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Grex > Cooking > #192: Cookbook vs. home-taught: the classical and improv in cooking. | |
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| 11 new of 14 responses total. |
slynne
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response 4 of 14:
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May 2 17:51 UTC 2002 |
I often cook "freestyle". My only regular dinner guest often says that
he wishes I would use a recipe. He usually says this while he is in the
kitchen fixing my latest disaster. He is a good enough cook that he can
not only cook without a recipe, he can almost always fix what I have
messed up.
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jaklumen
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response 5 of 14:
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May 5 11:06 UTC 2002 |
resp:3 baking is a science-- interesting, and fitting. Besides using
yeast, and getting things to rise or conform to a certain consistency,
what else needs to be constant.
resp:4 Practice, and following what has worked, is apparently what you
need. Follow and take notes on what he does =) I sometimes call
family for tips when I cook, even when I'm fairly confident on what
I'm doing.
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cmcgee
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response 6 of 14:
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May 5 14:24 UTC 2002 |
Baking is a science: in fact, it is the baking that uses a combination of
acids (lemon juice, buttermilk, baking powder) in a chemically-balanced
amount with a base (baking soda, baking powder) to create a specific
amount of carbon dioxide to raise a specific amount of flour, fat, bits
of fruit, etc that is most likely to go wrong if you don't have the
amounts just right.
For me, yeast is much more forgiving and flexible.
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i
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response 7 of 14:
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May 6 10:07 UTC 2002 |
Yeast baking is more science if you're using a bread machine, where the
mixture that you start it up with has to work out right with the (totally
brainless) machine's pre-set cycle. Done by (experienced) hand, yeast is
pretty forgiving, because you can make all sorts of adjustments as you go.
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ea
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response 8 of 14:
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Jun 3 02:08 UTC 2002 |
I'm not a huge cook ... I do a lot more baking than anything else. What
I do cook tends to be stuff that's pretty easy to make (think typical
College Student diet), so I don't use a lot of recipes when I'm making
dinner ... Dessert on the other hand, I follow the recipe pretty well.
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gelinas
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response 9 of 14:
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Oct 6 02:51 UTC 2002 |
I don't cook enough (often, varied) to be able to go by eye. I don't have
an educated enough palate to season "to taste", so I tend to follow recipes
fairly closely. I like my chili recipe, but someone told me recently, upon
seeing the recipe but not tasting the result, that it didn't have enough
flavorings for the amount of meat. Ah well.
I think it's practice, whether from the book or from the mentor/instructor.
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jmsaul
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response 10 of 14:
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Oct 6 13:38 UTC 2002 |
I think it's practice too -- not necessarily with a specific recipe, but with
recipes from a specific cuisine or style, so you have a good grasp of what
goes together well and how it's done. I also second the comments about
baking; it takes a lot more experience to improvise that properly, because
you need pretty precise proportions of ingredients for it to work at all.
I can easily improvise Chinese, Thai, or Indonesian given the right
ingredients, and I can do some Mexican stuff the same way -- enchiladas rojos
or verdes, for example, or raw salsas. I can hack a decent Italianesque red
sauce.
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slynne
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response 11 of 14:
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Oct 6 20:09 UTC 2002 |
You know, I have had some really good exeriences improvising while
baking lately. I am trying not to eat eggs so mostly I am eliminating
eggs from recipes. I have been using some soy yogurt instead and that
seems to be working well.
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jlawler
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response 12 of 14:
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Oct 7 12:46 UTC 2002 |
My mother says "anybody who can read can cook". She taught herself from
cookbooks and almost never used them after a while, except for new baking
things (I agree baking is different; I rarely bake). I did the same and
now I rarely use recipes.
But I love reading cookbooks and trying out new recipes (once at least, to
get a feel for how much the book's been bowdlerized for American palates).
I taught myself to cook Chinese by working through the Thousand Recipe
Chinese Cookbook and trying out variations when I should have been writing
my dissertation. Later on, when my kids were growing up, I did the
cooking and got *really* good at making do with what was fresh and cheap.
When I feel some serious cooking coming up I often sit down and consult
a bunch of recipes, or search the Web to find a bunch, just to establish
parameters to vary from. Then I fall into a creative trance and do what
feels, smells, and tastes right. I'm a sucker for complicated dishes
with multiple strong flavors contrasting and complementing (I also like
plaid), like tinga poblana or pescado a la Veracruzana.
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orinoco
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response 13 of 14:
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Oct 9 00:54 UTC 2002 |
That brings up an interesting point: the sort of milage you get out of
improvised cooking probably depends on what sort of food you like to cook.
I'm a sucker for ingredients that already taste pretty complicated on
their own -- olives, or good cheese, or miso, or beer -- so I tend to just
dive in and cook without any preparation. My idea of a good recipe is a
combination of flavors that I haven't thought of yet, not a new process I
have to master or a delicate proportion I have to measure out. I imagine
if I were into long elaborate recipes, or chem-lab-stunt foods like
ceviche and souffles and fresh bread, I'd do a lot less improvising.
Or maybe that's backwards. Maybe I'd have more respect for ceviche if I
didn't think improvisation was so much fun.
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scott
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response 14 of 14:
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Oct 9 01:46 UTC 2002 |
I'm the product of a mixed kitchen: My mom actually worked as a home
economist and test kitchen researcher back in the 50's, so there's a lot of
theory behind what I learned. On the other hand, my dad got heavily into
cooking back in the 70's, and was likely to mix all sorts of crazy things
together on a whim. Generally I find it works best if I do a recipe a few
times (or maybe just once) and then start to muck around with it later on.
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