A friend recently shared a quote on a menu, which read:

“A recipe lacks soul.  It is the chef that must give life to the dish.”

My first reaction was snarky, asking if my friend had tried the soulless dish the description was referring to.  Heh.  I’d also initially thought it was a translation error as the menu wasn’t local.

I went on about my day before the sentiment began tugging in the corner of my mind, because I’ve found it’s relatively common opinion that if you use a recipe you’re obviously not a good cook.

Conversely if you can cook without one then you must have the skills that pay the bills (thanks Bill for that one).  Which is frankly, ridiculous.

I have no idea where we’ve gotten this notion from.  I use recipes all the time to get ideas; it’s not like we practice cooking with every single fare/method every single day.  There are plenty of things I know how to do in memory, but in execution I need a quick written refresher.  And in this country, where our cuisine expectation is so diverse, we definitely need the jogger.

You’ll find earmarked cookbooks and reference books in most good restaurants, places where Chefs create new things and are reaching to be their best.  Why?  Because food is a big, big category.

They usually don’t use those exact recipes but it helps to brainstorm and get ideas when up against a food wall, or have a bunch of fresh **fill in the blank** from a local farm and don’t normally cook with that item.  How are they gonna use them?

So how is that different from when you look in the home fridge and see the romanesco you got at the farmer’s market because it looked cool, and think, how am I gonna use this?  How am I gonna use the veggies that come in my co-op box I signed up for because the idea sounded neat but I had to google half of them to know what they were?

Cooking isn’t set in stone like many believe, it’s a constant flight of exploration even for the “experts.”

So, like the quote said, does a cook give life to the dish during this process?

Hmmmmm.

I think of the few recipes I’ve written that truly came from me creating something, from nothing.  I remember how it felt to make them, to write them, to own them.

Maybe that quote is wrong.  Maybe they’re intertwined.

A recipe is the soul of the cook, written down in physical form.  When you use it, you recreate that moment where something was born from nothing– like a mini Big Bang that you can control.

It allows anyone to touch a piece of creation in a way reading a book or observing a work of art can’t access because it enables you to physically accomplish the same thing as the creator.  There aren’t a lot of things in life where you can do that without taking a class or attaining a higher level of education in something, yet here we are with this gift.

I can see the disillusion.  Some recipes today have become as seemingly cardboard stamped as most of our food selections.  But I remember the old note cards from my Grandmother that my mom now has in her recipe book, that start “From the Kitchen of…” and then the person would write their name in.

What ownership that is.  What power.  This is mine, and I’m sharing it with you– along with all the joy or frustration or celebration it’s brought me.  I’m sharing my spark, and with that the ability to feed people.

What a mighty power.  Written down in recipe form.