The New York Times
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
pgs D1&D2
The Story
The Summary:Recipes on the web have everyone thinking their food critics. Is this a good thing?
Cooks have always adjusted recipes, for all kinds of reasons. Perhaps they didn’t have certain ingredients on hand, so they substituted others. Perhaps they knew that a half teaspoon of cayenne would make a dish too hot for their taste, or that their families preferred chicken to fish. Perhaps they had to observe dietary restrictions. Or perhaps they simply had what they thought was a better idea.
Until recently, recipe tweaks and adaptations took place in the privacy of the kitchen. Not anymore. Cooking Web sites including epicurious.com, recipezaar.com and allrecipes.com (which had unique visitors in February 2007 of roughly 2.4 million, 2.5 million, and 5 million respectively, according to Nielsen/NetRatings) reveal that the urge for cooks to make a dish their own is widespread and passionate.
Has anyone ever made a recipe exactly as it states? Who hasn't made a tweak here and there? Isn't that what cooking's all about? Making it your own? I can't remember a time I haven't made some substitution, it might be something simple (and thrifty) like substiting fresh for dried or canned, or something more complicated, like steaks for chicken.
“Gourmet has 8 test kitchens and 11 food editors,” said Zanne Stewart, media food editor at Gourmet magazine. “Even if we think a recipe is right the first time, we cross-test it. It’s likely to go through a bare minimum of four iterations, really refining it, before it’s written up and passed along to the cross-tester. Then everyone gathers around for the discussions. Is it right? Could it be better?”
So what does Ms. Stewart think of the endless tinkering that cooks boast about on the Web? “It makes me a bit sad, considering how much work went into the original,” she said.
Again... no one makes a recipe exactly as it says. And when a recipe goes from very sophisticated tastes like the chefs and staff at Gourmet to the simpler tastes of the general public, of course they're going to want to make changes. I'm still a little weary of the idea of meat and fruit mingling together in the same dish. I'm getting better, but I like meat and veggies for a meal, and fruit for dessert or snacks. I did grow up on a farm in the midwest, the fanciest thing my mom does with fruit is put apples in her stuffing (which is delicious).
Of course, home cooks were taking charge of recipes long before the arrival of the Internet. And you didn’t need to go online to get feedback from readers.
Susan Spungen, a cookbook author and former food editor at Martha Stewart Living, said magazine readers would call her hoping she could predict how a recipe would turn out if they made substitutions.
“They want me to tell them what will happen if they replace all the butter in the cake with oil,” she said. “I always say, it might be fine, but I haven’t tested it that way, so I can’t be sure.”
Substitutions gone wrong: oh I can relate! I've substituted chicken breast tenders for drummies... they don't take as long to cook, so I ended up burning a lot of little peices of chicken. (but substituting whole breasts worked great!) I've found: the more expensive the recipe, the closer one should follow the recipe. Other times, substitutions work great (I substitute 1/2lb margrine and 1/2lb crisco with a whole pound of butter in my chocolate chip cookies, it only makes them better.)
Television has also had a role to play in bolstering the home cook’s sense of adventure.
“You see Emeril, the most genial guy in the world, making a U-turn in the middle of a recipe, and people think they should cook like that, too,” said Ms. Stewart of Gourmet. “They forget that he’s a highly trained chef.”
It is not uncommon for Web site users to describe such radical departures from an original recipe that the result is a completely different dish.
This woman from Gourmet Magazine is kind of a snob. Just becasue we didn't go to culinary school doesn't mean we're all bad cooks. I bet my grandmother could teach Emeril a thing or two... she never went to culinary school, but she does have 60 years or so of kitchen experience. My mother, on the other hand, has had horrible results when she has messed with recipes. I have a really good lasanga recipe that uses chicken and alfredo sauce (it's divine). She tried to do the same thing, but didn't drain the juice from the chicken mixture, and then added extra sauce. The result was really chunky baked alfredo soup. The taste was okay, and I got to say "I told you so," so I was kinda happy.
As tantalizing as new cuisines and exotic ingredients may be for many cooks, the lure of the familiar is still strong. Arugula, fresh halibut and Parmigiano-Reggiano have been nudging aside iceberg lettuce, frozen fish sticks and Velveeta in supermarkets throughout the country. But many cooks still want to create food that tastes familiar, even if they’re using ingredients that aren’t. So these new ingredients often turn up in recipes alongside garlic powder, Lawry’s Seasoned Salt or Wishbone salad dressing.
It's fun to experiment with new ingredients in old recipes. I've come to prefer the taste of fresh baby bella mushrooms over canned, and I use finely chopped fresh garlic in my spread for my garlic bread. A co-worker introduced me to the mix of a can each of black beans, whole kernal corn and diced tomatoes with chili peppers... I add it to everything... rice, any mexican style hotdish I might make... it's yummy, and it's good on it's own as a dip, as well.
Barbara Kafka, writer and editor of 13 cookbooks, including “Vegetable Love” (Artisan, 2005), applauds the improvisational impulse. “People should make recipes their own,” she said. “Only by doing that will they use them and enjoy them fully.”
“On the other hand,” she added, “some people think that it doesn’t make a difference” which directions you follow and which you ignore. “Laundry starch will not substitute well for cornstarch,” she said dryly.
Now, wait — does she actually know someone who did that?
Indeed she does: “My mother.”
And you can't substitute white vinegar for balsamic vinegar... white vinegar shouldn't even be consumed... it's for cleaning (or maybe canning) purposes only!
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