recipe boycott
June 26, 2008
If you like this recipe, I am sure you will love these related recipes!
On Tuesday afternoon I sat encircled by my go-to cook books: “The Art of Simple Food,”“Moosewood Restaurant Lowfat Favorites,”“Vegetable Harvest,”and a few others. I was planning my trip to the farmer' s market, scouring lists of ingredients and directions, hoping for the perfect meal to emerge from the pages. But even as I revisited these tried and true, I felt under-whelmed: every recipe I saw had some ingredient I didn' t feel like finding, or some technique or time requirement I didn' t feel like abiding. What if I wanted something with eggplant and squash and onions that didn' t require Parmiagiano-Reggiano or a mandoline? What if I wanted asparagus and fiddlehead ferns but not mixed into a rich risotto? I turned more than 700 pages looking for the perfect combinations to appear. Nothing. In the 
early stages of my culinary experimentation, this would have made me feel like a failure. 
There is something subliminally dispiriting about directions. Sure, it works against me every time I try to put together Ikea furniture without the instructions, but food is another story. Especially when it comes to non-baked goods, which can really be dictated by intuition in lieu of chemistry. Somehow, I feel like recipes keep me from fully experiencing food. The imposed restraints hold me back from following the sensibilities of my nose, knife and gut. Still, I felt obliged to support the farmers who had worked so hard to harvest produce this week. At the market, I was seduced by all of my favorite June vegetables: their lumpy shapes, their warts and bright colors. Haphazardly, I threw whatever tickled my 
fancy into my old brown bag, yet unsure of what they would become. When I got home, I ordered take out, still stung by the cookbook roadblock I' d faced a few hours before. I wasn' t ready to deal with the mass of raw eggplant, orange peppers, cauliflower, tomatoes, basil, mint, eggs and cucumber I' d procured, seemingly without a purpose. The next day, still discouraged, I got all of my eats from random sources—eggs at a coffee shop, salad from the grocery store, a bag of nuts and dried fruit from yet another coffee shop… lots of coffee. I felt thoroughly unsatisfied. All of my food had been outsourced: not a bite of my own doing, despite the many ingredients dormant in my crisper drawer. But still, I thought, “At home, there' s nothing to eat.â€�
Have you ever had this feeling? Absolute discouragement at the prospects of what' s in your kitchen? The sense that there' s nothing to eat, even when an abundance of items lines the shelves and drawers of the refrigerator or pantry? I have this feeling a lot.
And cookbooks are to blame. Cooking should be an experience unique to each person—just as appetites and food preferences are. What if we can' t find a recipe to encompass the complexity and dynamics of our palate? Does that mean we should order take out, because we know the pizza will deliver those same reliable flavors? In my experience, recipes can be quite limiting: I think if I put something in that doesn' t belong or leave something else out, I won' t measure up to the standards of the author. I' m revolting against recipes. For the rest of the summer, I will use them only as inspiration for some combinations of foods, but for nothing else.
Until I need to make a proper Béarnaise sauce or soufflé, I am abandoning anything that puts a limit on my interaction and relationship with food. When I decided that, it suddenly became obvious what all of my ingredients needed: the vegetables yearned to be roasted with olive oil and sautéed shallots and herbs, and the cauliflower, basil, mint, pine nuts, avocado and cucumber I had lying about were hoping to
meet the blender and a soup bowl. All I did was steam the cauliflower, let it cool and throw all of my ingredients into a blender with a diced super-hot pepper. It was one of the most pleasing chilled soups I' ve ever had: thick and creamy and light all at once. Now my refrigerator is
stuffed with things I cannot wait to eat, and all it took was a blender, a broiler and a bit of confidence in my own tastes. I want to love food for what it is–a complement to my appetite and cooking. After all, I know what I want. Why shouldn' t I have it?
