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| Thoughts needed: Recipes | Hugh 2011-02-08 14:11:00 UTC |
So, as you know, at KKC we’re fairly opposed to recipes in any way, shape or form. But I’ve been thinking about the things recently, and I’m starting to come to the conclusion that there are times and places for such things. For example, I’d argue that there’s no bloody point whatsoever in any chilli recipe that’s less well tested than Heston Blumenthal’s “Perfect” one. You’re better off understanding the components of chilli (the mince, the vegetables, the chillis themselves, the accompaniment, the beans) and then you can produce not just one chilli, but whatever chilli you like. A light, firey one with a single bhut joloka and turkey mince. A Texas-style one with cornbread and no beans. A heavy, satisfying beef-based chilli with chopped beef and gentle fire from normal red chillis and some peppers. There are infinite chillis. On the other hand, if you’re baking bread, you need a recipe, or the damn thing just won’t rise. And if you’re wanting to produce really amazing food beyond your own level, about the only way to do it is to follow a really great chef’s recipe to the letter, as I’ve done several times with both Heston Blumenthal and Thomas Keller’s work. There’s no way I could improvise something that stunning in a million years. But then there are middle ground elements. Thai curry pastes, for example. Are you better with a recipe or an understanding? When I came to write this post, I was all prepared to say “look, you need a recipe for a thai curry paste”, but now I’m wondering. I don’t understand the ingredients enough, but maybe if I did I could improvise my own to do whatever I wanted at the time. When do you think you need a recipe? And when are you better to have understanding and flexibility? | |
| Stuart Carter | 2011-02-08 18:55:10 UTC Recipes are merely the starting point. They tell you the proportions and spices that are important to the recipe, and can bring you to the heart of what the dish is all about. But I cry “bulls**t” to anyone claiming the “perfect” recipe for ANYTHING. Everyone is different, everyone’s tastes are different, so don’t you DARE claim that your recipe is perfect! | |
| Matthieu Weber | 2011-02-09 07:04:14 UTC Herve This also wrote about recipes that you cannot actually reproduce the recipe of a great chef (taking as example his friend Pierre Gagnaire), since the chef selects e.g., a particular variety of carrots from a specific producer who grows them on a specific land, and so on… All you can do with your local supermarket’s carrots, is approximate the recipe, with more or less chance involved relative to the taste of the raw ingredients. Recipes do however give you ideas of what could be combined (which one of you would have spontaneously combined dark chocolate with Parmiggiano?) that can guide your improvisations. | |
| Hugh | 2011-02-09 12:07:18 UTC Matthieu – I’d argue that with the advent of the Internet that’s become less true. Certainly, Heston Blumenthal tends to list most of his suppliers, and I can get the same ingredients from them that he uses. (Admittedly, Heston B has a more scientific attitude to his recipes than many other chefs.) Also, I’ve found that three-star recipes in general, at least the well-written ones, tend to include a lot of very fine detail which massively enhances the finished dish if you follow it precisely. It’s not just about broad strokes but little ideas too. Stuart – I agree with you on perfection. It is, however, true that if you’re one of the best chefs in the world, and you have a month or so to thoroughly test a recipe, you can come up with something that I can’t improve upon. I’ve cooked a lot of Heston’s “Perfection” recipes (which, incidentally, he doesn’t consider perfect), and each time what I made was the best example of the dish I’d ever created. | |
| Bob | 2011-02-09 18:11:26 UTC I have just recently started pressure cooking. I am terriffied of running my cooker dry. I also have no idea how long a five pound pork butt should take to become tender. I think in this case, recipes are needed because because the details matter. A recipe for a peanut butter and banana sandwich on the other hand… | |
| Paul | 2011-02-10 12:42:50 UTC For me, in general, stovetop cooking doesn’t need a recipe because it can be adjusted all the time. Baking always needs a recipe because you’re committed from the start. Roasting? I guess that’s somewhere inbetween. | |
| Andre Virul | 2011-02-13 14:30:12 UTC Mmm, I think you need to look at it from a couple of perspectives. I’m an excellent, though not formally trained, cook. I often follow a recipe the first time I make something. It allows me to adjust certain flavors, textures, etc. as I make them. That is part of the fun. On the other hand, I also spent years (no, seriously) backwards extrapolating a recipe for a sauce I once had. I recently had a chance to talk to the person that invented it, told them what I did, and they grinned like a loon and congradulated me. Best feeling in the world. For me, I love playing with the ingredients, and when something turns out inferior, I go back and try something different. This is helpful when you don’t have the ingredients you normally use, so you can make up for that on the fly, and often get something approximating what you want. That said, I am reminded of my father, who is very German. Everything is to extremes with him, especially when he cooks. If a little bit of something tastes great, then ten times as much should taste even better. It drives me crazy, especially if I’m cooking, and maybe go to the bathroom or something, and come back to see him adding ingredients to my food. I’ll give you an example. He used to make a delicious potato salad. Not the world’s most difficult thing, but I loved it. But what happened was that he got bored with it after making it only a few times, and decided to start experimenting. Soon he started adding eggs and various other things, which was fine. then the onions were no longer chopped, but sliced into rings, the potatoes were sliced into medallions, he used scallions instead of onions, etc. etc. At the end, I no longer ate his potato salad- it had become a goop of mayonnaise and raw onion. I told him as much, and finally got him to make it the way he had many years ago. To his astonishment, he realized that I was right, it was the best that he had made. The weird thing that he had done was start from a recipe he liked, then altered it. But if he didn’t like that, he changed that altered recipe and went on from there, rather than altering the core recipe that worked. | |
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| nekouken | 2011-04-07 12:32:39 UTC I like recipes. They’re great when I don’t remember what goes into a dish, like when I’m learning how to make it or when I haven’t made it in a while. Consulting a recipe the first few-to-several times was how I learned to make a roux, how I learned to make alfredo sauce and so on. After you’ve got the recipe down, though, you get to play with it and learn how forgiving the recipe is. What can be substituted; what ratios are flexible? Will this recipe be served by that cool technique I just learned? That’s what the fun part of cooking is for me; taking the elements of a recipe, breaking them down and putting them back together as something better. | |
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