I am a fairly conventional cook.
I usually start with a recipe, and either make it as written, or customise it to suit my own tastes. I suspect most homecooks probably work on a similar basis.
That’s not the way my husband cooks.
Pete doesn’t take a turn in the kitchen very often, but when he does, the result is almost always sublime. He rarely uses a recipe, but instead creates dishes in an organic, instinctive way – adding a pinch of this, a dash of that – until he gets exactly the result he’s after. I’m always in awe of the way he layers flavours in a dish – something that I’ve never been particularly adept at doing.
Tonight’s dinner was a good example. I’d taken a container each of shredded (cooked) beef brisket and beef stock from the freezer earlier in the evening. From the garden, we brought in a fat carrot and a perennial leek.
I watched as Pete gently sauteed the ingredients, added the spices, ran outside to harvest mint and parsley, and tasted – constantly. He must have sampled the dish over a dozen times as it cooked, adjusting the seasoning, adding more lime juice to balance out the flavours, reducing the sauce until it was just right. Interestingly, he didn’t add garlic – which I do almost automatically with savoury dishes – as he didn’t feel it was right for this recipe.
As he continued on his merry way, I scribbled the ingredients out on the white board. I’m listing them here, or we’ll never get to be able to replicate this delicious meal. Quantities are estimates only, as everything (literally) was added to taste!
- one skinny leek
- one medium onion
- one fat carrot
- one seeded serano chilli
- a little red wine
- a tablespoon of olive oil
- 100g unsalted butter
- salt
- pepper
- a takeaway container of cooked beef brisket
- one tin of kidney beans, drained
- one tin of butter beans, drained
- one tin of chopped Italian tomatoes (we like the Mutti brand)
- a small takeaway container of homemade beef stock
- two dessertspoons of homemade plum sauce
- two teaspoons of Herbie’s Mexican Spice mix
- two teaspoons of sweet paprika
- juice of approximately 1½ Tahitian limes, plus the rind of half a lime
- continental parsley
- spearmint
I wish I could cook like this, but whenever I try, things usually end up tasting quite strange. It seems to be an inherent ability – my friends the Spice Girl and Choclette both seem to have it as well – as, I suspect, do most great chefs.
What about you? Do you tend to follow a recipe, or are you an intuitive cook like my Pete?
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
I am like you, Celia, all the way….
I adapt, change, but for the most part need a starting point from a cookbook, magazine, or a website.
Great that Pete complements your style so well!
Sally, Pete is really amazing – when he creates, the results are amazing! I can improvise, but that skillful layering of subtle flavours is something I’ve never been able to achieve…
I do both. I follow recipes, then change them to suit in repeat performances. I sometimes try to replicate something I try in a restaurant, usually successfully and very occasionally I just make something up. I wish my husband cooked……anything!
Pete could cook well before I could, Deb! He taught me when we were newlyweds! :)
Jane’s intuitive, I’m merely a recipe follower.
Like Pete and I, she’s the Yin to your Yang. Or maybe vice versa, I’m never quite sure how that works.. ;-)
I tend to follow recipes by the book, only improvising when I have to resort to fridge lottery, using what I have to hand
Nino, some of our best dishes have come about from fridge lottery! :)
Sounds like a great dish! I’m like Pete, the only time I look at a recipe is for baking desserts :)
Good for you! Desserts and baking tends to need a recipe, at least to start with, I think…
There are very few things I can cook completely instinctively, unless they are variations on something I’ve cooked so darn often I know it very well. However, once I’ve made a recipe once or twice, I can readily adapt it, often quite heavily, using the original recipe as a starting point on approximate cooking techniques and times, and then applying my own ideas and tastes.
Kavey, that’s probably true of me too, if I think about it. Sometimes I end up with a dish that is so for removed from the original that it seems wrong to call it the same name! :)
Lovely recipe from your man! I can recreate a dish I’ve tasted in a restaurant or at someone’s home… by taste, kind of like how I can play the piano by ear. And I will always tweak and rewrite recipes, always have, always will. And often, the results are better, at least to my palate. But I don’t have that wonderful knack you speak of, Celia, that good chefs also have, and clearly Pete does too. It is a gift, I think.
Lizzy, that’s a great skill! I’d love to be able to recreate something that I tried and loved! You’re next on Masterchef! :)
What Pete has is not just the creating of a recipe, but it’s the management of the subtleties in the recipe. My palate just isn’t fine tuned enough to be able to do that, although I always appreciate the end result!
He seems to approach cooking in roughly the same way I do. I prefer the instinctive approach – it seems to always work wonderfully. I like the way he cooks – that dish looks delicious. I tend to cook and write the recipe down afterwards :D.
Nick, your dishes are always fantastic! I’m glad you write them down for us! :)
I think I’m a bit of both, sometimes I need a reference point and other times I just go with the flow as it were! it just depends.
