Improv at the Second Kitchen
I am a slave to recipes.
I’ve cooked enough by now to avoid that numb terror you first feel upon picking up a knife (or a spatula, or a pan, or a…). I make certain foods, like guacamole, with confidence and ease and nary a glance at a slip of paper. But for the most part, if I haven’t cooked a dish at least a dozen times, I still clutch a recipe and God help us all if I vary from its instructions.
Everyone knows baking is a science, but for me all cooking is–and recipes are its immutable laws. If I add more than exactly a quarter-teaspoon of pepper, the house may explode. If I substitute powdered garlic, the planet cracks in half. Many times during my cooking adventures, my brother has sighed, strolled on in, tasted whatever I was convinced ‘d destroyed, and added a pinch of this or that to make it edible.
How do you people do it?
Take last night’s dinner (and today’s hastily-eaten lunch, hence the empty bowl): gazpacho-based tomato sauce with meatballs and angel hair. We started with a big jug of thin, cold soup leftover from a recent family party; my mom puttered about in the kitchen for a while, opened a few jars, and when dinner hit the table the stuff had magically become a real good, totally different, totally hearty sauce. When I asked her what she’d done, the answers seemed so obvious: boiled off some of the water. Added some crushed tomatoes. Smashed in some meatballs. And yet, had I been in front of the stove, I would’ve stared glumly at the gazpacho for a while before cooking up a side dish and dining on cold soup.
Maybe, once my brother’s done with it, I should take a look at The Improvisational Cook. But something tells me I’ll be reading How to Boil Water and its ilk for a while, yet.
It’s a long–and hopefully delicious–road ahead.
-Jim should probably start filing these recipes
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But if you put a dash of this and sprinkle of that in baking, it never works!
Posted by tigerfish at October 3rd, 2007, 4:17 pmIn cooking, it is more forgiving and you can adjust the taste as you cook. :P
at the end of the day….just add chocolate
my chocolate meatballs are amazing
Posted by chip wilson at October 4th, 2007, 12:28 amOne way to train yourself is to ask someone to put together a pile of ingredients for you, and give you a time limit to make something out of them. You’d have to promise not to reach for a cookbook, but reaching for a beer or a glass of wine might help! After a while you realize that you know more than you think you know about cooking; you just need to learn to trust your instincts. And if what you create tastes like crap, you throw it away and go out for dinner!
Posted by Lydia at October 4th, 2007, 6:06 amLydia, sounds like making your own episode of Top Chef! Hehe. Good idea though!
Posted by Hillary at October 4th, 2007, 9:56 amI feel the same way about baking–how do you people do it? It’s so precise! It’s terrifying!
As for the dash and pinch and handful ways to cooking? I find it much more forgiving. There is rarely a “correct” amount. Maybe a better or worse amount (or technique), but adding a bit more of this, or less of that, or doing it differently, etc., will rarely screw it up beyond repair. In the end, I guess I’m just not afraid I’ll screw it up. If I worried about making something inedible, I’d never cook again. And usually it takes several tries to get a recipe “perfect” anyway.
Posted by Kelly at October 5th, 2007, 11:38 amjim, you just made my day - or year - with this post. I feel like I am such a novice because of my adherence to recipes. well, I kind of am a novice since I only started really cooking two years ago. but still. on the rare occasions I get “creative” it’s only a very small variation but I feel so proud. I’m just glad to know I am not the only one.
Posted by melissa at October 5th, 2007, 4:03 pm