1 Read recipes as templates, not rulebooks
Now, just about everyone starts out cooking by using recipes – whether
in the form of a book, or scrawled on a piece of notebook paper from
Mom. But recipes should serve merely as suggestions, points of
inspiration, ways for you to get started thinking about what tastes
appeal to you and how you might achieve that taste. It used to drive me
bonkers when I’d ask Mom for her recipes and I’d get responses like:
"Marinate in some soy sauce and cornstarch, for awhile. Cook until
done." But these days I’m thankful that from the very beginning,
I learned to cook (necessarily) by my own interpretation, because it’s
the only way to understand the actual techniques behind cooking.
Treat each recipe you read as a guide to a technique, with a
suggestion for a flavor combination. Don’t bother memorizing the
recipe for Risotto with Shiitake Mushrooms, Roasted Bell Peppers and
Julienned Zucchini … instead, realize that the basics of making
risotto are essentially this: sauté veggies/flavorings in oil/butter,
add rice and stir, add wine and stir, add warm stock gradually until the
rice no longer has a hard white uncooked center. You can now make all
sorts of risotto dishes – risotto with asparagus, risotto with fresh
herbs, risotto with italian sausage and mushrooms, risotto with whatever
the heck you can manage to scrounge up in your kitchen. Understand the
techniques and you’ll find that you actually know a lot more
"recipes" than you think you do.
2 Save the measuring devices and timers for
baking – Estimate!
Baking is a science (which is not to say it’s not creative), in
which precision and proper proportions do matter, and quite a lot. The
same is not true of cooking. You’ll find you can whip those dishes
together much more quickly once you put the measuring devices aside and
learn to eyeball. True, it takes some experience to be able to
confidently assess whether this small pile of onion will provide
sufficient flavoring for that amount of peeled, cored tomato. But the
key is to train yourself to be able to gauge relative amounts … and
the more you cook, the more naturally this will come to you. After
cooking spinach just once, you’ll rapidly realize how a huge bowl of
leafy greens shrinks down into a tiny little portion once cooked. You’ll
notice that generally, two cloves of cooked garlic provides a good
amount of flavoring to most dishes, that raw garlic is many times more
potent, and must be used with considerably more restraint. And of
course, hand in hand with learning to estimate …