An analogy of the how and why of kitchen creativity
A coworker mentioned that she was not what her mother-in-law
called “a natural cook”: she could follow a recipe, but she could not deviate
from it in the least. I, on the other hand, can pick up on a general technique
and seasoning set and go from there – either following the recipe exactly,
tweaking it, or using its basic information as a jumping-off point to get
completely creative.
While food is as valid a medium for creativity as any other,
there are some basic ground rules we must follow. Some of these ground rules
ensure that our food is safe to eat: storing certain foods in the refrigerator
or freezer, cooking them to a certain temperature (or to specific visual cues,
such as “fluids run clear” or “toothpick comes out clean”), and serving hot
foods while they are still hot. Others are more STEM-related, such as the ways different
ingredients behave when mixed with other ingredients, or heated or cooled in
specific ways.
Once you know the ground rules, the rest can be changed to
meet your preferences, available time and facilities, and ingredients on hand.
OK, I’ll admit that’s an oversimplification, but the most
basic version of “fun with food” is “theme and variations”. If you’re not a
music maven, “theme and variations” is where a section of music, the theme
(like the verse of a song) is performed several times in different manners (the
variations): soft, loud, fast, slow, staccato (short, distinct notes),
arpeggiated (preceded by short notes of the chord it’s on), and so on.
In some ways, that still misses the nuance.
Cookbooks, like many technical manuals, have their own
vocabulary. Aside from the abbreviations used to indicate quantities of
ingredients (as well as some advance preparation, such as peeling a
vegetable, beating an egg, sifting flour, or making sure something
is cold, room temperature, warm, or boiling), there
are the techniques, such as simmering, blanching, sautéing, pan-frying,
whipping, folding, and so on.
This vocabulary is something akin to the parts of speech you
learn in Language class. A sentence needs a subject (who or what), an action,
and an object (who or what is being acted upon). In a recipe, the subject
is understood to be the cook, baker, food preparer, or (“traditionally”) housewife
or chef. The objects are the ingredients and the mixtures of ingredients as
they are prepared (for example, a roux, which is a mixture of onion
fried in a small amount of butter, to which flour is added to brown and
thicken). The final object, the conclusion of this tale that is called a
recipe, is what you end up eating (or serving to your family or bringing to that
church dinner).
But that’s just the basic, overt vocabulary: the “I, you,
it, we” and “past, present, future, infinitive”. Unless you know what to look
for, you miss the styles, the genres, the sense of what that food is –
and by this I don’t mean “how to duplicate what I’ve done” but rather the
historical and ethnic origins of a food, how the main ingredients, seasonings, and
techniques go together like the various cliques in your child’s middle school…
If, for example, you go into any mom-and-pop pizzeria, you
will find shakers of oregano, garlic, and crushed red pepper. When these spices
hang out with onions, basil, and tomato, they create a taste profile most of us
associate with “Italian cuisine”. If you’re missing a recipe for marinara sauce
or arrabbiata, this is where to start.
In addition to soy sauce and stir-frying, Chinese-American
food (largely adapted from Cantonese cooking) has a go-to seasoning blend
called “five spice”. While the actual blend varies from cook to cook, cinnamon,
cloves, star anise, and Szechuan peppercorns are common ingredients. Peanut oil,
crushed garlic and grated ginger are often used at the start of a stir-fry, while
sesame oil is a frequent finishing touch.
Other Asian ingredients in my cupboard include Mirin (a sweet,
seasoned Japanese cooking wine) and rice wine vinegar. Adding these to soy sauce
creates a basic “Teriyaki” flavor without having to buy still another
special sauce.
If you asked me for a “Pumpkin Spice Latte” out of season, I
would steep a cinnamon stick and one or two whole cloves in black coffee for a
few minutes, and add a quick grating of nutmeg after adding your steamed milk
and your sweetener of choice. Or I might add that cinnamon stick as a garnish
instead, allowing you to decide how strong you want your drink flavored.
Any decent chef or food historian will tell you that I’ve
only given you a basic, “cultural appropriation” level of those seasoning blends
and preparations – and they’re right. It’s a “Do-Re-Mi” level of understanding.
But just as Maria tells the Von Trapp children, “When you know the notes to sing,
you can sing most anything.”
I hope I’ve given you a few culinary themes to inspire your own
variations.
