The Road Not Taken

This might sound like a strange bit of advice coming from a blog that is part of a website featuring food recipes: Don’t worry about following the recipe.

Recipes are merely roadmaps that guide us on our journey from a starting point to a destination. But like any and all paths that are marked out, you will find alternative ways to get to where you are going and many side routes that are worth exploring. If you’ve ever taken a road trip, I’m sure that you’ve traveled off the direct line to your destination. You might have discovered wonderful sights and experiences that made the trip all the more worthwhile than if you had just moved forward like a horse trotting with blinders on, oblivious to your surroundings.

Perhaps you stopped at a small town and discovered a mom-and-pop store with local antiques from a bygone era selling items like small ornately-decorated jewelry boxes and brass picture frames that remind you of your grandmother’s house. Or perhaps you were driving along the coast and you took a detour that led to a majestic vista overlooking the ocean where you stopped to watch the sunset on the horizon cast pink hues on the underbelly of distant cotton-soft clouds, and where you sat to listen to the ocean waves gently crash against the rocks below with soothing regularity reminding you of both the power and tranquility of the sea. Although the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, a meandering line may well be the more worthwhile choice.

Even in life itself, sometimes side paths lead you to better destinations or make the destinations more worthwhile for having taken them. Remember that high school sweetheart who gave you your first kiss and with whom you thought you were going to marry and have babies? Turns out your sweetheart’s role model was Glenn Close’s character from Fatal Attraction. Better off that you tied the knot with that wonderful stranger you first met in the produce section at the grocery store. Life is messy. You’ve heard the adage: “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”.

Recipes are the same.

Have you ever watched any cooking competition shows on the Food Network, Cooking Channel, or any other network? Ever seen seasoned, experienced, top-trained chefs ruin a dish (one they’ve made a hundred times before) because of some simple oversight? Maybe the pasta was over- or under-done. Maybe the meat was too rare or too well-done. Maybe the cake still contained raw batter. Cooking is messy, just like life.

The variables can be overwhelming. No two kitchens are the same. No two stovetops heat the same. No two ovens have the exact same temperature calibrations. Even ambient humidity can have a profound effect on cooking. Nathan Myhrvold, the author of Modernist Cuisine, says that (due to humidity) during the winter, an oven in Chicago bakes about 20 degrees lower than it would at the same temperature setting in New Orleans in the summer. Hmmm… set oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit... now, where’s my humidity setting? Oh, darn; mine doesn’t have one.

You want that perfectly-cooked sablefish with the crispy skin, snow-white exterior, and just-on-the-verge of raw/cooked flesh inside? I’m sorry, “sear on the stove top for 1-2 minutes on both sides, then finish off in the oven for 5 minutes” is not going to cut it. Recipe by numbers is not a recipe for success. You need a little bit of experimentation and experience - getting to know your fish, your pan, your stovetop, and your oven - to achieve the results you want. There is a bit of an art to the craft of cooking.

Sometimes changing up a recipe can be as simple as an ingredient substitution. Don’t want to kill your loved ones with hypertension by giving them an overdose of sodium meal after meal? Try skipping the salt and soy sauce and use lemon and herbs as a flavor substitute instead. Want extra spice for a kick because your taste buds have gotten bored with life? No need to use that shishito pepper - you can use a habanero instead. Experiment and see what works for you.

It sounds like a cliche, but I’ll say it anyways. My mom is an amazing cook. I come from a family of six with widely differing tastes and preferences when it comes to food. My mom, my eldest sister, and my brother prefer their meat rare. Our middle sister of the family and my dad prefer their meat medium to medium rare. I prefer my meat well-done (don’t worry, if I ever cook for you, I’ll ask). However, my dad and I are practically pescatarians; everyone else loves meat. I love sashimi and spicy foods but my dad can’t stand raw or spices. You get the picture.

On top of preparing delicious meals for the family, we would regularly have 5 to 10 guests over. My mom could make the most creamy and earthy beef stroganoff, perfectly-prepared London broil with well-done ends and a rare center to cater to everyone’s palate, and fish stews that left the inside of the fish chunks moist and not overdone. Yes, she would read recipes but she did not have a dogmatic adherence to them.

This might have had more to do with my dad rather than my mom looking to actually experiment. Dad was very particular back in my childhood days and has only gotten more so over time. He was (and still is) a butter-lover through-and-through. He also can’t stand garlic or onions. That beurre blanc sauce? Better strip out the shallots. Just had lunch at The Stinking Rose where they “season their garlic with food”? You’ll need to reschedule your visit to see him for next week.

I like to think of recipes like travel guides from a bookstore. They are chalked full of information on museums to visit, restaurants to eat at, local attractions to see, tips for getting around, etc. They might even include specific routes for walking tours. But I would be willing to bet that most people would prefer to just pick and choose what appeals to them for sightseeing, dining, and other experiences rather than have a completely guided tour. If you are a visitor to New York and you like the outdoors, you’re more likely to enjoy walking through Central Park and the Bronx Zoo or kayaking to the Statue of Liberty than visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum or seeing a show at Radio City Music Hall even if the latter are considered must-see tourist destinations. Likewise, recipes can guide you along towards making a dish, but you should infuse a bit of YOU into the dish as well, whether it’s changing the ingredients or method of cooking.

After all, whether you are cooking for yourself, friends, or family, the joy of cooking is made possible by giving expression to YOUR choices, tastes, and sensibilities. Even if you are trying to cater to some else’s tastes, ultimately it’s your choice of ingredients, your preparation, your plating that makes the dish unique - not just the mechanical process of churning out a dish by following a recipe.

The poet Robert Frost expressed this idea most poignantly at the conclusion of his poem The Road Not Taken:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

What are some creative or fun ways you experiment with food? Please share your thoughts.