When It Doesn't Quite Work

I have been lucky in that most of my cooking experiments have turned out reasonably well. I did once singe a bunch of sweet potato fries but that's a different story. Tonight, I attempted to make "Catfish in Salty-Sweet Caramel Sauce". The recipe is straight forward - add this, mix that. It's also a really brief process compared to a lot of things. The entire list of ingredients and instructions only consumes half a page. Somewhere along the way, something must have gone wonky. The sauce refused to thicken. I gave it more time. Nothing. Adjusted the heat. Still no luck. After maybe 15 extra minutes of cook time I had to face that this was the best it was going to get. What resulted was decidedly Asian tasting and Asian smelling (as it was supposed to be) but, I can't help but feel I missed a certain glow that would have gone with a well thickened caramel sauce.