I am fairly useless at presentation. I don't know why, because I have a fairly good eye for color and shape, but I'm usually hung up over how things taste. Making it all pretty is low on my priority list.

I also can't flip a wok, I don't have the arm strength. As I stir fry regularly, this is a little distressing, but I think flipping is for exhibitionists which I am not. So I flip the food inside the wok which isn't nearly as impressive. Still tastes good tho'.

Cheryl

I've had trouble sliding a pizza off of a peel onto a pizza stone, but the last time I tried was in Venice, and I did not have enough room in front of my stove. I switched to using pizza screens and haven't looked back even though I still have my pizza peel and now have plenty of room in front of my oven. The screen is just so convenient and easy. I haven't mastered twirling pizza dough in the air either!

Lars

Lars, I forget about my pizza screens, thanks for reminding me. Usually I manage o.k. to get the pizza off the wood peel by first sprinkling the peel with cornmeal. The grains really do act like ball bearings.

I'm not very good at carving. I can slice a beef pot roast fine, but carving a chicken is not my strong suit. And I can't fillet fish. My mom did teach me how to cut up a whole chicken, but I don't often use that skill. Thank goodness we have my dear BIL to carve the holiday birds!

Teresa

...cut a raw chicken into pieces. By the time I'm done, the poor thing is so mangled. It looks easy seeing chefs do it, but I'm all thumbs it seems.

I have extreme difficulty flipping as well....eggs, pancakes, you name it. I have to use both hands just to turn over a grilled cheese!

I can make a decent pie crust now, thanks to Nancy's vodka pie crust recipe, but I won't go so far as to say my crusts are pretty.

And presentation is one of my weaknesses as well. I can put together glass, paper, wire, beads, etc. to make some beautiful things, but unfortunately food is not a user friendly medium for my artistic abilities!

Linda

There's no doubt I'm deficient in many ways in the kitchen but the only things I can think of offhand:

I get mixed results with dinner rolls, especially if I don't use the breadmaker to mix it up. Biscuits? Forget it. Although I haven't found a biscuit recipe I really like anyway. I do *not* like those baking powder biscuits. They taste about the same as throwing a fistful of flour in your mouth. No thanks. Not even buried in ketchup! LOL I actually *like* the whack-a-mole tube buttermilk biscuits when you put some real butter on them. I've wished I could recreate my mother's dinner rolls but can't. I have had mixed success with other recipes though, but it's the principle of it. I spent a lot of mornings keeping her company while she labored over those golden goodies. And getting 2 or 3 of them hot from the oven and the jar of peanut butter... dang, thems was good eats!

One thing took me years to master and it's such a simple thing. Boiling potatoes! They'd either be mush or they'd be undercooked. I never could get the thing timed out. Then, finally, I was careful about the size of the chunks, stood over it and constantly checked and okey dokey, finally mastered one of the simplest of kitchen items. But I come by honestly at least (or so I claim - that's my story and I'm sticking to it). My great-uncle was a lifelong bachelor and one of his favorite dishes was boiled potatoes! My aunt (his niece) always laughed about it. "What *easier* thing is there to make but boiled potatoes?" she's ask. I didn't tell her that (at the time) I couldn't make them either!

One other thing, I can't carve very well either but I don't really care! Chop the meat off the bones and dish it up. Other people may "eat with their eyes" but I use my mouth, ergo my tastebuds come into play and foo-foo plated food does not impress me. Usually it's more spaced out so you have less food (therefore less cost which equals more profit) to the restaurant.

Cynic,

"One other thing, I can't carve very well either but I don't really care! Chop the meat off the bones and dish it up. Other people may "eat with their eyes" but I use my mouth..."

ROFL :) Thanks for the chuckle.

/tricia

I make horrible mash potatoes most of the time. Sometimes they are okay - but mostly they are not up to the standards of the rest of the meal. I avoid mash potatoes. I have a Mash Potato Phobia.

To me, I see cooking has three areas of focus:

1. Taste.
2. Presentation.
3. Texture.

With Internet, "Taste" is no longer a challenge. If you can Google and measure, you can always get recipes with good tasting end results.

Good presentation is one of the most daunting and satisfying aspects of cooking. Presentation skill is very tricky because you cannot do very well by just reading recipes. Although there are "How to" books and instructions, they are like training wheels on a bicycle, or painting by numbers, they are helpful but they are not going to get you there. I do believe that everyone can become good at it by practicing. I practice every chance I get. I hope someday I will be good at doing it.

I am very focused on the importance of texture control in food. Most of the time when something don't taste good is not because of taste, it is because of texture is messed up. A bowl of melt ice cream tastes the same as frozen ice cream. An overcooked tough piece of steak tastes the same as one that's juicy and tender. Al dente pasta, crispy fried chicken, creamy Mac & Cheese --------- It is all about mouth feel. On another forum, a few members and I have been trying to figure out how the Chinese make hand pulled noodles. Hand pulled noodles have a very nice texture which cannot be made with other methods. We have been trying for over a year, no luck yet. I wish I could come up with a way soon.

dcarch

Here is a link that might be useful: Pulled noodles

I'm not a fancy cook, but I am good at cooking regular homestyle or country style or southern style food. It is what I grew up on, and what I like. I don't know that I could flip anything in a pan, but that isn't anything I aspire to. I just want to share a recipe for biscuits. When you make them, don't over work the dough. You just want it to come together and roll them out gently and cut into biscuits. This is a recipe I've used and like, although usually when I make biscuits, I don't use a recipe.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fluffy biscuits

Baking anything...bread, pie crust, muffins, cakes, it's all a crap shoot. Somedays I'm awesome and other days even the dog gives me an incredulous look like "That's a cake???"

Thanks to my Zo, now I can usually turn out decent bread and rolls.

Yup and presentation...some days my presentations are fabulous and other days they look like they came from the dirty dishes at Flo's Diner's.

Can't figure out why my skills are hit or miss...and no it does not correlate to wine consumption. LOL I think I ad lib too much and get bored with doing the same thing again and again. I never met a recipe I didn't tweak and have probaly never made the same one twice!