Cooking Failure
I have come to the conclusion, I hope the final time, that I cannot follow most recipes.
In culinary school and from my dad, who was a chef, I learned that writing a recipe is a serious science. You have to be very precise and clear. You have to list specific steps in order and list all measurements exactly. You can't leave anything out. That is what insures consistency. That is how a restaurant is successful no matter who is cooking the food.
However, most people do not write recipes this way. I have been guilty of it too. It is tempting, especially when cooking meat or something on the stove with varying sizes or shape, to wing it, add a dash of this or that, a little more or less water. You have to make adjustments.
You CANNOT do this with baking. Pie dough especially is very tricky. Last week one of my coworkers brought in a dessert and shared the recipe. Now I could tell by looking at it that it was messed up and wouldn't work, but baking being a strange science that you never know the end result, I ignored my better judgement, AGAIN. This always happens when I follow dessert recipes. Recipes online always turn out bad for me.
So I am done not trusting my own good sense with pies. I can make a damn good pie or layer cake if I follow a recipe I wrote. Sorry Judi, your recipe and the pie both went in the trash. It was not edible. Mom says I was being wasteful, and blew up on me in a huge fight this morning. She won't drop it. Whatever, I don't care. I hope this week gets better, not worse. Experimenting in the kitchen for my recipe book should be fun, not guilt trippy or belittling.
Replies
Masters tend to make lousy teachers. Some things are either easy or impossible and beware the master who has achieved the easy. They tend to over-simplify *everything* whether the student can just it all, or knot.
I have frustrated many a Master Chef to stuttering with my method of treating recipes like suggestions more than scripture. Hey Chef Master, my compost thrives on them there "Mistakes." Knowing it all just gets in the way of the creative process. If ya ain't falling down, ya ain't trying hard enough.
I never lose. I either win or I learn.
Right! I learned. Not being able to follow a recipe doesn't mean you can't cook! I can cook fine, just my own way. I can't follow knitting patterns either, they seem unnecessary when I can just look at the finished product and figure out how to make it myself.
But basically this pie recipe called for baking on too high heat, and didn't use any thickener. Also too much sugar. I get so mad at myself for not trusting myself, but it's hard when he is hovering and saying did you follow this, did you do this, why did you do that? And she is sitting in her chair yelling what are you doing? What did you just get out of the cabinet? What is that?
I miss being a chef. I had a whole professional kitchen to myself. Everything in logical places, any ingredient I could want, peace and quiet, equipment that worked. Assistants to do dishes and stuff I didn't like to do.
The kitchen at my house is always a messy dysfunctional wreck, just like my mom, who is the one who puts the kitchen that way.
I have never had chef ambitions, but I learned early on that a creative cook is welcome at any campfire. I leave the pro grade kitchens to the pros. I doesn't even have the ambition to wait at the table, much less trade cooking tips, but I totally agree with the Master Chefs who lecture that the best cooks always leave the kitchen cleaner than they found it.
Ever since I heard chemists called, "the cooks of the science world," I have liked to pretend I am a mad scientist in the kitchen. Sometimes the evil variety. . . Good thing I am surrounded by volunteer guinea pigs. The worst part of that is that I can seldom duplicate the dishes that really rocked.