Recipes and Non-Recipes

Many years ago, while a college student, I rented a room in a big old house near campus. My housemates there included a young man from China. (He was a great guy. I took him to my family's Thanksgiving dinner, where his sweet nature evaporated our usual "humor" of trading insults back and forth. Best Thanksgiving ever.)

One day, my friend asked me to teach him how to make a sandwich. I was completely baffled (and thus, I fear, completely unhelpful). In more than twenty years of sandwich making, I had never once considered sandwich construction in a way that allowed me to convey anything useful to my friend. I just knew how.

In my pursuit of good food that I don't have to think about, I have come to really love recipes that aren't really recipes at all, but more like approaches. If I want a sandwich, I don't grab a cookbook, I just get some bread and see what I've got to put in it.

In February 2011, I began experimenting with frittatas, which are a sort of no-fuss omelet that (in this version) are started on the stove top and finished in the oven. (I wrote about them here.) I've made six or eight of these now, and no longer consult a recipe, because the recipe is just some eggs, some cheese, and whatever I want to put in it. Sure, there are limits to that whatever (such that it needs to either be cooked before it goes in or small enough to cook really fast), but I'm comfortable with what those are. Last night, in my need to produce something actually tasty after a day of iffy results, I threw together a frittata with shallots (because I had some I needed to use), some reconstituted dried shitake mushrooms (because I'm on a kick for them and like to use the soaking liquid for other things, and goat cheese (because it sounded good). It was tasty, though the goat cheese disappeared: I may have to look at a couple of recipes.

Twice, now, I've made a simplified paella that (again) starts on the stove top and finishes in the oven. It has struck me that just leaving out the saffron produces a pilaf, and opens a world of possibilities. Once I've learned the rice and liquid amounts (or written them on a note inside my cupboard door, there are hundreds of possible no-need-for-planning suppers.

But I'm still not sure how I'd teach someone to make a sandwich.