I love cooking
but I hate recipes. Recipes to me are nothing but lists of complicated
ingredients followed by several steps of careful measurements of weight,
temperature, and viscosity concluded with “until tender.” I’ve never owned a
kitchen scale or a kitchen thermometer. I have no idea what the recipe authors
mean by “until golden brown” and whether they would agree with each other on
what the perfect “golden brown” is if they were in the same kitchen.
I also have to
admit to never following a recipe precisely due to my ego. Following someone
else’s recipe doesn’t have any grandeur to it. Like any chef, I want to make my
special mark on the dish. Sometimes that means substituting a spice, sometimes
that means hovering over the pan and stirring when I’m not supposed to. This
either has the effect of creating a new flavor, or completely ruining the meal.
My favorite
moments learning how to cook have always come not from cookbooks, but from
cooking with others. Drinking beer with a friend and flinging garlic, onion,
cumin, curry, ginger, and tamarind into a pot taught me several Indian dishes.
Standing side by side with my mom and watching her create meals by intuition,
unable to quantify any single step along the way. Get-togethers with my hippie
friends taught me how to handle exotic vegetables without any exotic spices.
This is what I
want out of cookbooks. The feel of another, more knowledgeable, human being
chatting with you and sharing their knowledge as opposed to a set of strict
instructions that yield only one type of meal. Though I’m an avid collector of
cookbooks (if nothing else, for the pictures), it took me a long time to find
the few cookbooks that could deliver just that.
The Tassajara Cookbook by Edward Espe Brown was precisely that.
The author doesn’t believe in recipes, but rather shares how different grains,
vegetables, and fruits behave in different situations. He doesn’t just tell you
to salt the cucumber salad, he explains what happens when you add salt to
lettuce and cucumbers and how it affects the flavor. It’s the perfect holistic
approach to foods. This cookbook has the comfortable feel of standing side by side
with someone else in the kitchen because Edward includes stories of potlucks,
cultural legends, and (best of all) times when he ruined a recipe and how he
was able to salvage the dish. This cookbook is a great book for beginner cooks
and seasoned chefs alike.
The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. As the title suggests, this hefty tome deals
with fermenting. It includes pickling (cucumbers, kimchi, sauerkraut, tomatoes,
garlic), beer, yogurt, buttermilk, cheese, grains, wine, beans, etc. The first
few chapters explain how fermenting works
and why you should try it. You will learn about good bacteria and how to keep
it alive in your fermented products while killing the bad bacteria. You will
also learn the simplest way to make your own pickles in a week (needed: jar,
water, salt, cucumbers). Much like the
Tassajara Cookbook, this guide to fermenting doesn’t include specific recipes
as much as basic guidelines which you can interpret in different ways to create
your very own product in the end.
Bottom line – I
will never stop buying standard cookbooks with beautiful pictures and sets of
draconian instructions or subscribing to Vegetarian Times because they provide
inspiration. But I vow to make every meal my own and never follow a recipe
precisely.
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