Status Updates From Milk Street: The New Home C...

As a friend of mine once said, "I love to cook because every time I step into the kitchen I am a beginner." Exactly right. If you teach long enough, you eventually realize that you were the student all along.
And that, perhaps, is the definition of a recipe. It is moment of learning.
As the ingredients are being brought to life in the pot, we arise as well Something stirs our soul. We cook with our hearts.

And now we can say what recipe is. Like music, great recipes speak to the soul, not just the palate. They are reductionist; without trimmings.
And they are alive; the ingredients going into the pot are a far cry from what comes out. There is some measure of alchemy in good cooking; life starts without expectations. And recipes like company-great food is only great when shared.

… And so one asks, "What's a recipe?" We can start by saying what it is not. It's not just what's on the plate. It starts in collective memory. It has roots.

This was a gift and is more of a reference book than a read-straight-through book but I have marked half a dozen recipes to start with. The explanations provided will help me adapt the recipes a bit without ruining them. I may not want to buy a dozen new ingredients every time I cook. Planning to try two recipes a week.

I have been reading and looking at receipts as well. Looking forward to cooking some of the receipts soon!

From the introduction:

“The realization dawned. Slowly. There’s no “ethnic” cooking. It’s a myth. It’s just dinner or lunch served somewhere else in the world.

I own a ton of cookbooks, so new ones have to add something new. This one does: homemade harissa, how to use carbon steel, and much more. There’s still a little too much of the Cooks Illustrated “I tried this and it didn’t work” but so many new ideas on almost every page.