Recipe problems - they still exist
- rosemary
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
"If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything." Michael Symon
That cookbook I was planning for the grandchildren - well I'm still working on it, although having been treated to dinner cooked by one of them last night - butter chicken, pumpkin masala, naan - I sometimes wonder why I'm bothering. I also wonder what is the best approach. I think I am aiming, in a less grandiose way, to do what Michael Symon says in his opening quote - teach them the how rather than which recipes to choose. Although, of course, it's not as simple as that, and technique is fundamentally boring is it not? In fact the young of today are much more likely to get recipes on TikTok or Instagram than a book. Anyway here are a few thoughts on recipe style, plus a few on why I think I probably should provide a few recipes - because I do think that every now and then it is useful to actually follow a recipe.
One of the features of a recipe that might attract a young person of today is length. Here I turn to two examples from then and now of the opposite to the above examples of the super brief - to which I shall return. On the left two pages of the complete three of the recipe for Navarin printanier from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and below Cheese tamales with all or some of the trimmings, from Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage's book Flavour. I suspect this particular recipe is Ixta's.
Now I have made the Navarin printanier a few times, but even back then I had to overcome resistance at three pages of text. And all of the recipes in that book are a bit like that, but if you dive in you can see that it's set out like that so that you can easily follow each step and it's accompanying ingredients, with information about 'how' and 'why', sometimes even helpful drawings. And let me tell you the end result was pretty wonderful. I haven't made it for a while. Maybe I should have another go. But yes it's off-putting. If I hadn't been a keen cook I probably would not have attempted it.
You would think that cookbook writers today had learnt that lesson, especially in the face of the competition from the internet and social media - but no. The example above is from Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage's book Flavour - two pages of text, with an incredibly long and detailed list of ingredients, plus a page of pictures showing you how to wrap your tamales - which I guess is useful, and a picture of the final result. At the end of it all. Half of the first page of text is fundamentally a marketing exercise to get you to make the recipe, but the text is small, and pale. On the plus side it does also give advice on leftovers, and how to vary it and the 'extras'. Daunting though. The danger is that you might end up thinking like Rita Rudner who said:
But short is not necessarily good either. To re-examine those two examples at the top of the page - first Elizabeth David's Minestra di pomidoro - and here I cannot resist (again) including some of the text from Julian Barnes' humorous essay on it:
"Melt? Melt a tomato ? Even a chopped one? The implausibility of the verb froze me. Perhaps if you are south of Naples, and beneath the intense noonday sun your fingers have just at that moment eased from the plant something that is less a tomato than a warm scarlet deliquescence waiting to happen; then, perhaps the thing might melt under your spatula. But would these muscular cubettes I was now easing into the oil ever do such a thing? I found myself, as the anxious pedant frequently does, caught between two incompatibilities. On the one hand, I believed, or wanted to believe, that with a few encouraging prods the tomatoes would, by a culinary process hitherto unknown to me but promised by my trustworthy tutress, suddenly melt; at the same time I was pursued by the sane fear that cooking the surly chunks any longer in the oil and thus adding to the over-all ten- minute time limit would make them lose their freshness and vitiate the whole point of the recipe.
For several stressful minutes I waited for the miracle “melt”.
Then with a cookish oath I seized the potato masher and mashed the shit out of them…
He went on to comment of the garlic - peeled or unpeeled? chopped, crushed, left whole? How much of the herbs and again what did you do with them, and how do you skin a tomato anyway (well that's my addition to the long list of questions).
And Nigel Slater - probably the modern master of the short recipe in cookbooks - also assumes a bit of knowledge - I mean how do you poach an egg. He doesn't tell you. Either here or anywhere else in his book Eat. 'Slide in' How? And those measurements a tiny bit vague, which you can either take as reassuring (it doesn't matter) - or frustrating - 'couple' - is that really just two?, 'a few drops' - what does that really mean? 'Baste' - would a beginner know what that meant? Besides, what do you baste them with - well obviously the butter I suppose, but maybe a beginner might not even know that.
Short also has other traps. I remember one recipe I made for stuffed pachieri - those really big pasta tubes. One of the instructions was simply 'stuff the pachieri". I wrote about it all in detail in a post I called "Stuff the pachieri" (or not). So I won't do that again. Suffice to say it wasn't that simple and there was nothing in the recipe to answer my questions. A quick read of the recipe and a glossy, tempting picture of the finished dish would not have alerted you to this problem.
Short can however, be extremely good - and, as I said, Nigel is a master at this. Witness the example shown here. Ok there are no quantities given but in this case I don't think it's all that crucial. Three lines that tell you how to make a satisfying pasta dish. And if you don't like Gorgonzola, then I guess most people might realise that they could use any other cheese they did like - maybe even add something else at the end - like chilli, herbs or breadcrumbs ...
