On Recipes -- July 8, 2016

This is nothing about the Bakken. If you came here for the Bakken, scroll down or check out the sidebar at the right.

In the past several years I have really been enjoying cooking. My wife is probably among the best cooks in the western world. She has recipes on 3 x 5 cards, but seldom needs to look at them. She remembers the correct temperature to cook fish or bake chicken. I don't know how she does it.

I've always thought recipes seemed too complicated in all the recipe books one sees at Barnes and Noble. If not complicated, certainly too detailed. I'm talking about cooking here, not baking.

Baking: one must be "exact."

Cooking: lots of flexibility.

I was reminded of that while reading Leonard Mlodinow's Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. In the very first chapter he talks about recipes. He notes that even the font of the recipe in those cooking books affects one's feeling about a recipe. A recipe in fancy and hard-to-read italics is often perceived by the reader "as too difficult to try."

I would go a step further. When I see a list of ingredients, and a paragraph how to make a marinade, for example, my eyes glaze over. I don't need the details. Give me the big picture. I 'll figure out the rest. That's why I love the way I presented the bread recipe as seen on SortedFood the other day:

Bread

• 4 cups flour
• yeast
• salt, tsp
• 1.5 hour to rise
• punch down, in bread pan for another 1 hour
• in oven with tray of water on bottom of stove 
• 15 minutes at 425; 25 minutes at 350

That was it. For some folks even that much was too much. For some folks, the only thing they needed was the reminder for the tray of water at the bottom of the stove.

But for me, I had to add a few more things, like salt and yeast, to make sure I did not forget. Compare that to a standard recipe for bread on the internet. Lots of words; an intimidating list of ingredients.

It seems one could accomplish the same purpose with an introductory essay on "why" bread is bread and a basic generic recipe, followed by any number of recipes, containing only modifications with lists that highlight variety or differences from the basic generic recipe, if that makes sense. But every bread recipe seems to be about 90% like any other bread recipe. And all that information is repeated.

For the bread recipe above, for example, some folks would add some sugar, some folks would add some vegetable oil. I just don't want to forget the yeast, and unlike my wife, I can never remember cooking times or cooking temperatures.

One last example: corn-on-the-cob or spaghetti -- the only thing one has to remember: ten minutes.