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LEARNING TO COOK: DON'T FOLLOW THE RECIPE Everyone should know a little something about cooking. Even if you are not a cook or inclined to be one, you may be snowed in one day, unable to get to a restaurant or have pizza delivered. At times like those, it's good to be able to make a pot of soup. For many of us, soups were the first attempt at cooking, and the most forgiving. It's pretty hard to make an irreparable mistake with soup (though once I did put 2 tablespoons of searingly hot cayenne into a stew instead of the sweet Paprika that was meant to go in). For a simple vegetable soup, after all, you only have to cut up some things you think will taste good together, put them in a pot with a liquid - water is usually fine - and cook them a while. Then you taste and add seasonings until you like your soup. But if that is too free-form for you - say, for instance, you've never cooked at all, and aren't sure if cabbages and strawberries would go well together in a soup - then do the next best thing: start with a good recipe, and adapt it. You may be surprised to be hearing from a cookbook writer that you should not follow a recipe. Well, I encourage people to vary my recipes in ways that suit their taste and circumstances. The most fun I have cooking is when I have no plan, when I do it by smell and taste and feel, and I want everyone to enjoy cooking that way. It's great to learn to trust your taste buds and your intuition. Naturally, the safer you feel, the more you'll relax and enjoy yourself. So, if you need to, follow the recipe exactly the first time, even the second. But the third time, experiment. I am continually coming up with interesting new dishes in exactly this way - by starting with something familiar, and then doodling with it. The soup I just made is a good example (look for it in this month's New Recipes). It's a big, hearty winter soup that is a variation of another one, and itself could be varied infinitely. It started out as a simple barley-vegetable soup - a few root vegetables, cabbage and greens, the most basic things that are available in midwinter, all simmered with some barley. Then, I added sautéed mushrooms to make it a classic eastern European mushroom-barley soup. I added a large quantity of dill, because I happened to have it, and it goes so well with potatoes and mushrooms. It was delicious: complex, interesting, yet homely. But I wanted something more to set off those wintry root vegetables, some bright, unexpected note. The taste of dill gave it to me - pickles. I added a cup or so of finely diced dill pickles, let them simmer a while with everything else, and there it was - Pickle Soup. It had just the right subtle zinginess that a mild, almost porridge-like soup wants. And the pickles don't dominate. In fact, you wouldn't guess they were there if you weren't looking for them. You would just notice that it was a livelier sort of soup. If you follow my recipe, you'll make a delicious winter soup. Have it steaming hot, plain or with a spoonful of sour cream. A moist pumpernickel bread would be an ideal partner. If you have some crisp apples and cheddar cheese for dessert, you're set. It's an easy meal, simple enough to carry over to the hearth and eat by the fire, or to pack up and take to a cabin in the snow for a weekend, and big enough for a party, or to freeze half for another time. On the other hand - you can start with my recipe, and change it, make it your own. The best thing about cooking freely this way - besides the fact that it allows you to concoct a meal out of what's around and saves trips to the store in bad weather - is that it's just plain fun. It's fun to savor the aroma of your cooking as it fills the room, let your mind wander a bit, then follow an impulse. When you enjoy yourself cooking, you enjoy your eating. And here's a news flash: you get more nutritional benefit from your food if you enjoy it. I've been saying this for years - fun is good for your health - but I recently read about a study that made it official. So if winter is getting to you, go in the kitchen and play with your food. |