Recipes Missing Instructions
What are your hobbies? Writing and eating. Eating is not a hobby. It’s a necessity. Kidneys and other body parts will be lonely if nothing enters your mouth. Fine, point taken. How about cooking? Is it a hobby?
I regard it as one, because I post recipes from time to time but they can be frustrating because I omit certain things. First of all, I cannot include quantities like cookbooks. They tell us to use half a cup of olive oil which gives me the chills because olive oil, healthy or not, it is still oil. I must not judge though, because maybe they used a big pot when preparing the recipe. Here are the reasons why my recipes are not recipes, in the conventional sense of the word.
Quantities. I don’t know the size of your pot. I cannot say use half a teaspoon of salt because you might be trying out the recipe for six people or more. Anyway, I seldom use salt. I substitute with apples, carrots and peas, wherever possible.
How-to instructions. Rice is a good example. I usually say eat with rice at the end of the recipe but I do not tell blog visitors how to cook it because there are different ways of cooking rice. Pasta too. Should the pasta be al dente or mushy? It depends on the cook.
Cooking time. I usually say cook for 3 or 6 minutes but that is based on me standing next to the electric stove. Those minutes might shrink if you use a gas stove. Cooking time is also based on what you like. Salmon for example. I think it’s criminal to bake this fish, let alone add 1,001 spices and cook it for 15 minutes. Murder She Wrote, was a television series. Salmon is moist and cooking should not tamper with that. I usually cook onion and tomato in little olive oil for 6 minutes just to make stubborn onion soft. I put salmon steaks on top and switch off the heat. Surprise! Surprise! Food still cooks with the heat off, but remove it completely after 2-3 minutes.
Recipes are just a guide I guess. It is like driving stick shift. You change gears depending on the road. Online recipes are also recipes but it is suicide driving. Nothing is measured. Too much salt to die for literally, and five spices to make the chicken wish it was an egg again, where it was protected by the shell.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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