HOW TO READ AND FOLLOW A RECIPE
I think the hardest thing about cooking at home is no one teaches us how to read a recipe. How to really understand it. So, here are some rambling thoughts.
Before you start to cook, read the recipe. Seems like obvious advice, but I really mean it. I know it seems like you are wasting time, that you should dive into cooking, and just get the process going. But I can pretty much guarantee you that by taking 10 minutes and reading the recipe in advance, you are saving so much time in the long run.
Treat a recipe like Shakespeare. Recipes, like Shakespeare can be daunting if you don't know what your are doing. So, I suggest you read it through three times.
Read it the 1st time for general context, does it look good? Would my kids eat it? Is this for a special occasion or just Tuesday dinner? Like Shakespeare, you are just trying to get the general flow, don't get bogged down with the vocabulary.
Read it the 2nd time looking for content. How many times have you gotten excited about a recipe for dinner guests, done all your shopping, gotten 1/2 way through the process at read “Rest for at least 4 hours, or overnight.” Whoops, dinner is ruined. So, read it over and make sure you understand how to do it. Do you have all the equipment you need? Is there vocabulary you don’t understand, or a technique you need to learn. This is the part on Romeo and Juliet where you start to really understand the characters.
Finally, read it one more time before you start cooking. Think Shakespeare, this time BE the character. Invision yourself cooking it. How long is this really going to take me? While the onions sauté I can season the meat, or fold the laundry.
Now, I’m going to talk about devices. I LOVE that I can look up recipes online, everything I want at my fingers. However, once I have a recipe I have started copying it on my dry erase board, or printing it off. And that’s because of distraction, and parent modeling. I found it took me 3 times as long to cook a recipe off my computer than if I transfer it to the wall.
Inevitably I have to wake up my computer when my fingers are covered in dough so I can look up how long I knead it.
And then LOOK my best friend sent me a picture of her new haircut! oh, better text her back a picture of the dog at my feet. Oh, an email reminder about Girls Scouts on Friday, I should take a second and put Grace’s uniform in her bag. By the time I get back to making dinner I’ve flipped the laundry, let the dog in and out 20 times, and somehow got distracted by a recipe for ___ I want everyone to cook for the charity dinner I’m doing in October. So, find the recipe and put down the damn phone.
Line up the soldiers. I spent my culinary internship in an R&D kitchen. The best thing I took away from there was the simple, almost grandma way of cooking. Gather your ingredients, put them on your left, and as you measure them out move them to your right. I love to teach this to kids, it makes it so simple, and even if you get distracted you don’t get lost. So, say you are making biscuits, you are combining all your dry ingredients, it’s so easy to let your mind wander and then think “Soda, did I put the soda in?” Well, if its on your left side, it’s not in yet, if it’s on the right you are done. boom.
Remember to look away. When you go to the symphony the musicians all have the music infront of them. You know they know this music backwards, and yet you’ll see them in the more challenging sections eyeing down each measure. Then, you see them break away, the parts that they know so well, and so freely, they are able to step away and get caught up in the piece. Feel that way about a recipe, work to getting away from the paper, and simply cooking. You’ll find you work faster and more effectively if you aren’t always staring at the page. I know if I’m working on a layering of flavors, or something I haven’t worked with before that I need to read the page, following each direction like the measures of music, but when if there are passages I am familiar with, I can simply let that flow.
Next, bring a few recipes to memory. My daughter's music teacher last week told her, piano is my best friend, and I always have music with me. I want you to keep practicing, because I want you to have that best friend too. Cooking is my best friend, and I have recipes that I carry inside of me like music. And I want you to have that too. Like a poem or a sonata, have a few that you carry in your heart, good friends who will never leave you. Like the woman who can walk by a hotel piano and play a sweet & simple etude, or the guy at the campfire who knows the chords to all the taylor swift songs. Martha Stewart’s Pate Brisee is in my heart. I learned 100 pastries in culinary school, but this one just struck with me, and now I can make pie whenever I need. Pick a few recipes you’d like to commit to memory, that would be useful and joyful to carry around with you. If you go away for weekends with big groups of families - memorize an incredible but simple sough dough waffle recipe, or perfect a few sauces to accompany the meats you KNOW the men put on the grill (a chimichurri or pesto, or if you are more advanced a bar blanc or bernaisse). If you travel abroad pick something that feels quintisenntially PNW, that you can use local ingredients but put that PNW spin on them.