Do you consider yourself a good baker? A great cook? A top notch chef? Are you a blue ribbon winning home baker? Have you begun an underground restaurant because you gave such stellar dinner parties? Do you think your palate is superior to anyone you eat with? Is your cookbook collection the envy of everyone? Is your recipe based blog highly trafficked? Do you give homemade candy as gifts? Have you taken innumerable cooking classes? Do you consume eggbeater for the recipes, or for insight into professional cooking? Did you read Michael Ruhlman's Ratio? Did it radicalize or bore you? Inspire or confuse you?
Recipe: a method for achieving some desired objective.
I'd like to pose a question.
Do recipes get in the way of learning to cook, bake?
At what point does a baker, a chef, no longer need recipes, or, when are recipes needed and when are they crutches?
It's too many questions, I know. Not of which can, truly, be answered. But I'd like to involve you in considering them with me.
Because I've worked a number of professional cooking/baking venues, and I've recently jumped from large scale bakery baking to tiny batch plated dessert component baking, these questions have come banging on my door in the middle of the night. They're many, and loud. And they don't let me sleepwalk through. They don't let me stay still. They make me itch with their curved lines and that enigmatic dot at their end.
?Questions.
Questions without answers.
But questions that beget learning, delving, growing, understanding.
And then there are more questions.
Recipes, to get back to the subject, are validated. Everyone likes a good recipe. Recipes are passed down on notes, in book, translucent oily index cards. Unique handwriting scratchings. Recipes are whispered, graffitti'd, brought to the grave, tattood and celebrated.
Millions of trees have been cut down in the name of recipes. A cookbook is born every second. Recipes are facts. Recipes are coveted. You can trade a recipe like money, and there are as many recipes that 'wprk' as there are that 'don't work.' No one can argue with a good recipe, right?
And some recipes will live forever. In our hearts, in our minds. O recipe, we love you. For cliches ever on.
Is it blasphemy, then, to want to do away with recipes? Will I be witch hunted and burned alive for public view? Should I now beg for mercy, while you're silently collecting stones?
Recipes.What are they, though?
Recipes represent certainty. They are certainty. They represent logic, arithmatic, and maybe even math. And we hate, we despise, we murder, we denounce uncertainty. We approve of Empirical and we're not afraid to erase its opposite.
We love facts. We love when things make sense.
Well, many of us at any rate.
Intuition.Intuition represents uncertainty. Intuition is touchy-feely. Intuition is something beyond logic and is sometimes re-named as common sense. Intuition is related to psychic and many people would disregard all such subject as hokus pokus, never even needing to wash their clean logical hands of it because to them it never existed in the first place! Intuition is not empirical. Intuition is heart and love and none of these things exist under a microscope.
You either have a good sense of direction or you don't.
Intuition.
What is it? We define it by what it is not because we don't know what it is. And we despise uncertainty. We discard illogical. We call it crazy, hysterical, ridiculous, a farce, a scam; we want to stand on the other side of it and put it in the dunce's corner.
But you know what?
It's fear. We are terrified of uncertainty. We embrace safety & surety and we do everything in our power to keep groundlessness at bay or, better yet, throw it in the bay.
Can intuition be taught? Inspired? Can inspiration be dispensed? Does it take one great teacher to move you beyond, and delve you deeper, or many? Or none? Do you either have it or you don't?
What if you're somewhere in between? What if you sit on a fence, are a switch, can go both ways, are all ways, like bois & grrls, can see beyond what's at the tip of your nose, have a thing for sublimating the paradigm, live outside the pink box, use a recipe and intuition both, think with all of your brain, don't believe in opposites?
I believe in recipe and intuition both. Combined. In tandem. A guild, if you will.
I believe, though, that recipes can {sometimes} block intuition. {Especially when used alone.}
I believe if one places the recipe before what one knows to be true, that's where {some of the} trouble begins.
That's when "Bad Things Happen."
And, so, I beg of you to consider this.
I ask you to step outside the comfort and safety of recipes, especially only ever making a recipe once, or casting aspersions upon a recipe and it's supposed author/parent because 'it didn't work!' for you.
A recipe is a guide. A recipe is a series of suggestions, of possibilities. A recipe is a ratio.
One of the very first 'cookbooks' ever suggested to me was Le Repertoire de la Cuisine. While it is a compilation of recipes and methods, there are no measurements, no implicit instructions. Upon first glance there are merely lists. And yet, what one finds, upon closer and inquisitive inspection, is patterns.
And within patterns, there lies quiet learning.
Protein always does the same thing, whether in flour or chicken, egg whites or oranges.
Leavening can always be relied on to rise, whether via yeast, baking powder, egg whites, steam.
You may cook and bake for very different reasons than I, I know. You may not be seeking what lies around the corner from your tried and true tested recipes. You may think I'm relating recipes to life in a way that's silly and indulgent. You may not think everything is related, as I do.
I'm not asking you to set fire to your cookbook collection or never spend too many hours again on recipe based food blogs. I'm not even asking you to humor me by swallowing what I have to say whole.
