Charmed Life
I love books, actual books. My father-in-law generously offered to buy me a Kindle for Christmas this year, and I declined, even as my husband accepted and now waits with bated breath for his. So it feels a bit treasonous for me to say that in the past year or so, I have divested myself of almost all of my cookbooks, and now do almost all of my recipe hunting and—more importantly—my cooking-inspired research online.
Sure, I love the convenience of being able to pull up a recipe on my IPhone (Big Oven app is great) or on the old laptop I keep in the kitchen for just that purpose. They take up a helluva less room than a bunch of books. But that’s not the biggest advantage of online recipe sites for me, not by a long shot. The reason I love the online sites is because I love reading the comments from reviewers.
Now, I’m a big fan of the reviewers on Amazon, and often use them to guide my purchases. But what one finds on recipe sites is something altogether better: one finds a true picture of how people actually cook in America. And it’s a picture that probably horrifies the typical cookbook author because, well, the truth is that most people are not following recipe instructions to a tee. They’re using recipes as a starting point or model and adding/subtracting/modifying/completely transforming to their heart’s content. Until I started reading online recipe reviews I thought I was alone. Now I have found my people, the folks who say things like, “I used chopped tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes, because that’s all I had.” Or, “I added chopped mushrooms to this dish because I had some I needed to use up.” Or, “I made this without the butter and cream, and it still tasted great!”
Case in point: this weekend I googled cauliflower leek soup because I had some leeks that needed to be used up (they were about 2 weeks old and getting a bit slimy!) and my husband came home from the market with 3 heads of cauliflower on Saturday (fyi: that’s a TON of cauliflower!). I clicked on this and saw right away that it was a standard blended vegetable soup recipe (saute leeks and garlic; add veges; add broth; simmer; blend with an immersion blender). And then I started reading the reviews, most of which bore four or five stars—but only after (and only because) the reviewer had made modifications to make the soup both thicker and more flavorful.
I started out by more or less making the soup as the recipe called for (though I used a dollop of creme fraiche instead of the cream because, you guessed it, that’s what I had). When I tasted the soup and found it under-flavored, I knew exactly what to do, thanks to a reviewer named “Matthew F”: I added coriander and garam masala and a pinch of cayenne. And voila—my soup suddenly rocked, a collaborative effort of a recipe creator named “DRUMNWRITE,” a reviewer named “Matthew F” and me!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/08/09 at 10:46 AM
