A home kitchen elicits memories of family. It conjures up parents and siblings congregating around the kitchen table, of delectable aromas wafting from the stovetop pots and pans, of fuzzy feelings of comfort and stability.
My home kitchen has never been the most aesthetically pleasing. Our silverware drawer is a mess and the paint is chipping off the walls. But I am now more comfortable there than ever before, familiar with every crack in the kitchen floor and every pan In the cupboard. I know which drawers in the fridge are harder to open and where my mother puts spices and sugar.
I got into cooking and baking almost two years ago, when I started obsessively watching Food Network and Laura Vitale’s Youtube videos. I learned macaroon techniques and read up on herbs. I’m still mediocre at cooking, and my baked goods always turn out ugly even if they taste fine, but I’m glad to know that from it all I’ve become best friends with my kitchen.
Last winter, I baked for the first time without without a recipe. This summer, I cooked without one.
Both experiences were exhilarating.
This was quite a difference from when I first started cooking and baking, when I’d stick to the recipe religiously. Even if I didn’t have parsley, then too bad, I wasn’t making the dish. As I progressed, sometimes I would branch off a bit from the directions, yet the mindset as a whole was still unchanged.
But with experience comes more confidence, and thus more bravery. I understood the most basic components of what tasted good together, how much of an ingredient to use, the essentials of cake-making. My curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to create, on my own. I wanted to explore the vast arrays of taste upon my palate without limitations.
Cooking and baking without recipes were different in execution but same in my rejoice afterwards. As is often noted, baking is a science, involving chemical reactions of flour and water and eggs and heat, so it is essential to have precise measurements and follow orthodox procedures (don’t overmix!). It is mandatory to understand the chemistry before creativity can blossom. On the other hand, though it too involves its scientific components, cooking is an art. Improvisation is a lot easier. Chefs need not think too thoroughly about the scientific characteristics of each and every ingredient. But in both, once technique is mastered, stylistic choices shine through the presentation, taste and unique flair of the dishes.
The first time I baked without a recipe in my hand was with a friend, also a baking fanatic, at her house. We’d already made some with-recipe cupcakes, but we wanted to make a cake on our own. Thus, we pulled out the essentials--flour, oil, eggs, sugar, butter, milk, vanilla. To flavor the cake, we pulled out coffee, cocoa powder, cinnamon and vanilla extract.
Before we began to concoct the batter, I was sure to get the ingredient proportions correct. I’d remembered an article I’d read recently about them in cakes and confirmed ours were fine. And I wanted it to taste good, of course. Since butter lends cakes supreme flavor, and oil makes them moist, I utilized both fats.
Delirious with excitement and itching to add unique touches, we whipped up a coffee frosting. We also placed Hershey’s kisses throughout the batter, which we poured into a ramekin and placed into the oven.
After it was cooked through and we pulled it out, dolloping the frosting on top, we dug into the cake, not waiting for it to cool. I was proud of the two of us—it was tender and moist and warm still in our mouths, with a coffee-cinnamon flavor and a subtle hint of cocoa, complemented perfectly by the frosting.
I’m pretty sure I felt cocky for the rest of the night.
The first time I cooked without a recipe was after I was trying to look up a dish to prepare for dinner, but I couldn’t find anything I really desired to eat. Cooking was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it? I decided to try and pull something together myself--that would be fun, perhaps.
Peering into the fridge at our ingredients, I saw leftover rice. Okra, baby carrots, eggplant and tomatoes sat in the vegetable drawer, ground beef in the freezer. (Yes, a tomato is a vegetable. I dare you to challenge me.)
I determined to use all of them. I roasted the tomatoes, eggplants and okra with different flavorings and cooked the carrots on the stovetop with a bit of sesame oil for a few minutes, so that they would retain a bit of their crunch. After the vegetables were cooked and the beef thawed, I heated sesame oil and cumin on the stove, then cooked the beef in it and seasoned it more. Then, I stirred in the rice and vegetables with more cumin and a bit of chili powder.
After the fried rice dish was adequately toasted and mixed evenly, I turned off the heat. As a finishing touch, I grabbed a jar of marinara sauce and poured a bit in, then mixed it through, wondering whether it would disgustingly ruin everything. It didn’t. The tomato flavor worked with the cumin, beef and vegetables, pulling everything together.
My parents weren’t too impressed and consumed some of the leftover food, but my siblings wanted to try my dish and scarfed down their portions. I liked it, too. As I ate, I noted what components I could have tweaked--the pasta sauce was good, but I could have added less.
While eating its leftovers the next day, an idea sparked. Remembering Korean bibimbap and the fried egg traditionally served with it, I fried an egg on the stovetop so that it had crisp edges on the whites, but still a runny yolk. I placed it on the warmed rice before me, then smashed the egg with my fork, piercing the yolk so that it ran everywhere and breaking the white into bits. I stirred it through the bowl and chewed a spoonful. The yolk infused a pleasant but not overpowering richness, and the pieces of the whites served as an additional, delicious component interspersed through it.
I felt cocky again for the rest of the day.
In both of these experiences, I had so much more fun that I had ever had while following a recipe (which to me, was already a delightful undertaking). It does involve more thought and heart to invest into the dish, but the rejoice afterwards is an experience unmatched. And, especially for baking, it does require at least some basic knowledge of food and technique, at least some experience. But once these rules are established, your dish, once a blank slate onto which you can uninhibitedly paint flavor and personality, bursts forth as a creative niche. Of course, not all the times may your original recipe be successful, but like everything in life, it’s our failures and the consequential questioning of our processes stemming from it that allow us to correct ourselves and improve more than ever.
Hopefully, I will be able to concoct more successful desserts and dishes in the future. Hopefully I’ll be able to recreate so many of the fond, familial, food-related memories of my childhood myself. And hopefully, I won’t be forced to eat boxes of Ramen every day in college (even though Ramen is good).
