I’m someone who’s spent a lot of time cooking from recipes and double- and triple-checking the instructions as I go, then slowly growing accustomed to and adapting them over time. And it works! I have some favored staples I came by that way. But recently I’ve been exploring the merits of just winging it, and as you may have gathered from the title, that was… a different kind of success.
I like messing things up. I had absolutely no concept of this as a child – see “triple-checking the instructions” – but I’m learning that getting lost is a lot of fun, actually, and especially with food. Soup! I think I actually read a soup cookbook as a kid, cover-to-cover, and – again, no hate, I’ve enjoyed some of those – the Throw Stuff In A Pot method has yielded some of my favorite soups ever. I still take notes, of course. I’m far too committed to re-enjoying something to not. But the meticulous measurements I carefully laid out when I was nine have been eclipsed by “large tomatoes (any %)” “for-pickled-things-generous amount,” and “one commitment-challenged small spoon’s worth of honey.” Scientific, it is not, but goddamn am I having fun.
Also involved with this mindset are recipes. The proper sort, properly written, by other people, to which I try not to make Culinary Crimes level substitutions, and which I sometimes still manage to muck up by accident. And then it’s good. So I make a note and keep doing it that way! This Spooky Season I made a quick bread (or… tried to make a quick bread) that called an impromptu “trick or treat” and decided it was both. It’s springy. I’m fairly sure it can be classified as a pudding. I’ve never been so delighted by the consistency of something that came out of our bread machine. It was absolutely not supposed to do that, and I had a little slice with strawberry cream cheese (equivalent) and now I think I’m committed to making it this way until the end of all time. Isn’t this kind of mess fun?
