I also have an idea in my head of people whose recipes work as written almost every time--Ina Garten, Madhur Jaffrey--and people who have interesting ideas but write recipes that always seem to require some adaptation and cooking intuition to execute. I think Alison Roman is in the second category, and I have an Alain Passard cookbook with lots of great concepts and illustrations, but you might as well just look at the ingredients and make up the preparation on your own.
I completely agree, I use cookbooks as history books in a way and also as inspiration but rarely cook from them unless I am trying to understand an unfamiliar culture. Summer KItchens by Olia Hercules has been my pandemic read since I knew nothing about Ukranian food and now I do.
The idea that it is a gradual process of internalizing and how an array of techniques become personal canon is so relatable. The food we eat in India varies every 50kms and when I was making food from Archana Pidathala Five morsels of love, I literally fell in love with the technique of using whole spices in curries, stews, and vegetables and I think it has become a treasured technique that I would want to use for everything I make.
I often think of cookbooks as being written for people who can afford to buy cookbooks, these 35 - 40 dollar objects. Still, when a friend shares a recipe with me, I get insights into their palette at a particular moment in time. We can share a meal across distances, like a psychic union. When I work from a recipe, it feels as if I have a night off from cooking, just the same as when I choose to read, I am taking a break from writing. What if a recipe wasn’t a tool for improving yourself as a cook, but instead a back massage from a friend you haven’t seen in a year/ a sensory type of communication?
I also have an idea in my head of people whose recipes work as written almost every time--Ina Garten, Madhur Jaffrey--and people who have interesting ideas but write recipes that always seem to require some adaptation and cooking intuition to execute. I think Alison Roman is in the second category, and I have an Alain Passard cookbook with lots of great concepts and illustrations, but you might as well just look at the ingredients and make up the preparation on your own.
I completely agree, I use cookbooks as history books in a way and also as inspiration but rarely cook from them unless I am trying to understand an unfamiliar culture. Summer KItchens by Olia Hercules has been my pandemic read since I knew nothing about Ukranian food and now I do.
Big yes to this which invites the complicated. Cooks are collectors
The idea that it is a gradual process of internalizing and how an array of techniques become personal canon is so relatable. The food we eat in India varies every 50kms and when I was making food from Archana Pidathala Five morsels of love, I literally fell in love with the technique of using whole spices in curries, stews, and vegetables and I think it has become a treasured technique that I would want to use for everything I make.
I often think of cookbooks as being written for people who can afford to buy cookbooks, these 35 - 40 dollar objects. Still, when a friend shares a recipe with me, I get insights into their palette at a particular moment in time. We can share a meal across distances, like a psychic union. When I work from a recipe, it feels as if I have a night off from cooking, just the same as when I choose to read, I am taking a break from writing. What if a recipe wasn’t a tool for improving yourself as a cook, but instead a back massage from a friend you haven’t seen in a year/ a sensory type of communication?