What's in a Recipe?

When I was growing up, we had the Edmonds  'Sure to Rise' Cookbook and another Cordon Bleu one that Mum wheeled out for special occasions, I think Alison Holst and Delia Smith made entrances occasionally, but the majority of the time, we relied on the Bible, you know the one, it's full of Grandma's writings, Mums adaptations, Aunties' contributions, the occasional 'family secret' recipe shared from a friend: " Oh you simply MUST give me that recipe!"

These days, everyone is a chef, you can go on telly and prove how amazingly creative you are under pressure (and be yelled at by mean chefs if that's your thing), or you can start a blog just because you like food, there are no rules really. Whereas once upon a time we sat fixated on Julia Child once a week, there is now an entire channel devoted to cooking shows.  With that much competition it's a real challenge to come up with unique food offerings. Instead of 2 or 3 cookbooks, you're likely to have dozens, and you may have stopped buying them because you can easily jump on the iPad and voila- there's dinner! Sauce wipes off an iPad too.

This got me to thinking, how do we 'own' a recipe? The answer is of course, we don't. You are free to take my recipes and play with them, tweak them, personalise them, and pop them in your own kitchen bible. It's just food, and people are creative with food in their own way.

The chef I've trained with in the last couple of years makes up a recipe after much thought and then as he's making it, suddenly decides it might be good to add a little X, I like that, it appeals to the way I think. I've never been a recipe follower. I'm far more about a slap of this and a dash of that, taste and see. I must say this works very well in Raw cuisine because you know right now how it will taste, no waiting to see what happens in the oven,  so it's easy peasy to make adjustments.

That said, there have been many influencers of my raw cooking palate over the last 10 years. My first was Chef Juliano, I spent $100 (yes $100!) on his (un)cook book having had it shipped in by a specialty book store, I devoured it and spent 3 days in his restaurant in LA scoffing everything he created, it was magical. That book is full of post it notes and stains. Since then there have been numerous others and in another post, I'll share my favourite books in detail.

What I've learned looking at the way raw chefs operate, is that there are a gazillion raw materials you can choose from in the plant world and myriad uses of them, but often we come back to familiar combinations. Take sauces for example, it's a rare chef that doesn't use cashews to make a creamy cheese sauce for example, just like a cordon blue chef would generally make a roux the same way as his counterpart. So there are some basic aspects of raw cuisine that are repeatable, and some basic rules like 'coconut oil will set your cheesecake', that stand firm, you just get to colour in around the edges.

Some recipes might have once been inspired by another chef, but have since become my own versions on a similar theme, because I found things I liked to use better, flavour combinations that I felt tasted better and substitution of ingredients I couldn't get.

Many more are born of practice. For example, I'm working on one right now and I'm up to version 4. It involves chocolate so I don't mind the practice, this is the true grind of creating something new from scratch, it is a bit of trial and error, but that's how we break boundaries and come up with something really special!

Often times, I might just have a craving. Macaroni Cheese was born that way. I just needed that familiar flavour and texture and played and played till it hit the spot.

So, enjoy my creations, mess with them, make your own versions:  if I'm ever passing on a first hand recipe from someone else, I'll be sure to mention that, but right now, my arsenal is choc full of reworks and re thinks: all I know is that the last version tasted good enough to share!

A work in progress!