I’m an okay cook. I never learned to cook fancy recipes or how spices work together or how to put foods together from scratch on a whim, but I can follow recipes just fine. Cooking, I’ve learned, is like high school chemistry experiments in that you have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen. If I follow the directions things will turn out just fine. Actually, cooking is better than my high school chemistry experiments, which were more often frustrating than not. This may have had more to do with my perfectionism than with the subject matter itself.
So how does one make that leap from following recipes to really exploring the world of cooking and all that it has to offer? Cooking is a huge world, and I want to create more in it in the same way that I create worlds of fiction. The problem is that there’s so much out there that I have no idea where to start. Help?
4 Responses.
Get a scale. Proportions are more important than measurements, so weight is more important than volume.
Also, you’re going to find that you want/need a lot of other equipment that is way too expensive.
My mom is really big on proportions. She can cook without measuring a thing, which always drives me nuts. How on earth did she know how much of anything she was putting in? But everything turned out to be delicious. And I’m definitely discovering that on the equipment front.
Please share whatever you find out! I’m the same way – I can cook almost anything if I have a recipe (I even just made bread from scratch without a bread maker!!) and sometimes (especially if it’s a simple recipe or I’ve made it before) I can change things up a bit. But to make something from scratch aside from a basic stirfry? Not really; especially not using interesting ingredients.
So please share!!
I haven’t made much progress on this so far, though I did make some stuffed peppers tonight based on two recipes that I mixed together. This will definitely be a long adventure.