Vague Recipes

My neighbor is a food professional.  She’s been a pastry chef and now tests and writes recipes for various food publications.  The good news is that she often appears at our door with a version of something, usually delicious, on which she’s working.  The bad news is that’s it’s frightening to reciprocate – kind of like teeing it up with Tiger or Phil:  no matter how good you think you are, you just know they’re way better.At the moment, she’s working on recipes from a pre-Holocaust Polish cookbook.  The book is a vegetarian restaurant’s recipes and has been translated into English so the recipes can be tested and see if the book is worth publishing as both an historical document and a source of excellent food.  From the samples I’ve had so far, it might work.  The difficulty she’s having is that quantities are not always specified (“season with pepper” vs. “1/4 teaspoon”) nor are cooking times or end results (“fry in butter” vs. “fry until golden brown and tender, about 4 minutes per side”).  Because she didn’t live in pre-war Poland, it’s hard for her to know what the desired outcome is – should the cucumbers be soft or firm, how much paprika in the soup?

One of my favorite cook books is  Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. Written in Italian by a Bolognese author in the late 1890’s, this book is mandatory reading for any of you foodies out there who like and cook Italian food. Like the Polish book, quantities and cooking times are often vague but there are hundreds of little tips throughout that will make you a better cook.  The fact that these books have been translated from their native languages adds to the complexity – cooking has its own language with nuances, just like any other and these nuances can get lost in the translation.

So what do these books have to do with business?  A lot.  While you may have “cookbooks” on how things are done, the reality is that the skill of the cooks and their ability to visualize the outcome, interpret the often vague recipe, and deliver a delicious finished dish is the key to success, not the recipe itself.  You may think your cooks are interchangeable and replaceable – I’d argue you’re vastly underestimating the difficulty of interpreting the recipes we often give our staff.

Read any good cookbooks lately?  What recipes are you handing your cooks these days?