she wanted caldereta because we hadn't had that for a long time, hence I decided to try that instead.
Okay, so it's my first time to do it (this hassle-dish that requires quite an effort) and to actually follow a recipe to the letter! Sadly I don't remember how it's supposed to look like, so I had no idea how to vary and modify this dish.

Date Performed: Nov. 29, 2009

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
1 tomato sauce (Net wt. 220 g)
3 cloves garlic
1 small onion
1 carrot, diced
4 cups water

Preparation:
Clean the chicken.
Marinate chicken with vinegar, salt, and pepper for 15 minutes. Drain the marinate.
Brown the chicken in a saucepan. Remove and set aside when done.
In the same pan, sautee garlic and onion. Return the chicken afterwards. Sautee for 3 minutes, and then add the tomato sauce. Stir occasionally until 5 minutes is up.
Add 4 cups water, let it simmer in low fire for 20 minutes.
Add the carrots and let it simmer in low fire for 10 minutes.
Add 1/2 tsp salt and a dash of pepper.
Serve hot.

Post-lab:
"I give you 95% for the effort," says mon pere. This means that I literally failed the dish. There was too much water. Of course they still ate it, but I can see the complaint in their eyes that it almost ended up in the trash even though I didn't burn anything to a crisp. Perhaps the dish-being-cooked-on-the-process was all right until I added the water. Ma mere says I should only add 1 cup of water or less, depending on the amount of chicken (which in this case would always be small), and on the chicken itself (because the chicken that you can buy here are all H20-injected, and you'll expect the chicken to release its water later). I suppose that recipe I found was from an overseas worker or probably lives abroad where the chickens are huge. In the end, they tell me not to follow a recipe to the letter.
OKAY! So when I actually follow a recipe seriously, this is what happens. But when I modify someone's recipe to incorporate major changes, I still fail. This means that in cooking, it's not as simple a lab experiment after all as I initially thought. Experience matters alot.
When I think about it, I probably should me more considerate about the people for whom I'm cooking, considering that they're also gracious to me whenever I make mistakes. Still, like I said before, I am really really really not fond of cooking. Cooking serves as an escape for doing the dishes though. (Well I don't like doing the dishes because my hands get that wet and I always need to use some lotion afterwards. What a hassle.)
In cooking, I learned that I should be flexible and that I should also be consistent as well (or else I can't repeat whatever I did in the past). But then again, the ingredients aren't always of the same amount, unless I weigh them all. Imagine weighing them all just as you often find in the TV shows! Weighing the garlic, the onions, and all the other vegetables would be too time consuming!