The Great Recipe Debate

Have you ever looked into your refrig­er­a­tor, seen a big bunch of leeks and a con­tain­er of cream and thought you ought to do some­thing with them?  So you moseyed on over to your com­put­er, typed in the search box “leeks and cream recipes” and found a whole host of sug­ges­tions.  From a whole host of sources, in fact, which in turn rep­re­sent a whole host of cooks, who’ve con­tributed their recipes to these vast com­pen­dia, online.  And did you find a recipe that you want­ed to try?

Have you, on the oth­er hand, ever sat down in a com­fort­able chair with a cook­book, or even a mem­oir by a cook­ery writer, and read beyond all the time you real­ly had to spare, dog-ear­ing pages that con­tained recipes you were tempt­ed to try?

Well, I’ve done both.  Many times, both.  So I’m intrigued by the debate cur­rent­ly pop­ping up around Face­book and oth­er places I dart around on the inter­net: is there any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for online recipe data­bas­es, or should we all be root­ed firm­ly in the cook­book tra­di­tion?  One chef I like a lot, Clif­ford A. Wright, has come down firm­ly on the side of cook­books, call­ing inter­net recipe trawl­ing noth­ing more than “cook­ing by num­bers,” insist­ing that if you want to become a bet­ter cook, you need to read real books, writ­ten by real peo­ple and, impor­tant­ly pub­lished by real publishers.

What’s the point, he asks, of look­ing up “lemon cake” for exam­ple on an inter­net search, and com­ing up with a recipe by (I’m para­phras­ing here) Bet­ty, hand­ed to her by her friend Louisa?  Who is Bet­ty, any­way, much less who is Louise, and why should we care about their recipes for lemon cake?  Have these ladies any bona fides, after all?

Wright insists that the bat­tle toward good cook­ing is to be won by read­ing and learn­ing from advice from tried and true sources, tak­en in con­text.  Mar­cel­la Haz­an, for exam­ple, doyenne of Ital­ian cook­ery, just look at the cook­books she has to her name, the pub­lished his­to­ry, the famed rep­u­ta­tion.  Any­thing Mar­cel­la tells us has weight, believ­abil­i­ty, and CON­TEXT.  We know some­thing about the recipe just because Mar­cel­la has giv­en it to us.

Bet­ty and Louise?  Some­where in Wis­con­sin?  Not so much.

I think there is room for both, as far as inspi­ra­tion, direc­tion and just plain recipes go.  Let me explain.

Clear­ly I have no trou­ble col­lect­ing cook­books.  When I first start­ed cook­ing, and buy­ing cook­books, a quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry ago, I looked for titles like “The Essen­tials of Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook­ing,” or “Mrs Chi­ang’s Szech­wan Cook­ing” (actu­al­ly both of these were gifts from my adored moth­er in law!) or “The Break­fast Book,” by Mar­i­on Cun­ning­ham, a book that I read avid­ly, dog-ear­ing near­ly every oth­er page.  In short, I was an igno­rant begin­ner, and I need­ed as many clas­sic sets of instruc­tions as pos­si­ble.  Olive oil for Ital­ian cook­ing, peanut oil for Szech­wan, rose­mary for Ital­ian, soy sauce for Szech­wan, gar­lic for both, pas­ta beyond spaghet­ti and mac­a­roni, Chi­nese food that involved chop­ping and stir-fry­ing, rather than pick­ing up the phone.  And break­fast!  Every­body needs a basic muf­fin recipe, and a way to make hol­landaise in a blender, not a dou­ble boil­er.  Basics.  Inspi­ra­tional basics.

The longer I cooked, the more con­fi­dent I felt in my own opin­ions.  And the more I got inter­est­ed in the life sto­ries of the cook­ery writ­ers I liked.  As nec­es­sary as I found the recipe for Lau­rie Col­win’s beef stew, as a new­ly­wed, even more sus­tain­ing was her com­men­tary on “Alone in the Kitchen With An Egg­plant,” her mus­ings about how much she hat­ed Thanks­giv­ing stuff­ing and why, until she thought of one with Ital­ian sausage and heavy cream… her mem­o­ries of the worst hang­over of her life and how much it was helped by toast and lemonade.

In short, I love cook­books.  I read them like fic­tion.  I find hun­dreds of recipes I want to cook, I mark all the pages, I day­dream and am inspired, and then… I read anoth­er.  They enrich my life, their spines smile gen­tly at me from my book­shelves when I have an idle moment, mem­o­ries come back.  That sto­ry about a whole beef filet, on New Year’s Day, with the tar­ragon mus­tard sauce… must make that again, and what about Orlan­do’s straw pota­toes cooked in hot goose fat?  How I love Orlan­do, how his writ­ing work­shop changed my life… Avery loves those potatoes.

