Just like others read news or magazine articles I read recipes. At the age of 15 I was paging through the paper clips and handwritten recipes in my mother’s cooking journal and then boldly clipping my own find. Inspired I would set my mind to cook a fruit tart only to find out that brown sugar was unobtainable exotic item in a small Russian town in mid 90s. This recreational recipe reading, urge to cook and pressure to substitute have taught not to depend on recipes and more often than not cook without a recipe as such. And I am sure everyone can with these simple tips.
Still when I cook a new dish I look up at least 4-5 different recipes to understand different takes on the dish. Ex-consultant in me always looks for available expertise but stays critical towards it. So after reading a few recipes I get a sense of proportions and process and then head out to the kitchen. With such research and a few fine-tunings on the way I am able to cook almost anything without a recipe. Here are my tips.
1. Don’t look for recipes, look for ideas!
Two years ago when I make making my first steps in Turkish cooking and was still very much recipe-dependent I was struggling to find reliable Turkish recipes. Turkish recipes in the non-Turkish sources are largely based on replacements which I did not need as I live in Turkey and Turkish recipes are often times so high-level that too much is left to your imagination. It was later when I understood that people in Turkey may not necessarily be looking for very specific recipes. Because if you either already have it from your mom or you call her in the moment of great need. So why Turks buy culinary books and cook magazines still?
My mother-in-law could write a series of Turkish cook books herself (and I do hope she will do one day) but still she buys anything she can - 3-5 cook magazines monthly, every possible cookbook she finds plus she is watching TV cooking shows too. Why? She is looking for additional ideas and inspirations and sometimes for the proof her recipe is way more superior than anything else written and said.
Which a bit more technology at my service I am like her. Unless I come across a really good recipe of a classic from a reliable source which I will immediately add into my Plan to Eat, online recipe database, most of the time I simply clip interesting recipes into my Pinterest so that they become my reminder to cook a particular dish and an inspiration on how to approach cooking it.
2. Cook, cook, and cook
Cooking is a skill honed by practice. As I cooked a new recipe every day when living in Norway and I am cooking for a crowd now I am learning a tremendous lot of things. Quantity in cooking turns into quality if you are consciously working on that. I document all my attempts with notes of how I can improve next time.
Take Turkish cooking traditions which only little rely on formal knowledge such as recipe. Because traditionally Turkish women have been cooking daily and for not particularly small families. In that case even you hate to be at the kitchen you will develop certain confidence and shortcuts that would replace recipes.
Start somewhere, with the simple dishes you like cooking and then replace or add. For instance, green lentils have the texture and taste of minced beef so it’s perfect based for nutritious meatless dish. In a popular Turkish dish of stuffed eggplant I use green lentils much to the surprise and apparently satisfaction of my eaters here.
3. Know your ingredients
Because those who write recipes don’t. Honestly, I can’t be sure you have access to roasted pepper paste, a commodity for Turkish cook, and I don’t know if the plums are right now in season for you as they are for us, and then I have no idea if your olive oil is the same as mine. And ingredients determine a good deal in the final dish.
For instance, in time I have learned that bread is not a bread is not a bread. Once I cooked a soup of roasted vegetables and stale bread. I saw the dish on a food TV shows and got very convinced this is my type of food. I roasted what I had - eggplant, zucchini, tomato, onion and garlic. and I then turned stale bread into the croutons with olive oil and dry thyme. I combined the roasted vegetables with the croutons only to find out that my croutons absorbed the liquid, softened and expanded five-folds. My supposingly elegant and very Italian soup looked like the dog food we are fixing every day with the leftovers from the kitchen. This is how I have learned that Turkish bread is so light and airy that even when dried it does not work for the soup calling for a good dense sour-dough loaf. It is good to think ahead how each particular ingredient behaves and use if accordingly.
I have always been cooking with what’s available, what grows in the area and what’s seasonal. You will never sell me a strawberry cake in winter because I believe that it will never beat a good pumpkin pie at that time of the year. I recommend anyone take this philosophy close to their hearts, study available ingredients and learn thoughtful (!) replacing.
4. Taste as you cook
As I started giving cooking classes and working at the kitchen in our countryside restaurant I have discovered a shocking fact: most people don’t taste their food as they cook. You may be trusting the particular source your recipe originates from or your own routine but you must taste your dish a few times as you are cooking it. Because this is how you can learn trusting your judgment about quantities and cook without a recipe at all.
When I cook for a crowd I find it too complex to think how I am going to quadruple a particular recipe because often times simple math does not work in cooking. So I would trust my judgement and taste the dish many times adding more of a particular ingredient or watering it down, cooking longer an so on.
And then the whole flavoring business is so relative. Turks love way more salty and hotter dishes than most of us do so how can you be sure Turkish style seasoning is right for you without tasting? If not trusting your tastebuds educate yourself by tasting dish after adding each seasoning - that way you can learn how particular one contributes to the flavor of the dish and become more confident in using them.
5. Study technique
When I first came to stay with my mother-in-law (Zeliha Hanım for me back then) I had a notepad by my side and was documenting every step of her. It was a useful exercise to get the base Turkish recipes I still refer to. But what appeared more important is to learn basic preparation methods.
Techniques are often times that intangible bit of knowledge that they omit in the Turkish recipes. Something you have to witness yourself to understand. And I believe that each dish has that technique element critical for the success of the dish. It can be as basic as mixing dry and wet baking ingredients separately and then combining them gently for the perfect texture in a cake or more complex like deboning anchovy.
When it comes to Turkish dishes I ask a woman in our family to show me the making and if the dish is foreign I go on youtube and find a person (usually a couple of them) showing the technique. When I travel I love taking cooking classes or even informally sneak into the local kitchens to learn a trick or two which otherwise are hard to get from cookbooks. Seeing and experiencing is more important that the recipe.
So I hope as you read the recipes on this blog - past and forthcoming - you will get inspired enough to go to your kitchen and create dishes in your own way - the one that no recipe can fully capture.
