Ian has bought me a book of recipes based on Medieval manuscripts. I have only glanced at it as little bear is now quite poorly but while OH is having fish n chips tonight I can see a more exotic flavour on the horizon.
I have also acquired from my friend (ebay) a book of 1000 microwave recipes to try and reduce my dependence on the iffy gas oven. It has a few recipes for cakes (which I may try) and some steamed puddings. I quite fancy a savoury bread and butter pudding with plenty of parsley though I shall probably put in a few fragmented pieces of grilled bacon in instead of cheese.
But what I really want to know is - why can't I just follow a recipe 'as is'? Or a knitting pattern for that matter? I read through recipes and I am subconsciously substituting from the start. Fair enough when it is something like pancetta and I am probably going to use streaky bacon. The bacon instead of cheese is because OH is intolerant to cheese. I am still reeling from the knitting magazine that described a cardigan as 'only' £67 to knit - I don't want to spend that much in a year! So yarn substitutions happen, and I lengthen things and fiddle with sleeve length. And what I do to innocent scarf patterns is not fit to print.
I think it comes down partly to never, ever in my life seeing my mother ever follow a recipe or pattern 'as is'. Or, when I think about it, any of my female relatives. I had one great aunt who could fit together three or four complex Aran patterns without much in the way of notes. It has left a mark. I watched my grandmother week in week out making scones. She never, ever measured and they always, without exception, turned out beautiful. Mind you, you could have tiled floors with her pastry.
However I think it sometimes puts me off trying some more complicated things - because I don't know how to fiddle with them!
1 comment:
Yay! It's finally arrived! I'm a little annoyed with Amazon as something I ordered 6 days after I ordered your book arrived on the same day. I hope you like it though.
You're labouring under a misapprehension re: mum knowing exactly what she was doing. She did know with the basics. But this is a woman who never, to my knowledge, consumed a sauce other than gravy.
Fiddling with things that you don't know what to do with, I've learnt in the past are actually examples of running before you could walk. The great-aunt who knitted those fearsome mixed aran patterns definitely knew what she was doing. I also wish I'd had the opportunity to watch the other great-aunt make the best pastry I've ever tasted in a coal range. I have no idea how she did it.
I don't remember Gran's pastry - that's probably the reason why! I did laugh when I read that bit.
Darling Uncle likes to fiddle with recipes. Personally, I like to make a recipe by the book first, and then fiddle with it afterwards. It helps.
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