Coffee Table Declarations
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
I am in my own private recipe hell. The good news? Our company collected over 250 - enough to make our cookbook. The bad news? Guess who gets to type/edit/reformat them all by the end of the week or quite possibly the end of the day? That's right, me.
I now know more than the average person needs to know about recipes. For example, 4 cups equal one quart and if you put a toothpick in something baking and it comes out clean, this is called "testing done". I know the difference between a dash of poultry seasoning and a pinch of poultry seasoning. I know how to make white sauce, tomato sauce, and fruit sauce. I could tell you over a dozen varieties for homemade macaroni and cheese. I could instruct you how to whip up a batch of cookies using only the ingredients you have in your cabinet right now. I could explain to a roomful of strangers the intricacies of creaming, mixing, and blending.
But I still don't know how to cook. I mean, anyone can follow a recipe. Cooking is the art of knowing what goes with what and straying from the directions into brand new territory. Cooking is inventing and creating something wholly new and decidely better than the old. I'm afraid that this is a skill you cannot acquire through the endless typing and proofreading and reformatting of recipes. I wish it was because I would have my own cooking show by now.
I now know more than the average person needs to know about recipes. For example, 4 cups equal one quart and if you put a toothpick in something baking and it comes out clean, this is called "testing done". I know the difference between a dash of poultry seasoning and a pinch of poultry seasoning. I know how to make white sauce, tomato sauce, and fruit sauce. I could tell you over a dozen varieties for homemade macaroni and cheese. I could instruct you how to whip up a batch of cookies using only the ingredients you have in your cabinet right now. I could explain to a roomful of strangers the intricacies of creaming, mixing, and blending.
But I still don't know how to cook. I mean, anyone can follow a recipe. Cooking is the art of knowing what goes with what and straying from the directions into brand new territory. Cooking is inventing and creating something wholly new and decidely better than the old. I'm afraid that this is a skill you cannot acquire through the endless typing and proofreading and reformatting of recipes. I wish it was because I would have my own cooking show by now.