A recipe has two parts - ignoring all the extra bits that you sometimes get these days - variations and make ahead and leftover tips - which is, I have to say, an admirable addition that should be encouraged. Perhaps I should include the marketing bit - the introduction and the picture - but they are just the hooks. The first part of the recipe proper is the ingredients and the second is the method.
Ingredients - There are a few things to say about ingredients. How many, difficulty of sourcing, what you do with them, and where/how are they listed?
How many? Actually this doesn't really matter, because a long list might mean you just gather them together and chuck them in your pot or a blender, but I guess that nevertheless it might put off a beginner, particularly if the list includes a whole lot of things that are not readily available, or that you have to go out and buy. Ottolenghi used to be notorious for this. A short list doesn't necessarily mean the recipe is simple however. Off the top of my head, a perfect omelette, a chocolate mousse, risotto, home-made bread might be examples of this, although I am sure there are plenty of others.
What do you do with them? - These days I notice there is a trend of telling you how to prepare particular ingredients in the list - you know - 1 onion, chopped - or peeled, cut in half and sliced thinly - which is absolutely in line with the dictum of always reading the recipe through before you start, and then assembling your ingredients before you start cooking. These days they also tend to list them in the order that they are used. Also very useful. It was not always thus. Elizabeth David, in that soup recipe just mentioned them as she came to them.
And you know, a few people are beginning to do that too. One example here is NIk Sharma who says in his introduction to his book Veg-Table:
"Based on the feedback I've received directly from my readers over the years, I've streamlined my recipes to make them easier to read and follow. Taking a cue from the lendary The Joy of Cooking, I've listed ingrdients within the recipe steps. The ingredients and their amounts are bolded within the steps so you can easily see them while cooking, with the book propped on your counter. This is exactly how I write recipes when I develop them in the kitchen."
And here is an example of his approach:
I don't know about you but I find this daunting and not helpful. Yes I am enticed by the gorgeous picture of the end result which is on the preceding page. However, even if the ingredients are in bold type and include what to do with them, it is dangerous to ignore them until you get to them - 'while cooking' as he says. If halfway through cooking you suddenly have to stop and chop stuff you might ruin the whole thing, by stopping the process, burning the food that is halfway done ... Sure, if it's in bold and you can therefore assemble and do all the preparation before you start, then why not just list them at the beginning? And his 'The Cook's Notes' right at the end - in pretty small print, whilst useful tips, are really better placed within the recipe, where the tip is appropriate I think.
He's not alone though. Nigel does it as well - in Eat anyway. Yes there is a list of ingredients at the start, but no quantities and no preparation instructions. You have to rely on the bold print for that. Thankfully this is a very short recipe however, and the majority of those ingredients are all together at one stage of the process. Nevertheless I don't think it's helpful.
Nik Sharma, obviously had some input into the way the recipe was arranged, because of that note in his Introduction to the book, but I guess, most cookbook writers don't. It's probably more of a decision made by the publishers and the designers of the books.
The method - Well avoid phrases like 'melt the tomatoes'. I suppose a critical factor here is who is the audience. Somebody reading a Jamie Oliver book like Simply Jamie is going to have a completely different skill set to somebody reading Heston's Fantastical Feasts, so one shouldn't criticise a cookbook aimed at people who obviously are experienced. Clear, unfussy, and explanatory for the beginner's however. 'Never assume' should perhaps be the catchphrase here. And really the only essential advice is read the recipe all the way through first - and then read it again, and read each step before doing it. And let me say here, that I still make mistakes because I have somehow skipped over something.
When I set out on this exercise of writing a book for my grandchildren, I wasn't going to include any recipes at all. I really just wanted to talk about how to make up a recipe for several basic kind of dishes - stews, traybakes, roasts, pasta, tarts ... Basic techniques. However, I now think I should include a few simple recipes for each kind, plus potential things that you could do with a particular set of ingredients you might have to hand - like what's in my fridge today. You learn from recipes - well I certainly did. And besides it's nice to actually try something that you would never have thought of yourself every now and then. Because:
"A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal." Pat Conroy
Or as Nigel said at the end of his satay recipe above "For 4. Nutty. Spicy. Fingers to lick."
I'm not American so I don't know what Sunday sauce is - well I think it's tomato sauce for pasta. Anyway - a good example I guess, from one of their better recipe writers - Ali Slagle - of a pretty simple, but pretty ordinary pasta dish.
YEARS GONE BY
November 3
2024 - The rule of 1-2-3 spritz
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Just a thing?
2020 - Missing
2018 - Nothing
2017 - Nothing
Ahhh......... Elizabeth David and Julian Barnes on melting a tomato !!!!!😃