Do you too have a difficult time following recipes?
Do you start out with the best of intentions of following that soup, lasagne or quiche recipe to a “T,” and then midway through something shiny in your peripheral vision draws you away from the stove and before you know it you’re 20 minutes deep into scrubbing the bathroom, calling old friends, and doing laundry while the half-completed recipe is burning on the stove?
Are you eternally feeling frustrated that the recipes don’t ever quite taste or look like you think they should, or that they often call for a ridiculous amount of strange sounding kitchen gadgets (Microplane? Mandoline?) or ingredients (Buddha’s hand? This is food?) that you don’t have/don’t want/can’t find/can’t afford?
Do you take joy in ignoring the recipe’s instructions and doing your own thing as a simple act of defiance (“you don’t tell me when to add the flour and sugar, I tell you when I’ll add the flour and sugar”).
Recipes aren’t for everyone. In fact, they can limit the creative aspect of cooking that we all love. Putting too much faith in them can create frustration when something goes awry. It’s like that moment when you’ve been dutifully following your GPS system and the “fastest” route leads you to a road that is no longer a road. You short-circuit, come to, and realize you have to turn your brain back on and go the route that you felt was better anyway. Fixating on following a recipe perfectly can often quiet our intuition, leading us to miss the subtle nuances here and there. The details.
Don’t feel like you have to follow a recipe precisely (unless you are baking then dear GOD yes follow it). In other words, don’t be a robot–just use the recipe as a guideline and improvise as you see fit; you may want to change the flavors by mixing up the spices, the protein, the fat, the herbs. This will bring your creative cooking intuition forward, and encourage you to season food to your taste buds, not the chef who wrote the darn thing.
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Consider these recipes as an inspiration to create something unique to you and table mates. You may find that not following a recipe is really fun and empowering and will make you a more confident cook. Keep your brain on and your guts intuitive. Open your ears, nose and eyes and pay attention to the sounds, smells, taste, touch and visual indicators that food gives you.
Most importantly, have fun! Share these recipes, make them and eat them with others. Create your own. If you have a favorite recipe or variation on a recipe that you’d like to share with us, send it over! We can add it to our community compilation: send to info@justroots.org
Here’s to continued fun and exploration in the kitchen. Happy cooking!