On Recipes

what I am cooking and what's cooking inside my mind

For some reason, over the last week I’ve been very intentional about cooking from recipes.

I made this NYT Cooking tofu-noodle-bok choy sheet pan bake on Wednesday:

On Thursday, I made fried walleye, corn cakes, and wild greens pesto from Sean Sherman’s Indigenous Kitchen:

Friday we ate with friends and I didn’t take a photo of the chocolate ice cream I made, which was delicious but I took it a step further on Saturday with this egg-based no-churn version. (I had a quart of heavy cream to use up, okay? Lol.)

Saturday I was back to NYT Cooking with this easy salmon, broccoli, and soba noodle salad that we spontaneously shared with friends:

And I’d bought a discounted brisket the other day, so tonights late-evening dinner was Smitten Kitchen’s classic brisket and roasted vegetable coins (and yes I know I didn’t cut the brisket up right, but it had been a Long Day, lol).

Oh, and a week ago I made some delish chicken tortilla soup, not exactly from a recipe but with some, ah, recipe influences, but nevertheless intentional and pretty:

I’ve been curious about this sudden determination to make something for dinner beyond our standards of tacos, lentils, burgers, etc.

One reason I can have any energy behind this is my oldest child, despite having all of his food allergies, is an increasingly adventurous eater who really likes flavorful and “interesting” things. It’s hard to motivate myself to make something delicious and beautiful that I’m not going to share, so having another person in the household who will actually eat what I serve is rather exciting!

Of course with the younger kids, it’s more of a try-a-bite, and here’s-your-quesadilla-on-the-side type of thing, but I’m hopeful they’ll grow into it. The current “Omie” bento box fad at the elementary school (and the kids’ subsequent sacrificing of their allowances to purchase them) seems to be prompting them to expand their palate a bit.

Thank you, I guess, to those folks creating YouTube content of thematic lunch-packing?

I also find myself channeling my deal-finding, Facebook-marketplace-expert ways when I find a bargain and then shape a meal around it. Two walleye packets marked down by $2 each? Time to break out the Sean Sherman! A whole chicken given to me by a friend? Some sort of soup that will use it all and then provide a nice carcass for additional stock!

Of course, even though the salmon was on sale, I spent $8 on a tub of miso paste. 🤪Sometimes it’s more about the fact of the bargain than the total money saved…and I am sure that miso paste will inspire me to follow yet another recipe!

Of course, I am comfortable with and enjoy cooking without a recipe. Not only does that satisfy a creative urge, but it also gives that brain-chemical-stimulation that comes with wondering — will it work? And most of the time it does, because I’ve done it so much.

Both my oldest and I have his favorite cookie recipe memorized, but I’ll just, you know, plop in what I think is the right amount, and he’ll be aghast at my lack of measurement. If it’s too dry, you can add a little more flour, and if it’s too wet, you can add a dash of oat milk, I explain reasonably. He eats enough cookie dough that he should be able to identify the right consistency!

Maybe I’m cooking from recipes more lately because that thrill of the unknown is not actually what I need right now. Maybe when so much in my life seems tentative or unclear, my body and brain are longing to be instructed to do such-and-such for that long, combine these, and end up with that.

Maybe I also want to connect with the person who created the recipe, and the others who are also making it, because I need companionship more than I need singularity right now.

Maybe it gives me a sense of control over what seems impossibly small in a vast world of chaos and conflict, and yet is also necessary for sustaining life: what we eat.

Of course, I frequently have to modify the recipes. I didn’t have enough gluten-free ramen for the sheet pan dinner, so I substituted the rice vermicelli I did have. The salmon salad dressing called for peanut butter, but I used tahini because of allergies.

And maybe this is also why I’ve wanted the challenge of recipes this past week: I like the truth of knowing that there isn’t a perfect way to follow what’s laid out. Following recipes also necessitates flexibility and grace, and those practices are so important for me to internalize as I struggle to know the “right” thing to do.

Food and feeding people is holy and sacred work. It can be mundane, like the minimalistic ground-beef tacos we have most weeks, or it can be special and beautiful, like some of these recipes from the last week.

In the kitchen, we find a microcosm of whatever it is we need to be practicing at this point in our lives — letting go, paying attention, following instructions, pushing limits, trusting ourselves, sharing with others, etc.

And in the kitchen, we find a macrocosm of the essentials of life: physical nourishment, connection with creation, beauty, and breaking bread together.