A smoothie to save you from recipes
Plus Dry Cleaning, Zuni Cafe, Top Chef, and a little fashion roundup
Too many of my friends are imprisoned by recipes, inhibited by the fear of delivering a disappointing meal if their eyes veer away from the page or an ingredient doesn’t hit a measuring cup. I always give them the same advice:
Read Daniel Licht’s Cooking As Though You Might Cook Again.
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.Remind yourself that you’re a person who has opinions at restaurants. Usually strong ones. Start paying closer attention to what you like and don’t like, and why. Take note of which components of each dish shine and which fall flat. Steal ideas, even if you don’t know what or how they work on the plate. Try those ideas out at home. See what happens.
Make two significant changes to the way you cook at home, both of which can still involve some safety-netting of recipe usage.
First: Stop following ingredient lists exactly. If a recipe calls for bok choy and you only have cabbage at home, sub cabbage. If a cookbook highlights halibut and the fish market is out, ask the person at the counter for a good alternative and just use that.
Second: Read a recipe one time before you start cooking and then don’t let yourself read it again. Lock your phone or cookbook in a kSafe if you need to. Then make yourself sink or swim.
Give honest feedback. If something tastes off, make an educated guess as to why, and work on it next time. If the mistake seems fixable post-plating … fix it before you keep eating.
I’m not anti-recipe. I love cookbooks and food writing. I’m anti self-handicapping. Your favorite recipe developers don’t follow recipes. Why should you? When you learn to taste as you go, to rely on sound and feel and experience to get a protein to a perfectly cooked state, to use instinct to pair ingredients and flavors together, the quality of your cooking elevates in ways that considered recipe curation can’t match. And isn’t that what you want?
During my first few months at Cool World, I peppered other cooks constantly with questions. “How much lemon should I use? How do I know if this crudo is properly seasoned? How long does this porgy take to cook?” Their answer almost always was: “Look at it, touch it, taste it. You’ll know.” At first, that only added to my stress. But they were right.
If you embrace this cold-turkey recipe abandonment, you’ll inevitably do something dumb. The first time I ever made fried rice, I skipped the “cook the rice” step. That sucked. But you’ll improve, and you’ll love it. If this idea truly freaks you out, then there’s no better way to ease yourself into it than perfecting the Honey Beary smoothie from Juiceland.
There are only five ingredients:
Frozen blueberries
Frozen bananas
Peanut butter
Honey
Almond milk
And there’s only one step:
Put everything in a blender. Blend. Drink.
But nailing this wonderful, balanced smoothie requires yourself to work through a few different things:
Finding the right ratio of blueberries to banana to almond milk to get an ideal, smooth texture. And then being able to recreate that texture every time without measurements.
Testing out different forms of each ingredient — I prefer Texas wildflower honey — until you get your preferred flavor profile.
Making modifications based on what you have around (chocolate chips or vanilla protein powder can be nice additions).
After you feel good about the smoothie, do it with a whole roast chicken and vegetables. Try it with pasta, fish, salads, dips — everything. Eventually, it works. You press the flesh of the chicken and you know it’s time to take it out of the oven. You taste a salad and realize it needs crunch from candied nuts. You consider your dinner spread and see that it’s missing an essential, simply-seasoned grain, so you whip one up. Recipes and cookbooks become an inspiration, not a crutch.
Now, on to the usual Bangers & Jams list. But first, a reminder that paid subscribers not only get access to every post over here. You also get perks like this one that a paid subscriber took advantage of last week, when he emailed me looking for a date-night dinner rec before a Friday evening play in the West Village:
Where should we eat that we actually have a chance of getting into as walk-ins (since all the spots I like don't have reservations available)
I swung him a res at a great spot down the street from the theater. Could be you <3.