Sue, I have to be careful when I go with the flow, as sometimes the end result is inedible. Granted, it hasn’t happened for a few years now. But you know how in some families they say, “don’t mention the war”? In ours, we say, “don’t mention the apricot lamb”. :D
I’m like you, too, Celia, mostly following a recipe, but making my own substitutions/variations based on our tastes. I am completely in awe of people who can just *create* magical dishes! Pete’s creation looks delicious. :)
Abby, thank you. I think that husband of mine is pretty special – you must all get sick of me carrying on about him.. ;-)
I am a bit of a Pete – Brian is a Celia – best to have one of each in the kitchen :)
Jo, whenever Pete cooks, I’m prep chef, and I think that works really well. And I try and have stuff on hand that he might need – so today I spent time making beef stock, pork stock, and more brisket for the freezer. So often when he’s cooking, he will say, “babe, do we have any duck stock? and what about champagne vinegar?” :)
Sadly that’s not us in any shape or form. Stock is serendipitous overspill, never made to plan. I take it back, we are more like the vultures in the Jungle Book. Shuffling around the kitchen, we are serendipitous cooks. Brian either cooks his Gran’s recipes from memory or digs out his favourfite Ottolgenhi recipes. There’s a lot of “anyone know where the couscous is?” “Did you buy some?” We are classic examples of the ‘nouvelle vague’ school of home cooking i.e. vague !
It all sounds very laid back and zen, dearheart.. :)
I think I’m more like Pete when cooking meat dishes such as casseroles, curries and chillis, but nearly all of my baking and desserts start off with a recipe which can be tweaked in minor ways that doesn’t stop the recipe working.
Suelle, I think baking needs recipes to start with, or things can end up pear-shaped very quickly. That’s partly why the pound cake recipe has been so much fun to play with – it’s let me adapt with a fair bit of confidence!
I let the food take me where it wants to go. I know the forms and bridges and partners with which to travel and then I follow. Occasionally I will follow a recipe, but it feels kind of stiff and doesn’t taste quite right. I guess I’m more like Pete- but I took a lot of years to make food consistently good.
Heidi, you do it so well too – I’d have never thought to combine the flavours in the last soup you made!
http://heidiannie.com/2012/04/a-surprise-soup-made-with-avocados-and-sausage-recipe/
That is so awesome! I am very rarely an impulsive cook and if I am I still have the original recipe with me ;)
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
CCU, I can be impulsive, but the end result doesn’t always have much finesse! :)
I stumbled across your blog after reading a couple of whats in my kitchen posts. I have to say with several food intolerances I have learnt to adapt and substitute so I can enjoy recipes I otherwise would not be able to. I love cooking and actually find a real sense of satisfaction in adapting dishes to suit my needs and still please friends and family.
Anyway, I love this blog and will be following avidly now I have found it. I have posted my own Whats in My Kitchen over on my little blog, A Good Year as I found all the posts really inspiring.
Best wishes
Sophie
Sophie, thanks for joining in! I’m glad you’ve been able to work around your food intolerances – have you found my friend Becca’s blog? She’s a chef, and also intolerant to lactose and gluten, and she creates the most amazing dishes! Oh, and she’s completely gorgeous too.. :)
http://intolerantchef.blogspot.com.au/
I wish I could cook like that too! My sister, who used to be a chef, can and she often has a giggle at me following the recipe so closely! This dish looks awesome!
Ali, thank you! It was very tasty indeed – there are never leftovers when Pete cooks..
I guess I fall somewhere in between the two of you, Celia, but that just comes from many years of cooking and having a good idea of what complements what, in the way of food & spices.
I just envy you having a husband who will cook. My husbands only efforts are to char things on the bbq – often badly. ;-)
Amanda, Pete got sick of eating meat and three veg when he was about 16, so his mother let him start making exotic dishes like spag bog. :) He doesn’t cook often, but when he does, it’s a treat for all of us!
I envy people who can do that, it’s like the cleverer cooks on Masterchef. Like you Celia I follow a recipe unless it’s one I know off my heart. I am the same with knitting, no inspired free flowing creativity, just follow the pattern. ::sigh::
Rose, that’s not a bad thing with knitting – I once knitted a scarf when I was very young, and I was trying out all the different stitches in a pattern book I had, and used all different coloured balls of wool. It ended up very Doctor Who.. ;-)
I cook by feel. I actually found it really hard when I started blogging to remember to measure. My partner, Lewie, has never been known to use a recipe in his life. And he tends to just keep adding things. Sometimes the results are sublime, sometimes overelaborated. But either way, it’s just so so very nice to have someone cook for you, it doesn’t matter.
