Understanding The Recipe

I. Read the recipe. Turn off the television, don't answer the telephone, just sit and read it through. Make a mental inventory of the sort of equipment you need, the cooking techniques required, the ingredients you have on hand--or need to purchase. Note the stages of preparation, the sequences, and get a sense of appropriate timings. Also consider quantity.

II. Read it again. This time let your mind wander. Think about the finished look of the dish, the aromas, the flavors, the textures you want to create and whether any questions you had the first time around are answering themselves. Think about the seasonality of the dish. Consider what you might want to gain from it (not weight!) A historical layered Victorian jelly? Classic French. Your kniving technique.

III. Read at least three similiar recipes. Making boeuf bourguignon? Before you begin, study at least three ways to do it. Take, for instance, Craig Claiborne's use of wine and cognac. Juila Child's delayed use of aromatics (added halfway through the cooking process,) and Richard Olney's guidance on the right cut of meat (a gelatinous cut such as oxtail, shank, heel or chuck.)

IV. If it's in the title, leave it alone. Don't mess with core ingredients. Good recipes are designed around particular flavors. If you are considering a recipe for beef with wine and don't care for beef or burgundy wine, then find a different recipe.

V. Target the result more than the timing. The time noted might be accurate. Consider the unfortunate possibility that the writer might not have tested the recipe, but the desired result is certain. If the recipe says "stir onions for 20 minutes until softened and browned," and after 15 minutes the onions are soft and brown. Stop. Someone famous for not testing her recipes very well is Martha Stewart. I've had a few serious mishaps, following her too closely. Others, like Ina Garten, seem foolproof, and I write that off to her testing, re-testing and re-testing.

VI. Recognize that recipes are often compromises. Editors, considering the collective palate of the publication's audience, sometimes urge recipe writers to tone things down for wider appeal. The quantitites indicated might not reflect your, or even the writer's, true preference. If you sense from a lifetime of eating and cooking that two teaspoons of a spice or an herb will not do, add more. Conversely, know when to use less. Hot pepper flakes, for example, or cayenne. I inherited a subscription to Family Circle. For the time I received it, I never found one recipe I would seriously consider making, and I wrote it off to "magazine demographics."

VII. When you're ready, mess with the recipe. "Life," writes Ray Bradbury, "is trying things to see if they work." I would add, "...and if they don't. But the important thing is to try."

VIII. Do it again. Repetition (of a good recipe) is the path to refinement. You'll learn something new every time. I qualify the repetition statement, because you have to know when to cut your losses, as well. After cooking for a period of time, you should know when something is never going to be what you want to eat, no matter how much tinkering.

IX. Do not be surprised by surprising results. You can never control it all. The humidity in the room, the quality of your water, the nature of your fire, the chemistry of your cookware--all sorts of variables are at play. There might be no way to know them all, but do expect uncertainities. It's only an omelette, not the final judgment of your life.

X. Your soul is in the food. 24 cooks assigned to the same mayonnaise recipe--the same bowls, same spoons, same eggs, same mustard, same oil, same whisks, same peppermills, same room, time of day, marching orders--will create 24 different mayonnaises. Guaranteed.