Lynn Z. Bloom - Recipe (Object Lessons)

Anyone can cook anything and make it delicious.

Samin Nosrat

Recipes, like cave paintings, are seen only in their maturity, when they astonish us by their confident finish. Less perfect earlier versions are wiped away like the early drafts scrawled on the cave wall.

Adam Gopnik

A recipe is a success story. Nosrat captures the recipes promise to the cook, If you follow my advice you will create a delicious dish. A recipe tells the story of how any cook, however nave or sophisticated, in partnership with the recipes words and music, can transform often disparate ingredients into a congenialeven excitingtreat. The story celebrates a happy ending when delighted diners devour the food. The narrative line of this story underlies all discussions and examples of recipes throughout this book except for tells a different tale, a somber story of hunger and famine, with porridge as its salvation.

A recipe is a paradoxical construct, a set of directions that specify precision butbaking exceptedanticipate latitude. A recipe is an introduction to the logic of a dish, a scaffold bringing order to the often casual process of making it. A recipe is a means of codifying the informal practices of cooks worldwide, who rely not so much on written recipes, but on family lore and cultural heritage. Irma Rombauers Joy of Cooking (1931) channels Mom; later editions channel Irma; Julia Childs Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) distills the essence of centuries of a nations complicated regional culinary traditions. Flavored with the opportunity for transmitting sustenance, succor, and success the recipe serves as both inspirationWhat shall I cook?and aspiration. Can I really make this myself? Will it taste and look as good as its model? Will it be better than my rivals? A recipe embodies the chefs philosophy, as in Yotam Ottolenghis abundance, freshness, and surprise. Importantly, a recipe is an assertion of the cooks existence, identity, and empowermenta signature dish named in her honor, bestowed by kin or kindred spirits, a gift of cook, culture, cuisine. Today, thanks to the internet, every recipe can be the basis for an extended dialogueaffirmations, variations, and disagreementsamongst cooks and kibitzers, restaurant chefs and recipe raters, foodies filming and blogging every bite.

We know a recipe when we see it. It is introduced by a name, whether a barebones identification of the principal ingredient (Chicken) and type of dish (Soup), or the more detailed sketch of ingredients common in both traditional and contemporary recipes, as in Ottolenghis Chicken Soup with Egg Vermicelli and Pioneer Womans Chicken New-dle Soup. Fancier names evoke more specialized connotations: heritage (The Chicken Soup of Chinese Aunties; celebrity chef Julia Childs Chicken Soupvia Chef Paulette); or equally encompassing, the name of a family member, friend, or other intimate in the kitchen whose special qualities can also be incorporated (Grandma Evies Jewish Penicillin)in this case, curative powers to swear by.

The recipe conventionally specifies the yield, say 4-6 servings, but given the gargantuan appetites of contemporary American eaters, approximation is necessary. A recipe may or may not include an estimate of preparation time, which cooks can then adapt to accommodate their own cooking style, interruptions, and oven temperature. Especially helpful are explanations of whats going on during this time, such as Mark Bittmans analysis of why his Chicken Jook with Lots of Vegetables should simmer for around three hours, so the rice will break down and the water will thicken in this [c]reamy Chinese rice porridge, a perfect cold-weather soup, and a fine vehicle for delicious add-ins.

An introduction, written as if the author is conversing directly with the home cook, provides culinary philosophy, historical and cultural context, advice on variable ingredients and preparation techniques. Nigella Lawsons Introduction to her recipe for Thai Chicken Noodle Soup, for instance, illustrates the improvisatory, ad hoc nature of recipes for many foods in a particular category (such as soups, salads, stews, stir-fries) that involve a repertoire of substitutable ingredients (Bittman includes a table of Interchangeable Ingredients): This is a very laissez-faire recipe all round. She confesses, When I cooked it for the photo shoot I forgot to put the vegetables in and it was still heavenly, a mixture of pak choi, bok choi, spindly asparagus, Chinese kale, peanut shoots and Chinese chives. At other times, she happily substitutes some leafy greens and a julienned or sliced spring onion along with a handful of beansprouts. In characteristically seductive language she advises further improvisation, If you cant get the ravishing cellophane packages of almost equally cellophane vermicelli, dont be put off making this; udon, soba, rice noodles, spaghetti or linguine could be substituted.

It begins with a list of ingredients in the order they are to be used, larger quantities first, followed by the sequence of numbered steps to combine or otherwise prepare the ingredients in order to produce the dish. However, strict linearity may be illusory. In Salt Fat Acid Heat, Nosrat observes that while recipes lead us to believe that cooking is a linear process, most good food results from a circular one, like a spiderweb, touch one part and the entire thing will quiver. John Donne said of the human condition, No man is an island, entire of itself; with recipes too, no ingredient, no step, no process is independent of the rest.

Any step may require a subpart. These instructions can be folded into the ingredient list, as when additional preparation steps are embedded in the identification of a single ingredient: 1 large cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and sliced. In other cases, the preparation of a single component may require a separate recipe, such as chicken stock or a premade pie shell. Although a recipe can serve as a construction scaffold or a memory jogger, the logic of this sequential organization cannot be violated. Readers of recipes automatically expect this structure, whether they are new cooks clinging to its framework for security, or casual cooks working without a net, who glance at it only for inspiration.

For many dishes beloved by a family, community, or culture, there is a basic recipe and innumerable variations on the essentials which accommodate the range of everyones tastes and expectations. How else to justify all those recipe cards, cookbooks, blogs, Food Network programs?

Consider, for instance, the basic recipe for chicken stock, the foundation for chicken soups of all sorts as well as an essential ingredient in variety of other recipes. Throughout the entire world, wherever there is a chicken, there can be chicken soup. Every version of this basic recipe involves the same ingredients in the same proportionsthe amount of chicken in the recipe is always five poundswhich undergo the same cooking process. Whether articulated in a single simple paragraph in Fannie Farmers Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) or in two large pages in Childs Mastering, the basics are almost as simple as opening a can of Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup (the soup equivalent of Wonder Bread), but made-from-scratch is far tastier and more nutritious.

1. Place equal quantities of bones and meat (4-5 pounds altogether, depending on the size of the uncooked chicken) in an 8-10 quart kettle.
2. Cover with cold water two inches above the meat, add a couple of stalks of celery, one or two carrots, an onion or two, and simple seasoning.