All I'm asking, suggesting, is that you consider.
Consider stepping back from recipes. Consider how you learn, how you jump to the next level of learning, how you quietly cross lines and borders into new cooking/baking territory.
When you feel the bicycle under you, un-held, unsupported, for the first time, it's an exhilarating, terrifying, ebullient thrill! You don't know how you don't tip over; it's magic!
Baking is alchemy.
Tried & True Science, and mystery both.
Ingredients respond as much to logic as they do to love.
Recipes are ratios, but no ingredient stands still. Flour is not one thing, and neither is water. Ever block of butter, all around the world, will react differently. Even two sugars are not what you think they are, even though they look the same under a microscope!
If ingredients are alive, and changeable, then so must be recipes. And us; those who use, abide by, share, trade, give, alter, mix, fight with, discard, write & re-write, must also be amenable to holding on and letting go both, all.
Recipes & Intuition live on a spectrum. They are not opposites. Both are certainty & uncertainty. Two sides of one coin.
I definitely found this as I attempted macarons again for the daring baker challenge. It seems to me that it really depends on each of the components what the quantities should be and that should probably be adjusted each time one of those components is changed. Unfortunately, a meringue isnt terribly forgiving, so a change involves a new batch.
I presume as a restaurant chef it is really important to be consistent, so it is very helpful to keep to strict boundaries in order to achieve the same result every time and keep the customer happy.
Posted by: jennywenny | 27 October 2009 at 12:05 PM
Wow. You've summed up and expressed it better than I ever could. I constantly struggle with making what occurs to me as an inspiration, a seized opportunity or happy accident into a published "replicable" recipe. Having to be able to make the results consistent withoug being able to control the variables for another person as I would control them for myself is agonizing. I was once served (very proudly) by a friend my "own" fish soup recipe. Instead of a white fish it was salmon. Instead of croutons made out of french bread they were made out of olive bread. Instead of red pepper aoli it was mustard aoli. Instead of a small chop on the carrots it was large chunks. You get the idea. Yet to that person the recipe had been followed.
How can you control all of that?
My solution is to write into my recipes as much as possible taste and textural clues and wherever possible to give the reasons why and educate. To give them the bones of the idea so they can know how to flow from it. That's easier to do in my blog posts than in my newspaper column, but I do try.
Thanks for bringing up the topic.
Posted by: Faith Kramer | 27 October 2009 at 12:12 PM
Amen & Hallelujah! for every student that comes to me in France to learn to cook, there are 3 who just want the recipes. sigh.
Posted by: kate hill | 27 October 2009 at 01:10 PM
I smiled when I read this. I have a lot of food allergies (egg, all dairy, corn, soy, most beans, almonds, etc) and so I almost never follow a recipe exactly. In one case, I told my daughter to just follow the recipe for a cooked frosting. She took a look and said "It calls for white sugar, butter, buttermilk, corn syrup, and baking soda." I rattled off my substitutions to her.
"So the only thing I keep from the recipe is the baking soda?" she asked, "So in what sense am I following the recipe exactly?"
I decided to make hot and sour soup yesterday. I didn't feel like looking at a lot of different recipes before jumping off, so I settled for one from a vegetarian cookbook I like a lot. What I wanted was the shape of the soup, and, even though I used chicken instead of vegetable stock and tofu, different kinds of fresh mushrooms instead of dried ones, adjusted the seasonings to my preferences, and thickened with tapioca starch instead of corn starch, there was something about the essence of the author's recipe that shone through.
Posted by: Heather Madrone | 27 October 2009 at 01:35 PM
A great, GREAT post! I couldn't agree more. However, that's with one caveat...
I am a good cook. I have a good intuition for savory items, and for families of cuisine I've cooked a lot before. I will use a recipe once, but after that I wing it. I riff on themes. I know how ingredients work and mingle. And I almost never - except for maybe the first time I make an unfamiliar thing - actually use my measuring spoons or cups, but eyeball things and cook by taste and feel. It's like a jazz improv on a given theme.
BUT...(and here comes the caveat) - this doesn't work for baking. At least for me.
Sure, it works for baking once you know the rules and have them under your belt, such as you do. But I have had so many spectacular (!) baking disasters by applying the "just improvise and eyeball" theory that I am now quite gun-shy about baking. It wasn't until recently - in my 40's and under tuition of experts such as yourself - that I feel I am starting to learn the baking rules. But I am not yet at the point that I can deviate from a recipe without disappointment resulting. There be dragons...
Posted by: Diane | 27 October 2009 at 02:30 PM
I am not a recipe follower. I am trying to learn about technique and flavors and how to cook by intuition. But I post about things I make, and I'd like to help people recreate something equally delicious. I try to estimate amounts as best I can for those who need a little more structure, but my recipes usually involve more parentheticals than precise measurements. Most often I hope that the people who look at my site aren't following my notes exactly. I'd rather they use it as inspiration to get in the kitchen and make their own version.
