I was really excited about making this dish. My boyfriend absolutely loves it. Whenever we visit one of those Hong Kong themed restaurants, he never fails to order this. One layer of cooked rice, followed by a layer of meat sauce then topped off with cheese and baked till top is bubbly. Easy right?
So easy I didn’t even bother to look at a recipe. That was how cocky I was. Well, as it panned out, my version of cheese baked rice turned out quite bad :(
It was edible…okay let me rephrase, the crust was edible and now and then some bits of rice. The rest? Atrocious.
How could something that looked so good out of the oven and smelled so heavenly turned out to be a complete disappointment?
# – Perfectly good cheesy crust…what could go wrong? Right?
And every cooking failure is a lesson I have to learn from. From my disastrous cheese baked rice, I’ve learnt:
- Not to add beans I’ve never cooked before into perfectly fluffy rice just because I need to use some of them up.
- Never to buy too many cans of beans I’ve never cooked before because they were discounted. Refer to point above.
- Not to leave too much liquid in the meat sauce. Okay, to be more specific….drain the damn tuna. It won’t take too long.
- Not to cook too much of something you’ve never made before.
- Stick to the cheaper cheeses for first time dishes!!!!!
- Don’t EVER, EVER, forget the salt
# – Cannellini beans….not such a smart idea now is it?
I suppose that’s the nature of cooking, you can have some good days but you will bound to experience some bad days too.
If you’re attempting some form of cheese baked rice, and for some unknown odd reason you feel like dumping a can of cannellini beans into your rice, please, I implore you, DON’T!
# – This is an illustration of “BAD MOVE”.
So I screwed dinner up. It’s not too bad, all I had to do was take over the dishes duty and the BF’s successfully pacified. So there, if you’ve encountered any cooking disaster, don’t be discouraged and keep on cooking folks!