Recipes - to use or not to use

"Truth be told, recipes are infantilising: Just do exactly what I say, they say, but don't ask questions or worry your little head about why." Michael Pollard

Some time ago - I can't remember how long ago now - they did a study in the UK of how people actually go about the cooking process. This was one of their findings.

"No one actually follows recipes, the study found. Instead, most people are 'freestylers, throwing caution (and abnormal amounts of curry powder) to the wind when stepping into the kitchen,'" Phoebe Hurst - Munchies on Vice.com.

Which begs the question why recipes are everywhere. Every food producer of any kind has recipes on their website, there are cookery programs galore, whole channels even, dedicated to food - with recipes - on the television, free recipe books in your supermarket, recipe cards dotted here and there around the shops, recipes on the back of jars and packets of just about every kind of food, magazines, both exclusively dedicated to food and just part of the magazine and cookery books. Well cookery books must be one of the biggest sellers in the book publishing industry. Not to mention the endless blogs (like mine) from the well-known (Delia, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jamie Oliver et al.) to the completely unknown - me etc. You can even get them on your phone.

And we also write down recipes from memory and from watching people cook. So obviously people like recipes. And they always have - I think the Roman De Re Coquinaria by Apicius was the first one, but I could be wrong. There could have been something earlier, now lost. And really it doesn't have to be written down. There are many oral traditions around the world and in your own home. I don't make my Cornish pasties for example from a written recipe, but from watching my mother make them many times and therefore learning how to do it.

So when I started reading my early Christmas present of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat, and found almost the first words of the book to be the words at the top of the page I was somewhat taken aback. For I have always been of the opinion that if you have the right cookbooks then you can learn to cook. Or as Yotam Ottolenghi succinctly put it (Robert Carrier too in slightly different words),

"If you can read you can cook."

In fact it seems such a basic truth to me that I quoted it on my website's Home page.

The words at the top of the page, were not those of the book's author, but she obviously agreed because she followed them shortly thereafter with these:

"Recipes don't make food taste good. People do." Samin Nosrat

Now to me that implies that it's not everyone that can make food taste good. I know she is sort of saying that it's not the recipe it's the person using the recipe, but even if she is saying that, she is implying that some people are better at it than others - even perhaps that some people can and some people can't. And certainly, even with a recipe you should know what you are doing. Now that might not have been her intent. I do think that she is trying to go right back to basics and teach people to cook by knowing what they are doing and why, rather than because somebody says 'do this, then that', but nevertheless I think criticising recipes per se like this is a bit of a snobby thing. It's a bit like saying you can't use a computer if you don't know how to program one, or build one.

Her book is in two halves - the first explains how cooking works - how only four things - salt, fat, acid and heat influence how food tastes, and the second half has - wait for it - recipes. Now I haven't got as far as the recipes yet, so I don't quite know how she justifies their inclusion, because I think she is sort of saying that if you understand the chemical reactions of those four things, and what foods go with what (she has a sort of rudimentary table to show you that), then you can cook anything. You can become a 'real' cook. So why do we need recipes at the end of the book?

Now paradoxically, for a book which I think is intended to teach, to make the whole process of cooking more approachable and understandable, I think it's actually a bit daunting and ends up by potentially being a book for those who already can cook - by which I mean improvise beyond actual recipes. She tries to make it understandable - and yes I suppose it is, but actually there is so much information about the chemistry of it all that one gets a bit overwhelmed. Well I do. Which is not to say that I am not recommending it. I think it is actually a very interesting and informative book. Possibly even a great one. So far.

I will write more about the book itself, but for now back to recipes. Do you use them? Do you use them all the time, or just occasionally?

That study that I mentioned at the top of the page said that people improvised because mostly they were using up things in their fridge. So true. Mine often looks a bit like this one and I often have meals or parts of meals that really have to be used up in some new way. Well I suppose I could just throw them out, but even putting them in the compost is somewhat wasteful. The farmers did not put all that effort into growing things just for me to throw it in the compost bin.

But you probably need to have reached a certain stage of cooking ability before you can improvise. And I guess this is what Samin Nosrat is trying to give you. For if you don't know what you are doing then disaster looms - as per this poem I found:

I didn’t have paprika so I used another spice. I didn’t have potatoes so I substituted rice. I didn’t have tomato sauce so I used tomato paste; (A whole can, not a half can; I don’t believe in waste). A friend gave me this recipe and said “you just can’t beat it.” There must be something wrong with her; I can’t even eat it!

Unknown

Although I suppose this is someone trying to follow a recipe but not doing so and not doing so in a disastrous and uneducated way. It's not someone improvising from scratch.

I think recipes play an extremely valuable role in learning to cook. I think when we are very young that we learn by copying others who know what they are doing - our mothers mostly, but if you are lucky, also in school. I was lucky - we had cooking classes in the early years of high school. Sewing too. Initially we just help out with one little task, whilst watching mum. If you are lucky your teacher will explain why you are doing something. Well not why in the sense of knowing about the chemical reactions, but why in the sense of doing something else will stuff it up. You make mistakes and you learn from them. As you grow older you follow recipes. There are lots of recipe books aimed at children these days. Then when we have to cook for ourselves, or if it's a family tradition, or indeed if we just feel like it, because we have been enticed by a beautiful looking dish in our latest cookbook, we might make something special from a recipe. The more we cook, the more we learn what goes with what, what happens when you cook this way or that way, how you prepare the various ingredients you use.

The first actual recipes I used were from women's magazines - whilst still at home and a teenager, My mother's only cookbook was Mrs Beeton and this was not very tempting. So I mostly learnt from her and from the wonderful French ladies with whom I stayed in France. When I married I started buying cookbooks because I wanted to reproduce all that lovely French food - beginning with Elizabeth David who, as we all know, was sometimes annoyingly imprecise. But by then I knew the basics so was able to follow. Since then I have used recipes that vary in their detail from a few words "buy prawns, marinade, heat and eat" to the detailed pages found in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And really I think the only thing you need to know when following a recipe is that you must read it all the way through before you start, and that you must have all your required equipment ready and ingredients prepared and to hand before you begin.

I think Samin Nosrat and Michael Pollard are a bit unkind to many cookery writers about not explaining why you do something. Several of them do. And anyway does it matter if you don't know why you need a fresh egg for frying and a less fresh one for boiling? As long as you have that spelt out for you (and admittedly some books do not) then it doesn't matter does it?

Like the people in the study I rarely actually cook from a recipe these days. But if I want to do something special either for just us or for a special occasion, then I will gladly try something completely new. If it's a success and I try it again then over time it might evolve. The tandoori chicken that I often cook is not the same as the original Charmaine Solomon recipe I used back then, although the general direction of it is still the same. Others may even divert from that. I think Robert Carrier's kebabs - another family favourite - has been changed into a braised dish rather than a grilled one by my daughter-in-law and it's none the worse for that. For she knows what she is doing.

You can learn to cook in so many different ways today. Delia has an online cooking school and there are thousands and thousands of YouTube videos to show you how to do anything. Whether you actually need to understand why and how is a moot point and perhaps only necessary for professionals who truly are working from scratch and inventing new dishes for the rest of us to learn. Interesting yes. Necessary no.

"Know what you're after. Know what results you seek, so that you can take the steps to achieve them." Samin Nosrat

Now that's a useful state to be in, when it comes to cooking tonight's meal from what's in the fridge. I hope that not understanding how it all works scientifically won't lead to disaster when I experiment a bit tonight with some lamb minute steaks. Well that's what Coles called them. Very thin slices of lamb anyway. I know what I want to achieve, and I think I know how. I wonder if I will succeed, or should I find a recipe?