Re: Cookery Books.
Originally Posted by
AnnieS
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You must have an amazing memory Realist. I often try little tweaks with dishes but i will only remember all the details if i write them down. I have so many other things to remember for my job that my brain is creaking!
No my memory isn't any better than the average person.
Cooking is about established techniques, not volumes and quantities imo.
Take making soup. Do you need a recipe to make soup?
Nope.
Basic principles. Fry off the ingredients (usually vegetables) for flavour
Boil the vegetables
Add an appropriate source of stock
Season
Blitz with a blender stick
etc etc
Making a meat stew
Choose the right meat (shin beef, lamb shank, mutton, venison etc)
Fry off the meat first to brown surfaces and a bunch of onions
Whack in slow cooker
Add red or white wine as appropriate for the meat
Throw in vegetables like squash, parsnips, mushrooms etc
Add flavours like worcester sauce, plenty of herbs and seasoning and stock cubes
A good glug of port for richness etc
No recipe. Just same principles used throughout.
Making Spag Bol or Chilli
Fry off onions and mince
Add garlic, chopped mushrooms
Maybe some chopped courgettes
Throw in good passata or chopped tomatoes (Cirio)
The point is there are no real rules. You make dishes up as you go using what ingredients you have but following the same basic principles
Bread is no different
Mix up flour, salt, yeast and water according to how wet ro dry you want your dough
Stretch (or knead) the dough over the first 40 mins
Let dough prove anywhere from 1.5 hrs to 24 hrs depending on type of bread you want
Shape into boule or log, put in banneton or tin
Let rise again for another 30mins or so
Then bake
No rules. Just an understanding of what the various ingredients do in that whole equation.
Nobody needs a recipe to make a glass of orange juice. You instinctively know or learn that if you put too much cordial in the glass then it will taste too strong or too sweet.
Make a cup of tea and you know how much milk to put in. More milk = milky tea, less mashing = weak tea, more = stronger tea. etc etc
If you approach your cooking in this way you can create a myriad of great tasting dishes successfully without ever needing a cookery book.