Cook by Feel

Amateurs cook from recipes. Real cooks do not. They have techniques, yes, and an ever expanding repertoire of dishes, but they do not break off from their graceful culinary dance each evening for long periods spent peering over a bespattered cookbook. At most, a real cook will admit to being “inspired” by someone else.

Or so the thought goes. Unfortunately, there are many who fancy themselves above recipes yet lack the skill to carry this off, as my mother firmly noted, citing a certain family member who shall remain nameless. For myself, I have never suffered from this hubris, and although I fancy myself a decent cook, I make no claims as a kitchen choreographer. Rather, I turn expectant eyes towards my favorite cooks and chefs, devout in my study of their books. I will make minor changes, playing with flavors and tuning the recipes in to the season at hand, but only very recently have I begun taking a basic technique and creating my own dish from scratch (my slow-cooked lamb with tomatoes, saffron and cream, which I posted the other week, is one of only a handful of examples). Especially when I’m entertaining, recipes are something to cling to—a framework for the dish, supplying hopefully well-tested proportions, techniques, times, and flavor combinations.

And yet, for the Oktoberfest feast I found myself adrift—only a scribbled paragraph of instructions on what do with the pounds of Bavarian sausage, mountain of potatoes, odiferous mass of sauerkraut, and bottle of Riesling that before me. Boss man had given me directions, but only half of these had transferred to my scrap of paper, and none made any mention of quantities or proportions. How much wine? I wondered. How much chicken stock? How many juniper berries? I’d never cooked with this hardened blue-black berry . . . are they as powerful as cloves?

But there was no use in fussing; I had 14 friends milling about, getting progressively tipsier and demanding dinner. And so I jumped in, dumped the entire bottle of Riesling over the sweating onions, became a real cook for a change. I used common sense and kitchen experience, and felt terribly proud as I stirred and judged and adjusted. By the time dinner was ready I felt euphoric—this was real cooking; an art vaguely on par with musical improvisation or a spontaneous letra of flamenco dance. I loved it.

According to the Bavarian ladies this dish has a name, but I can’t remember what it is. My version was basically a vat of sausages, potatoes, and sauerkraut, infused throughout with wine, chicken stock, and a wafting whisper of juniper and thyme. I will modestly limit any further description to the response from one of my dinner guests, Will (in manner of book praise):

“. . . off the fucking chain. . . ”

Along with the main dish we ate a fairly simple green salad, two types of homemade mustard (beer-caraway, and dried cranberry), apple ketchup, and a massive round of freshly baked Pugliese bread, for mopping purposes.

To finish, I served up two laboriously constructed cakes: one black forest gateau laden with cream, chocolate, cherries, and kirsch, and one caramel-cinnamon ganache cake. These were taken verbatim from recipes. You don’t mess with baking, it’s different. Like science lab improvisation can be disastrous.