SC - Romantic Foods

[Laura C Minnick]

Huette von Ahrens wrote:
> 
> in the family recipe for making ham.  One instruction
> was to cut several inches off one end of the ham.
> When
> the daughter questioned this, her mother said, "This
> is
> the way my mother always did it, and this is the way I
> have always done it."  Rather than blindly follow an
> unusual instruction, the daughter called her
> grandmother and asked her why she did this.  The
> grandmother's answer was that she didn't have a pan
> big enough to hold a whole ham, so she had had to cut
> off
> part of the ham in order to cook it.  The mother had
> blindly followed this "tradition" all those years
> without any need.

Of course, the fact that the reason given was not applicable under the
young lady's circumstances doesn't mean the advice wasn't sound under
other several other sets of circumstances, For example, one might argue
that on some hams the hock requires a different type of cooking, or
different timing, from the rest of the ham, to do it to its best advantage.
 
> However, I dislike your disdainful attitude about
> cooks who follow recipes.  I follow recipes all the
> time.  I can pretty much look at a recipe and tell
> whether or not it is a good recipe or a flawed one.
> And, yes, I
> can create many dishes without using recipes too.
> When it comes to salads, or casseroules, I rarely use
> recipes, but with things I have never made before, I
> use a recipe the first time, so I can get an inkling
> as to what the original cook intended, before I start
> tinkering with it.  Call me lazy, but I prefer not to
> reinvent the wheel when I don't have to.  And, no, I
> wouldn't blindly follow a recipe or a practice if it
> didn't make sense or wasn't correct.  I have been
> cooking for more than 40 years and received my Laurel
> for cooking [amongst other things] 20 years ago.  Just
> because I like to use recipes doesn't mean that I
> don't
> have any feel or instincts for the food I am
> preparing.

All right, I guess this simply means that you don't agree with me, which
is fine, and I do apologize if I offended with my words. However, my
attitude is not disdainful, nor did my description of being
"recipe-bound" apply to you or anyone fitting your description. You've
gone to great lengths to indicate that you were not the type of person I
was referring to, which was to people who _cannot_ cook without a
recipe, and I wasn't especially critical of them in any case, any more
than it would have been to say people without wings can't fly unaided. 

Gideanus Tacitus Adamantius Magister Lauris 
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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