Cooking Your Way
A philosophy for cooks who don’t like being told what to do by a recipe book…
This series is about what I cook and, more importantly, HOW I cook. Which is not always according to the recipe. After all, I’m a busy mom. I try to buy in-season ingredients and stick to a budget. I don’t have time for 85-step recipes requiring goji berries and one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, the mostly full bottle of which will then sit, unused, in the pantry for all eternity. So, read on to find out how to make awesome food from yummy recipes without needing to go completely by the book.
I wrote here about how soup has been my hero for the last two or so years while I’ve been losing weight. I will share some of my favorite recipes in upcoming posts.
But right now I just want to have a little rant about recipe books. And recipe websites. Also, recipe cards, recipe blogs, hey, you get the idea.
First, all people who work from home (and stay-at-home parents, I’m talking to you too) will understand the reality of life at home.
The image in our heads is: we have nothing to do all day except cook delicious feasts, polish the doorknobs and dress up for our husbands’ or wives’ arrival home.
The truth is: we get up before everyone else to get breakfast going, we shout the kids out of bed in time to eat, wash and pack their bags before catching the bus. We clean up and do laundry. Then we have to put in a day’s work — it might be office work, writing, transcribing, editing, designing, cold calling, whatever we do to make money. If we don’t need to earn our own money (and actually that’s not most people, even if you have a wealthy spouse, be warned, but I digress), then we might work on our volunteer jobs, committees for everything from wildlife rehabilitation to church flowers to visiting the elderly and organizing working bees for school gardening.
Then there’s more house stuff: dinner to cook, laundry to fold and put away, groceries to buy, vacuuming or toilet-cleaning, tidying. Then there are the kids to collect, homework and chores to oversee. Then there are the daily life organizational tasks. Book the kids’ piano lessons. Check that I haven’t missed a birthday. Arrange babysitting for that movie I’ve been meaning to see. I live with my working parents as well as my two kids. My parents both consider me to be their ‘personal secretary’ — oh, you’re at home, maybe you could ring the plumber, book the haircut, insert the not-my-problem here.
I know you know this: the day disappears with frightening speed.
So, who has time (at least on weekdays) or energy (even on weekends) to follow recipe books like a slave? To plan in advance what you’ll need, write it on the shopping list, shop for it, then do all the preparation and cooking and synchronizing — it’s ridiculous.
Not me.
Don’t get me wrong. I love looking at recipes. I flick through magazines and websites often. If I find myself with thousands of zucchinis (courgettes) or pumpkins or blueberries, I research different ways to cook with them.
But I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that what is written must be obeyed.
I think this basic thought process is responsible for a lot of the stress people feel about cooking. My sister hates cooking passionately. And I can see why. Every little foray into the kitchen for her, be the recipe ever so simple, leads to steam, smoke, sweat and swearing. Mess everywhere, things going wrong all over the place, and hours and HOURS of time — just gone.
Her end results are always delicious, I should add. But SO not worth the stress!
And a lot of it has to do with her lack of confidence in the kitchen. Not knowing what to do if things go wrong. Not knowing how strictly to follow guidelines and not being comfortable with jumping outside the rules for a faster result.
Good enough is not in her vocabulary, and she is convinced she will poison the household if she adds so much as a quarter-teaspoon too much.
I have been cooking for a lot longer and have thousands of hours more experience in the kitchen than my sister.
I have learned a few things in that time.
- Recipes are guidelines. Unless you’re making some fabulous confectionery fabrication with 163 or more steps and at least 3 ingredients you had never previously heard of, you don’t have to follow the recipe!!!! And even then, I’d be inclined to give it a bit of ‘Emily magic’ (read, just wing it).
- Ingredients can be switched. Especially if you are cooking with meat and vegetables, you can pretty much pick and choose the meat or vegetables you use. So what if the recipe is for beef tacos? If you prefer chicken, GO FOR IT. If you prefer vegan, substitute beans. If you have heaps of asparagus in the garden, throw it in and forget the called-for cabbage.
- No one cares if your carrots are perfectly julienned. My word, the time I have saved by not bothering to make all my veggie pieces the exact same size! Not to mention how much you see chefs wasting on those TV shows, where they first trim their carrots or potatoes into perfect squares and discard the misshapen edges before creating perfect cubes with a few dramatic chops of the knife. Here’s a secret: the taste of the dish is completely unaffected by the size or shape of the veggies! And on that note:
- The skin of the vegetable contains most of its nutritional value — use it! The time you waste peeling those veggies means another 30 minutes of your life lived to no good purpose. Wash those babies well, and use the lot. Now, I must offer a caveat here. I live in a place where I can grow most of my own vegetables and buy the rest from farmers who use few or no chemicals. I still wash things I buy, because you never know, and then there are the hands of the unwashed multitudes who get that capsicum (pepper) from the field to the supermarket shelf. I realize how privileged I am. If you have no choice but to buy heavily chemical-sprayed produce, you might need to reconsider the peeling situation. And make your displeasure felt to your local suppliers!
- Your equipment — your way. Strict guidelines on timings, temperatures and quantities really aren’t all that strict. It’s true. You might be told to bake something on moderate for 25 minutes. The oven won’t explode if you leave it for 26 minutes. I mean, check the cake, obviously. No one likes black edges. But you know what? The person who cooked and tested that recipe doesn’t live in your house. They don’t use your oven. And, as every chef will tell you, ovens have personality. No two are the same. Learn how your oven cooks and act accordingly. For example, my oven has a glass front and old, crappy seals. Anything at the front of the oven cooks much slower than anything at the back. So when I’m baking cookies, I turn the trays around halfway through the bake. I also often turn my oven temperature down a few degrees and cook things for longer. It doesn’t hurt them, and I can then be certain to avoid burning. It’s the same for stove tops and pans. Some pans really conduct heat well and others don’t. You need to get to know your equipment and adjust your recipes accordingly. Otherwise you might be obediently standing there stirring a sauce that stubbornly refuses to thicken, all because your pan just doesn’t transfer the heat well. The opposite can happen too. If you put your stove on medium heat and find your onions are burning, maybe turn the heat down a little. No one ever died from taking a pan off the heat for a bit, if that’s what it takes to cool things down.
So, where does that leave us? For me, I love to cook. I enjoy making food I want to eat, and feeding the people I love. But I refuse to let it rule my life or take too much of my time. When I need to de-stress and don’t have 1001 other things to do (or sometimes when I do — classic procrastination and avoidance therapy), there’s nothing I like more than picking a brand new recipe and spending the morning in the kitchen. Or the whole day.
But that’s on my terms. On a busy weekday, I want to spend 2 hours in the kitchen as an absolutely maximum. 30 minutes to an hour is better. And that means adaptation and good enough is good enough.
If you’re interested to read some of my favorite recipes, complete with ways to adapt them as you want, then follow me. More coming in the next couple of weeks.
And happy cooking — YOUR WAY.
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