I have difficulty following recipes.
Strange considering my obsession with baking and the art of perfection. And maybe it’s not recipes for cakes, cookies, and cream puffs that make me squirm at the very thought of precise completion, but more the ones for savory stuff. Cooking. Whereas with baking I get a tingle when I measure to the fraction of an ounce, fold in freakishly well, and frost with almost maniacal attention to detail, cooking with exactness makes me claustrophobic.
Hand me an index card with your great grandmother’s famous lemon pound cake and I’ll follow it so closely you’ll swear Great Grammie was in that kitchen sashaying in her finest floral housecoat. Wafts of Jean Naté will swirl in the air as you bite down. You’ll bet your life your dear old mammy greased and floured the pan with love. And then you’ll realize that I made it, and you’ll smile remembering that your great grandmother could barely mix together anything more complex than cottage cheese and canned pears. That’s what I’d do, anyway.
I digress.
The point is that when it comes to baking, I’m your girl. But cooking, as much as I love it, means that I can’t execute a recipe as it’s written to save my soul. Or at least, I don’t want to.
There is so much to play with, so many avenues and angles to a dish, that I feel sticking to the printed word would be a disservice to my creativity. And maybe my midsection.
A large chunk of the claustrophobia I have surrounding exact cooking execution comes from the cheap side of me. I’m just unwilling, generally speaking, to shell out a five spot for a single use spice, a rare red chile, or anything on the cranny of the bottommost shelf of aisle 4. Parsley inevitably wilts and rots in my produce drawer. Sorry. It just might not be in the cards for me to have these special ingredients, even if that means making a dish that doesn’t quite taste as…mmm….as Ina would have made it.
All that being said, swallowed, and digested, there are moments in my life when I calculatedly carry out a recipe. Times when I measure each carefully called-for ingredient, read each line of the instructions, and precisely practice what they call, “cooking.” You know, those people who get their names embossed on the spines of hardcover cookbooks. They.
And I really hate to break the news to you like this, but, the end result? Fabulous. Just pure unadulterated bliss and satisfaction. I know, it’s a hard pill to swallow. Some recipes are meant to be followed. Sometimes a tablespoon of parsley matters more than you might imagine. And the recipe creator may indeed mean it when they call for a quarter teaspoon of sugar. I wouldn’t have believed it, myself, but it’s true.
So, what’s the good news in all of this?
That recipes are written by and from people who haven’t followed another’s instructions. I play more than anything in my kitchen. And I expect that you do too. It’s more fun to flit about and fling things in a pot, swirl stuff in a pan, and crazy up a casserole than it is to follow directions. So, friends, take heart: making a recipe as written, as decided by the creator, is almost always worthwhile. But if you can’t, it’s cool. That’s how you hit your stride, how you find your style in the kitchen. It’s the way good recipes are born.
An extra large slice of pride is served when you create an original, delicious dish. It means it’s your own.
Thanks for the inspiration, [insert famous chef name], but this one’s all mine.
One part inspiration, one part creativity, and one part 'hey, this could blow up and cost me an arm and a leg in fire damages and pride, but…I’m okay with that.'
What about you? Do you follow recipes closely or do you find yourself wandering?
-Andrea Mitchell, Foodista staff and blogger at CanYouStayForDinner.com
