Some cookbooks and magazines will try to convince you that a particular recipe is perfect or ideal. I’m dubious of such claims. The old adage, to each their own, applies to cooking and baking. A few examples:
Tastes change. For years my mother and I would make a particular zucchini bread recipe every summer, which called for one cup of oil per loaf. I’ll admit that the resulting loaf was quite moist. It was also quite greasy. I haven’t made any zucchini bread in years because Julian’s averse to the vegetable; even so, I’d still be reluctant to make that recipe.
Cooking methods evolve – or not. Let’s say you developed a perfect stir-fry that required you to crank up the gas burner to 12 to get sufficient heat to the wok. A couple of years later you find yourself living in a home with an anemic electric range and no possibility of a gas hookup. (Been there, done that.) You either adapt the perfect recipe to your current situation or put it in the “someday” file. This is why it can be difficult for friends or relatives to duplicate your perfection.
Availability of ingredients. This is a big one for those of us who’ve moved cross-country more than once. Even though we have a little Mexican bodega around the corner from us, I’ve never tried to find some of the ingredients I cooked with in Dallas. And finding good salt-water fish in, say, Nebraska? Forget about it. Luckily, Seattle has plenty of Asian grocery stores where I can find the required ingredients for most of my recipes.
The next time you see a recipe being touted as perfect, ask yourself: For whom? How? With what ingredients? As a former colleague used to tell her students: strive for excellence, not perfection.
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