Recipe Needed

I've been contemplating recipes and my devotion to them a lot recently. While I received several wonderful cookbooks for Christmas (and mind you, they were on my list), I have also gotten much better at improvising in the kitchen, in other words, not using the recipes that I so assiduously collect. I even enjoy altering and adapting recipes that I have mastered to create something new and different.

But it has also come to my attention why I rely on recipes so heavily. I had a bag of carrots that needed to be eaten. But I wasn't ready to wait 30+ minutes and heat up the kitchen by turning on the oven. And then I remembered a recipe for glazed carrots that Cousin S had passed on to me a long while back. I easily found it in my giant cookbook, where I compile ever recipe I make for easy reference. And it was a great success!!! The kids loved it. Thank heavens I had the recipe because I wouldn't have remembered it or thought up how to make it on my own. Thus, the importance of my recipe collection.

And then, this week, I made chicken pot pie. But I couldn't remember how I started it and what the ratios were. So I found my "perfect pot pie" recipe on my blog and followed it. Again, thank heavens for recipes. Then I used the leftover glazed carrots. And some soy sauce chicken from earlier in the week. It occurred to me that this was why pot pies were invented in the first place: to clean out the fridge! Anyway, the new sweet and savory pot pie was amazing. We ate almost the whole thing the first night.

Of course, sometimes the experimentation goes awry, like it did with a white bean and kale with rice soup that is currently in my freezer because I'm not sure I can bear to eat anymore of it right now (and so I'm really not going to bother writing down any kind of recipe for it, even if I put a warning on it telling me not to make it!). It wasn't awful, just not as good as all of those ingredients should've made it. On top of it, my friend Mama Teacher reminded me yesterday of a recipe for winter vegetable soup she had shared with me that would've been perfect for those white beans, had I remembered it. There's a disadvantage of relying on recipes: having too many and not remembering the really good ones.

Of course, while I don't want to make the bean-kale-rice thing again, I do want to make the new pot pie again. And that's a problem with experimentation: unlike a dish made from a recipe, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to make it again. And therein lies my devotion to recipes: I like repetition and reliability. As much as I enjoyed the experimentation of my new pot pie, I would like it even more if I could be sure I could make it again. I can try to write it all down, but it really was serendipity that it all came together.

Which means, I guess, that I just need to get better, not at cooking from recipes or not, but in enjoying the food I'm eating in the moment and not worrying so much about recreating that moment.

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Glazed Carrots

several carrots, cut into “fingers”

cinnamon

brown sugar

lemon or orange juice

water

Peel and cut carrots into strips. Place in saucepan with cinnamon and brown sugar. Add a little water or lemon or orange juice. Steam carrots on low/medium until cooked to desired consistency.

Cousin S

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New Sweet and Savory Pot Pie

2 refrigerated pie crusts, at room temperature

approximately 1 - 1 1/2 cups of leftover glazed carrots (I didn't even bother to cut them up)

3/4 cup frozen mixed vegetables

2 cups cooked chicken thigh meat seasoned with soy sauce and Maggi (approx.)

1/2 cup flour
4 tablespoons butter
4 cups stock (I used vegetable)
salt and pepper


Preheat oven to 350F.

Melt butter in a large saucepan. Then add flour. Cook until brown (i.e. brown but not burnt--if it burns, toss it out and start roux again. You can't get rid of that bitter burnt roux taste). Allow to boil so "gravy" will thicken. Add vegetables and cooked chicken to heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Spray inside of 9" pie plate with cooking spray. Roll out and lay down bottom pie crust. Fill with vegetables, chicken, and "gravy." Top with remaining pie crust. Vent. Put pie plate on cookie sheet to prevent spillover. Bake for approximately 1 hour or until crust is brown and filling is bubbly.

Mommy Hungry, via Miss L and Martha Stewart's Everyday Living and Cousin S