No Recipe Cooking

In my book, "The No Recipe Cookbook", I state that I do not use recipes. That statement is mostly true except for baking; now I am not an Alton Brown so I do not care if the enzymes congeal with the molecules to emphasize a rapid raise...... WHATEVER, I just want it to turn out without knowing the scientific reasons! So, for baking purposes and science you must follow a recipe.

Cooking, however, should be done by taste. Anyone and everyone can follow a recipe but a no recipe cook is the master of the kitchen, they can assemble a great meal with the ingredients at hand and often manage to do it quickly, easily and without thinking too much about what seasonings to use, how much of this or that goes into a dish or what the exact temperature of the stove or oven should be. The resourcefulness and creativity required to become a no recipe cook is not as hard to learn as you may think. Learning to improvise successfully in the kitchen can be achieved by mastering a conspicuous set of principles and practices that can be applied to cooking under virtually any circumstance, from a well-equipped modern kitchen to a backyard grill. With an understanding of the nuances of different ingredients, the variances of taste of spice and herb groups and some basic cooking techniques you can expand your horizon far beyond the pages of any cookbook and into the realm of culinary adventure. The time it takes to learn the basics of no recipe cooking will be far more productive than the time taken to memorize a recipe and you will never be disconcerted when the unexpected happens in the kitchen.

The first step to becoming a no recipe cook is understanding there are food groups or categories of ingredients that can be interchanged to achieve similar effects. There are ingredients that provide texture, ingredients that provide flavor, ingredients that provide substance, ingredients that stimulate the receptors in our taste buds and ingredients that cause specific chemical reactions. Learning to become a no recipe cook does not mean you have to know the characteristics of every food but you will need to become very familiar with the ones you are most fond of and become proficient in preparing them in as many varieties as possible. For example understanding the properties of the tomato opens a world of possibilities, it can be turned into sauces, soups, or stews; sliced and served fresh with spices or dried to intensify its flavor. Lightly cooked or raw tomatoes can be pureed to thin a dish or they can be cooked and reduced to thicken. Diced into chunks they give a dish one texture and liquefied they give a dish another, so knowing the potential of an ingredient can turn a simple ingredient into dozens of cooking possibilities.

Today is a good day to start experimenting with different Herbs and Spices. Take your favorite recipe and change it with different flavorings, start slowly and taste until you find something you like. Eventually this process will get easier and will become instinctive. Remember, if it taste good in the pot it will taste good on the plate.

Gary L. Nichols is the author of "The No Recipe Cookbook" which is a how to reference book for Herbs and Spices. If you found this article useful, you can find a "look inside" at: http://www.thenorecipecookbook.com Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com