Plus, as you note, there's so much variation. How much is one clove of garlic? Juice of one lime? It's silly to think that following even a professionally tested and retested recipe is perfect.
By the way, I love "They make me itch with their curved lines and that enigmatic dot at their end."
Posted by: Brittany | 28 October 2009 at 01:10 AM
Recipes are about responsibility. Less than "certainty" they represent what someone else says works. When a recipe doesn't work, the blame remains with that "someone else." When we follow our intuition, we place the burden of responsibility on our selves. Interestingly, when a recipe works brilliantly, we suddenly efface the author, taking sole credit for the execution.
Recipes aren't there because we want someone to hold our hand through the process, they remain so popular because they allow "someone else" to bear the burden of responsibility for failure.
Aaron, you're brilliant, as always. xx shuna
Posted by: Aaron | 28 October 2009 at 08:46 AM
When you first tackled this topic a few posts ago, I wrote this ode to your questions, called Sweet Little Bossy Boots.
Thanks for asking more.
Amanda, thank you so much for your comment, your own beautiful & lyrical blog, and the 'ode.' I am honoured. ~ shuna
Posted by: Amanda | 28 October 2009 at 11:32 AM
Do recipes get in the way of learning to cook, bake?
Not for me. I like recipes that teach me technique and allow me to riff. It's through recipes that I am now able to judge what I substitute if I don't have everything or what technique I need to use to achieve a flavor I'm thinking of. I'm a novice baker, now I need recipes for baking. Baking seems more exact to me so I don't feel comfortable winging it yet except in a very few things. As I try different recipes though I grow and since I don't have my grandmother beside me to teach me what dough should feel like for her fatayer, I have her recipes to try and try again and tweak to my memory.
Now for my husband, yes, recipes are a huge hinderance b/c he takes them so literally. Once he wanted me to define exactly what "slightly thickened" was. If the recipe says cook garlic on high for 2 min it doesn't matter if the garlic starts burning in the meantime. He's too afraid to let go of the recipe.
Maybe my training in post modern literary theory allowed me to know that the reader creates the text not just the writer so it freed me. While my husband does a more literal interpretation of text and assumes the author must be right.
hello latenac, i hope you won't mind if i just highlight a sentence of yours, ...the reader creates the text not just the writer... thank you very much. ~ shuna
Posted by: latenac | 28 October 2009 at 11:48 AM
The first word that came to mind about recipes is HOPE.
I agree with what you said about recipes and intuition, but I also find that recipes can lead to further inspiration and ideas and these things have helped me create new ideas in my baking.
Back to hope.
I love it when I see a recipe or a post about a recipe (especially with pictures) about a dessert that I thought seemed too difficult to make, but seeing that someone else made it happen by having a recipe as a guide. Or, if I shared a recipe or technique that maybe inspired someone to try something new, and enjoying their excitement and that I could have played a small part in helping them take courage to try it themselves.
This may not answer any of the questions you posed, but just a glimpse of what I thought while reading your thought provoking post.
Posted by: Jill | 28 October 2009 at 11:36 PM
An excellent piece! Interesting, balanced, insightful, and eloquent!!
Posted by: Dad & Ellen | 29 October 2009 at 11:43 AM
I, too, see the ingredients as being alive, by themselves say one thing and once combined can create a beautiful symphony or the sound of nails on a chalk board.
I also have food intolerances to many common ingredients and have to substitute and rearrange almost everything. I have experienced the fear that you mentioned - will it turn out 'wrong'? Will they like it?
The freedom that comes with the ability to let the food be what it is, and then learn from whatever the outcome is has been my saving grace. It lets me create with no judgment, and lets me grow as a cook.
Posted by: Amy | 01 November 2009 at 12:04 AM
Well written & so engaging. I am an intuitive baker, and too wild to be tied down with recipes. I love a good idea & take off platform though. Enjoy building off a good recipe base, and the freedom spurs me on. Loved reading this post Shuna!
Posted by: deeba | 04 November 2009 at 07:30 AM
Thank you.
The work of the hands is work of the heart. Recipes? Initial guidelines, a brief bolstering of the intellect in the name of execution-- if I stay there too long, or stray too far from intuition, my food is lost.
Posted by: Stine | 07 November 2009 at 04:19 PM
recipes and intuition, like reading and writing?
Posted by: bay brits | 15 November 2009 at 04:13 PM
I just found this blog for the first time tonight, and this was the first post that I have read.
That was beautifully written, inspiring, and I couldn't agree more. For me, cooking by feel instead of by the book is when it stops being labor and really becomes a joy.
Posted by: Jon Horn | 24 November 2009 at 12:21 AM
For any Chef the recipe is both good and evil. I use them but I change them, read them like a novel, think outside the box. Like Shuna I have cooked in large format, 500 plated desserts, and then I cooked a few at a time, not sure what I liked best, the hurry up approach keeps you on your feet. Now that I am Vegan I have a daily challenge and miss eggs the most.
Posted by: Linda Kinsman-Saegert (I.C.E '99) | 06 January 2011 at 09:53 AM