I like cooking, I like eating. I read recipes, often not often enough. My late mother in law was a great cook, putting huge effort to cook the simplest soup and doing her version of following a recipe. I often helped her and always asked if she was following a recipe, the answer was usually " Yes of course" , then a pause and referring to one ingredient she would say: " they say add: ( put in any random item here that would be necessary ) , and I thought that can't be right" This regular omission of a necessary ingredient made the dish entirely her own. It usually tasted delicious. She never believed fully in any recipes, always thinking something "couldn't be right".
For my own part I am keen on soups, they are the prefect way to clear old still edible veg from the fridge, and if someone asks if it is a recipe I qualify it by saying "Take ingredients from the fridge that have seen slightly better days, fry onions, add said ingredients and hope for the best, advise admirers that it is unlikely they will ever taste the like again, that's life, live with it".
I have periods where I think that I ought to read more recipes, so I do, but I lose interest when they have the phrase a little like: seek out your nearest African Deli and see if they have any biltong ( when I typed that at first it suggested Bolton, perhaps Bolton has a biltong factory ) Biltong is a dried meat and looks like strips of sun dried roadkill. It's not readily available. Another recent one: Tiramisu, or what I call an Italian trifle without the tinned fruit. The quick recipe recommended a visit to the local Italian deli, so that's not going to be quick then is it? And to buy what? Italian Pistachio Cream. Well, I'm not aware that there are any Italian Delis within reasonable range of here, and if there were they might not have it, thus discounting the recipe completely. They had the grace to suggest that you could replace this with hazelnut chocolate spread, but then that would turn the Italian Pistachio Tiramisu into Hazlenut Chocolate Spread Goo. Not the same.
Recipes with impossible ingredients should go the way of leaf blowers. Banned.
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