If skills are added to the cooking minigame, i think it would benefit from a difficulty escalation. For example, a new starter dish would be one that requires a few less ingredients and no chicken, then you'd have one that foccuses on chicken so you can learn how to deal with it, then you can get skills that make The Chicken situation easier. But this is merely a suggestion.
The biggest problem in my opinion is that since you seem to be the only playtester, the minigame will feel easier to you than it'd be to the average player. And that's how you end up having to make an easy mode.
I wonder how the "Quests that require other quests showing up" issue showed up.
Well, the MC learns about something and needs to do something, so a quest appears. However, he can't complete it yet because he lacks certain information or the means to do so, which is fairly realistic in real life.
For now, this is the solution I've "come up with" for this problem.
With this feature, it's immediately clear that the quest can't be completed right now simply because the MC doesn't currently have the means or ability to do so.