If you have read through any of my posts, than you may have been able to pick up on my hesitation to give to precise of directions and hopefully my encouragement for experimentation comes through. Personally when I am cooking I rarely am using a set recipe, and I think they cause a lot of beginning cooks more headaches than help, and can actually hinder any real learning process. One of my housemates has shelves full of recipe books and on occasion I thumb through them and will find some dishes that sound fascinating. Yet, I can count on one hand the number of times that I have kept the book out while I was cooking. I think it is better to see recipe books as idea books; they are great for inspiration and getting a basic understanding for what you need to get a type of flavor. After this point I think they become a hindrance.
Cooking engages all the senses and when we focus on the lists, the timing and the temperatures that many recipes provide we fail to use our senses in the process. Now baking is different, so much of it is chemistry that following recipes becomes important. The pages of my cookbooks that are stained and warped are those of baking recipes because in those cases I have my book out and on the counter as I am cooking. All the other pages tend to be crisp and clean. When you cook listen to your senses and learn to trust them. You can tell when garlic is about to brown by the way it changes smells, you can tell how done meat is by its feel, watching the foam of butter can tell you when it is about to go from having the wonderful nutty flavor of browned butter to the rather unpleasant flavor of burned butter, you can hear when a sear is ready by the change of the sizzle in the pan. Cookbooks try to tell you these things through timing and temperature (occasionally they will talk about sight and how something should look when it is ready) but the problem is that every kitchen is different, every burner is unique, every pan heats differently, every cut of meat has a different thickness or fat content and all of these things will impact timing. And this doesn’t even touch on personal preferences, the author of a cookbook may think that two spices are perfect for broiling a chicken breast, but you may not.
This is the heart of my love hate relationship with recipes they are great for getting the ball rolling, but too much reliance on them is stifling. When I am cooking with others, I frequently have to try to hide my frustration when people measure things unnecessarily and refuse to think outside the confines of the recipe.
Sure there will be setbacks when you strike out on your own; I recall the first time I tried to make a rather simple pasta dish. I was 13 and on my own for dinner, I prepped my pasta and went to work on a simple sautéed onion and garlic sauce, when it came time to add the spices I was just a bit heavy handed and the result was a pretty much uneatable dish, even a mountain of Parmesan could not save it. But I learned, I learned the overpowering nature of some spices, the importance of textures (too much dried spice mixed with olive oil makes a rather unpleasant past like substance), but these are things that recipe books don’t tell you. Sure by following them you may avoid a similar mistake, but you don’t really know why.
This is why I try to leave my posts as open ended as possible, and why I will try to describe the use of all senses in cooking and why so many of my measurements are approximations. The truth is in many cases I have no clue how much of an ingredient I use, and when I have tried to get a more exact measurement of the sake of helping others, the dish has come out tasting different and off.
Break free of the confines of recipes, seem them as idea generators and a guide for the basic steps, from there step out and have fun!
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