Linda, when the boys were little, they loved Bananas in Pyjamas, and there was an episode where the Bananas were trying to fix a table which had one leg shorter than the others. The end result was a table which only sat about a foot off the ground, they kept adjusting and adjusting and it kept getting shorter and shorter. That’s what I tend to do – like Lewie, I’ll add a bit too much sugar to balance out the flavour, then need to put in more salt to balance out the sugar, then be just a little too heavyhanded with the spices, and…well, you get the picture. :)
Tell Pete a good alternative to limes is red wine vinegar, adding earlier in the cooking when cooking up red meat (maybe that was your role when you cooked the meat earlier) it gives a depth and tang quite different from lime. In any case I would have happily joined you all as this looks like the most homely comfort food ever!
Roz, it would have been so nice to have you share dinner with us! I went straight out to tell Pete about the red wine vinegar, thank you! We seem to have quite a collection of vinegars these days, and they’re all quite different to each other!
My cooking and bread baking are pretty intuitive but for cakes I usually follow a recipe. Mr. W., let’s say his cooking is intuitive and pretty awful. If he’d cook, we’d probably need two kitchens but he’s a great dishwasher!
Poor Mr W – intuitive AND awful! :) I’m impressed you can bake bread by feel, I’ve never quite got that right, I still need my scales! :)
Baking = recipe. After that, anything goes. Most of the recipes that I follow are pretty basic, a bit of garlic, onion, chilli and herbs, squeeze of lime and Bob’s your uncle. Sometimes I’m a terrible cook other times I think, not so bad. :-)
Maz
Maz, I’m sure you’re a great cook almost all the time! Hey, maybe we should try Siri on cooking! “Siri, how many onions should I put in my pasta sauce?” :D
Hi Celia, I think it sounds like Pete would be sensational on a show like Master Chef because those who can invent recipes and taste as they go do really well in that kind of a situation. I would love to be like Pete but I tend to be nervous unless I’m following a recipe! xx
Charlie, you’d laugh at some of my efforts. I’ve been known to occasionally get very heavyhanded with the chilli and garlic, to which my husband will say, “my love, when you’re hormonal, you really, REALLY have to follow a recipe..” :D
Savoury dishes I cook more intuitively but baking has me glued to the recipe. I love the way you work out what you can change in a baking recipe and why Celia. That’s a real art.
Sally, you are really a very kind and encouraging friend, thank you! :)
xxx
Oh my goodness, your Pete and my Pete cook exactly the same!
:-) Mandy
Hehehe…only MY Pete wears shoes, Mandy! :D
Hi Celia, I love that Pete cooks for you however occasionally. I would love someone to cook for me. I also love how much you admire him!
Tania, that is very kind of you, thank you! Just to let you know, I got both your comments – the first one was hiding in my spam folder! xx
Good for you Pete! Tasting is key to all great dishes, and shouldn’t be taken for granted. That dish sure does sound yummy, and I wish you could send me left-overs (if your boys leave any that is!)
Becca, no leftovers, and maybe I need to get Pete a customised tasting spoon like yours? Hmmm. Actually, that’s a very good idea.. :)
Lol, I cook the same as Pete! It’s true that if we don’t write it down, we can almost never re-create it. Thanks for writing it down so that this recipe is never lost 8)
Soy!! How’ve you been, girl? I’ve missed you guys – hope the chooks are still doing well? xx
I love hiw way of cooking, I do that the same way. It is all about ther tasting process along the way: you should that too! :)
I love cooking & baking this way: you can be so much more creative! What a great & tasty stew, which I love!
Thanks Sophie! He’s very clever (at least, I think so)! :)
My husband is a great cook and prepares food just the way Pete does. I have often asked if he would try measuring so that I can share them but he says it takes too long. I can’t complain as he creates such good meals and enjoys doing it.
Karen, you’re right, we really can’t complain, can we? I know I’m biased, but when Pete cooks, I can’t think of anything or anywhere else that I would rather eat!
Oh Celia – how lovely you are. Thank you for thinking of me. Would love to believe I’m a great chef, but although I rarely use a recipe book for savoury items, things don’t always turn out to be as delicious as I’d like.
Choc, I’ve never known you to follow a recipe completely, and I’ve seen you come up with some amazing combinations that I’d never have thought of! I wish I had such a good understanding of how flavours work together, like you, Spice Girl and Pete seem to! :)
I will follow a recipe if I am baking, I am more like Pete when it is cooking,
Good on you, Norma, I wish I could be more like that! :)
I don’t cook at all like Pete.. my nose is always glued to the recipe book!! I am becoming a tiny bit more like that because of reading your recipes and blogs.. it’s inspiring me to take a few more risks..
ps I thought I’d worked out the email comment notifier glitch.. but now I don’t think I’m getting anyone’s newest posts by email. I’m so frustrated!!!!
Smidge, you don’t give yourself enough credit, I think your recipes are always so creative! :)