I like cooking without recipes. Tonight I decided to make a "fall-inspired" stir fry. Started with roasted butternut squash and improvised my way into a dish consisting of apples, chestnut mushrooms, kale, lentils, vegetable broth, butter, curry powder, cinnamon, "chicken-seasoned" seitan, and a bit of milk to keep things moist. I measured nothing.
2 years ago · 👍 digbat, kocka_collector, msz, basil_mori, oofbar
My usual rule is if you're doing something you've never done before and it's supposed to be a certain way, go ahead and use a recipe. But if it doesn't need an oven, you don't need to fret about being exact, and if you're just improvising or you've gotten comfortable you can do whatever you want. Family members say I'm amazing at seasoning tuna, but I've never written anything down. I just know how to throw in seasonings until it tastes good. · 2 years ago
@msz Agreed. The Netflix miniseries "Salt Fat Acid Heat" introduced me to this way of thinking about cooking, and it's been pretty great. I've been taking notes under my "rule of thumb" cooking "system" page and using Station as an ad-hoc journal for when I find something especially good, but it's probably about time I split up the aforementioned page into "general notes" and "recipe notes" pages. · 2 years ago
That's how everyone should do it! I also encourage to write own recipe journal to memorise mainly ideas, not quantities. Every ingredient means something--milk means (sweet + fat) thus replacing it with water + butter + maybe a pinch of sugar could do the trick (disclaimer: cooking is an art, baking is a science) · 2 years ago