Have you known people that could walk into any kitchen, take a look at 
what foodstuffs were available, and cook up something that worked?

I'm not sure how these people arrive at these skills, because I assume 
there is two approaches to cooking: learning to cook from cookbooks, 
and following recipes, or learning from someone else, such as Mom, 
Dad, or a cooking school.  The former seems to be a very classical 
approach, and the other more of an improvisational style.

I'm not sure how easy it is to move to freestyle cooking from 
cookbooks or home-taught family recipes.  I figure, after a while, you 
tend to learn what works, make some generalizations, and you have an 
idea of portion control.

I don't do any measuring when I make chicken curry and rice.  The 
recipes I looked at never had the ingredients I wanted.  I just did 
it.  Spices are easy, I guess.. for saute cooking, you just season to 
taste.

I'm sure baking is a whole other ballgame, because, well, some stuff 
you can't alter.  I think maybe there are more things that must be 
kept basic.

14 responses total.

My wife is an excellent "freestyle" cook in all the WASPy cuisine areas 
she grew up with.  She'll open the fridge or the cupboard, do some 
quick mental calculations, then grab a bunch of stuff and start 
cooking.  When she wants to make a seafood risotto, though, she has to 
refer to her recipe.  But even then, she'll improvise: she'll splash 
some cognac into the pan, or chop up some shallots.  To a much lesser 
degree, I'm the same way with Italian food.  The recipe is useful for 
the order you do things: at what point do you start sauteeing the 
garlic, etc.  

When we compare notes, we agree that the dishes we make freestyle seem, 
at least to us, too simple and obvious to be called "recipes," even 
though to an onlooker they might seem quite involved.  

Also, we agree that a big part of cooking freestyle is faith or courage 
or whatever.  If your instinct tells you to rub olive oil all over the 
salmon steaks before you throw them on the grill, do it.  Then throw 
them on the grill, then cook them until you think it's time to take 
them off.  Just do it.  That can be the hardest part, especially with 
something you haven't done before.

We never cook with recipes except the first time making something like bread,
where the proportions are important as is the timing.  I frequently go to
friends' houses and cook up whatever seems to need cooking first, into a
stir-fry or soup or stew.  Fry the onions first and add the greens last, etc.
Any bean (presoaked) or grain can be cooked similarly but millet needs more
water than rice.  I throw in whatever spice looks interesting in stir fries,
and sometimes herbs in the stew or soup.  (Don't fry oregano).

I do both, except that I almost never follow a recipe "to the letter", I use
it more as a guide.  I follow recipes more closely for baked goods.

Cooking is an art form, baking is a science, therefore I take more exact
measurements for baking.  If you wonder too much the chemical reaction may
not work right.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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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