That is an irre­place­able part of my life, that shelf full of cookbooks.

Now then.  What about those leeks and cream in your fridge?  What to do with them?  Or the big plate of pears your neigh­bor Char­lotte brought over, picked from her own back gar­den tree?

There is noth­ing eas­i­er than to run to the com­put­er, type in “leeks and cream recipes” and decide to try a tart, adding some diced ham and a bit of fresh thyme you hap­pen to have sit­ting in a glass on your counter.  Or how about a hot soup, or cold vichys­soise?  All won­der­ful ideas.  Pear tart, pear and apple­sauce, pear sal­ad with gor­gonzo­la and rock­et?  Great ideas, to be found by typ­ing in “pear recipes.”  But pos­si­bly not one cook­book on your shelf would have recipes for them.  You want­ed laser-guid­ed research for this one.

Or a left­over brisket stares you in the face.  Could­n’t you make corned-beef hash of that, you think.  What else is IN corned-beef hash, any­way, you won­der?  Run to google, find sev­er­al hun­dred recipes, all of which assure you: onions and pota­toes and a life­time sup­ply of but­ter. Done.

Of course, you don’t get any sense of the life his­to­ry of the author of Recipe Num­ber 101 for leek tart.  You don’t know if the corned-beef hash lady with the nicest pho­to­graph of her dish is Eng­lish, or Amer­i­can or French.  You just like her pho­to and the basics of her instruc­tions.  So be it.  As Audrey Hep­burn said in “Cha­rade,” “I don’t have room in my life for anoth­er friend.  In order for me to make a new friend, a friend I have now would have to die.”  Some­times you just want a recipe.

I pro­posed this debate — to find recipes online or not, that is the ques­tion- to my long-suf­fer­ing hus­band and recipe guinea pig, John.  And he imme­di­ate­ly con­firmed what I thought.  (So con­ve­nient, that trait, in a hus­band).  Both online and on-book­shelf are com­plete­ly nec­es­sary.  What you lose in the online search, he says, is sim­ple.  “There’s no acci­den­tal dis­cov­ery.”  Look­ing for corned-beef hash, you won’t acci­den­tal­ly come upon cas­soulet, and be trans­port­ed back to Paris in all its gar­licky, bean-laden glo­ry.  You’ll find corned-beef hash.

It’s the old debate between the mer­its of Amazon.com, and the mer­its of Daunt Books in the Maryle­bone High Street.  You go to Amazon.com when you want the lat­est in the Don­na Leon mys­tery series set in Venice.  There it is, you buy it.  Corned-beef hash all over again.  But if you don’t know WHAT you want, you just know you haven’t any­thing to read, you go to Daunt, and browse.  You turn from Agatha Christie to Stephen Fry to street guides of Moroc­co to the Man Book­er Prize short­list.  You are inspired.

You could make cas­soulet after all.

So I am pleased that I don’t have to choose between allrecipes.com and “The Clat­ter of Forks and Spoons” by Richard Cor­ri­g­an, that sex­i­est of all port­ly Irish chefs.  I can look up the pro­por­tion of flour to yeast online when I want to make piz­za, and accom­plish that in 30 sec­onds, no dis­trac­tions.  And when I want to read about Dublin bay prawns and be lured into a recipe for a creamy crab tart with goats cheese, I can cozy up with Richard and be transported.

Isn’t it nice to have both.

And for a com­plete diver­sion, don’t for­get that most spon­ta­neous way to find a recipe.  It’s on that plate of sal­ad you had for lunch, at your local deli, and in your taste­buds and taste mem­o­ries and the inspi­ra­tion of your life’s cook­ing.  Taste, be inspired, and cook.

Chick­pea and Cour­gette Sal­ad with Mint, Chill­ies and Goats Cheese

(serves 4 as a side dish)

2 soup-size tins chick­peas, drained

1 large cour­gette (zuc­chi­ni), inner seedy core dis­card­ed, and the cour­gette diced

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

8 leaves mint, minced fine

hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, minced fine

1/2 red onion, diced

juice of 1 lemon

LOTS of olive oil, per­haps 1/3 cup

sea salt to taste, fresh ground black pepper

sprin­kling of minced hot red chillies

100 grams goats cheese, crumbled

In a big, shal­low bowl, mix every­thing but the goats cheese very well, stir­ring as you add ingre­di­ents, let­ting stand a bit.  Just before serv­ing, sprin­kle on goats cheese and mix gently.