I just finished cooking for a workshop of hungry actor’s who were training at a month long intensive in Shakespeare.  Sunday night, as I was sitting at the bar soaking in the end of our time together, I was approached by one of the participants who said “I find it fascinating that you didn’t use any recipes during the workshop.”  I’ll tell all my blog readers a secret.  I don’t believe in recipes.  It’s not that I don’t believe in them but I have the voice of many culinary instructors in the back of my mind saying “A recipe is just a guideline.”

Truly, a recipe is a guideline or a map, if you will.  I will often google a recipe to get a basis for how I want to make something and then make it my own.  When you see recipe’s on this website that’s mainly for your benefit.  Often, when testing a recipe for you all, I have to stop what I’m doing, write it down and it makes the process much longer.  Working without recipes and creating something by tasting it and changing it is what creates the magic that I love in the kitchen.

That being said baking is completely different.  When you make you have to use a recipe because the measurements are so precise.  So in this new year I urge you all to be a little more free with your cooking.  Add something sweet to a salty recipe.  Find something in the fridge that needs to be used up and create a recipe around it.  Cooking can be as much fun or as much of a chore as you want.