Recipe Flexibility Quotes

For me, it's the unexpected and surprising combinations of produce that are the most exciting and lure me into the kitchen for a little bit of experimenting. Apples and sweet potatoes together? Who knew? Carrots with grapes? Okay. I may not be Julia Child, but I can do pretty well with a simple recipe and a lot of enthusiasm.

Baking is too precise for me. I cook with a pinch of this or that.

I write in freehand equivalents because measuring, to me, takes away from the creative process of cooking. Two turns of the pan with EVOO is about two tablespoons.

What strikes me, the more I cook, is that the best recipes are ones where the basic anatomy is so sound it will survive multiple adjustments. When a recipe has good bones, you can change the seasoning, double the garlic, swap lime for lemon, and it still turns out delicious.

No matter what the recipe, any baker can do wonders in the kitchen with some good ingredients and an upbeat attitude!

A cookery book should be there for inspiration. Recipes should be a guideline, and they shouldn't be cast in stone.

If you learn a recipe, you can cook the recipe. If you learn the technique, you can cook anything.

Omit and substitute! That's how recipes should be written. Please don't ever get so hung up on published recipes that you forget that you can omit and substitute.

Correct the seasoning' - how that time-tested direction stimulates the born cook!

I'm really a scientist. I follow recipes exactly - until I decide not to. And then I'll follow something else exactly. I may decide I could turn this peach tart into a plum tart, but if I'm following a recipe, I follow it exactly.

A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

You may say, "Oh, no. You can't touch a traditional recipe." But we ask: why can't you? Back in 1350, a vinaigrette was a stew, so we ask, why not? This can be applied to any kind of cooking, and that's the shocking part of it. It kind of bends all the traditions. It's a good thing.

One of the things I've found now, not just for television, but in the restaurant, is that you have many anxious chefs, who know how to cook twenty recipes really well, but they don't have a good foundation for other things.

Well, cooking starts with shopping. If the ingredients are not good, you don't do it. Just change your mind and do something else.

A recipe is not an exact formula, but it does need a certain structure. When the bones are right, you can dress it in many ways.

You can add things to savoury dishes as you cook, but sweet dishes are more challenging.

Seventy percent store-bought, ready-made plus 30 percent fresh allows you to take 100 percent of the credit.

I know pastry chefs who are overwhelmed by the idea of tasting, rather than measuring, their way to a balanced vinaigrette.

I'm a decent cook, and I will try to cook anything. My only weakness is that I don't know servings - I only know how to make a lot.

I'm a very improvisational cook. I sort of like to make things up as I go along. I'm quite creative in the kitchen.

In a way, the more techniques you apply, the less important the ingredients are. It shouldn't be that way, but you can get away with it. But if you're highlighting this astounding artichoke, it's got to be an astounding artichoke.

Once you know the fundamentals of cooking, then you don't need to follow a recipe - you just know what herbs go well or what meats, or what combination of what goes together, and then you can just branch out from there. But if there's something specific that I want to make, I work on the recipe and tweak it to my own.

I appreciate recipes that tell you what can be changed and what must remain fixed. 'The Zuni Cafe Cookbook' by the late Judy Rodgers is superb at this.

If you consider each individual tin as just the building block for a larger recipe, it doesn't really make much difference whether it comes from a tin, or whether it's fresh because it's just being used in a lot of other things.