Kitchen Experimental

I knit. A lot. Sometimes until it hurts. Most of the things I knit are my own creation in some way, not just because I knit them with my own two hands but because I make some change to an existing pattern or make up the pattern out of my head. I almost never follow the directions exactly. Even if the change is subtle, like using a different yarn or a different gauge, I somehow manage to make it my own.
Lately, I’ve been taking the easy way out; I’ve been following the pattern exactly and I’ve been rather disappointed. Maybe in order to make something that you want to wear and feel good in, you have to do those little things to make it your own. Or maybe the satisfaction you get when you know you’ve figured out how to tweak things just so, or that the idea in you head really does work, is what the process is all about. Maybe having the courage to try something different gives you the impetus to push your skills further the next time. I am constantly amazed by knitters who have been knitting for years but have not yet tried to break away from the “recipe” in front of them. To me, that’s when the fun starts.
It’s the same thing with cooking. Being experimental in the kitchen is just as rewarding. There’s nothing like looking in the fridge at a strange variety of ingredients and sitting down a short while later with a delicious dinner.
There’s been a lot of media lately on getting back to cooking, spurred on by the new movie “Julie and Julia” and Michael Pollan’s New York Times Magazine article about why we should stop watching cooking on TV and actually start cooking in our kitchens. This is an encouraging tread.
Pollan contends that Julia Child gave women in the 50s and 60s the courage to try new things in the kitchen and to not be afraid to fail. I believe that courage is needed again today. It’s too easy to buy pre-made foods plus the fear of not getting it right keeps people out of the kitchen and away from all the rewards of making food from scratch. Like knitting, the final outcome, when you use your own creativity to cook, is always more satisfying.
But how do you overcome the inertia of relying on packaged food, or take out, or just your regular set of recipes? It’s not easy, but then the easy way out is not always the most rewarding. It’s one of the things I keep in mind when I want to just blindly follow a knitting pattern. Pushing myself to think a little harder for just a little longer almost always yields better results (almost always, there are the occasional failures from which I always learn something important).
To succeed with kitchen experimentation, it helps to know some basics like what flavors typically combine well and how to sauté, roast, and bake. These are easily found in many basic cookbooks. I’m not advocating not using cookbooks, I’m just saying don’t actually follow the recipes in them. Use cookbooks for inspiration or for the stuff you don’t want to keep in your head, like cooking times or temperatures. Find three or four recipes for the ingredients you have on hand, read through them then put the books away and just have fun.
Summer seems like the best time of year to work up the courage to experiment in the kitchen. There is such an abundance of fresh, local produce; it calls out for a little experimentation. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you played with a few zucchini or tomatoes? Right now there’s more than enough to go around. Why not make some fresh tomato sauce or a zucchini tomato salad?
Let’s take the tomato sauce as an example. Opening up one of my cookbooks, there are recipes for fresh tomato sauce with mint, or basil, or zucchini flowers and red peppers, or mozzarella, or eggplant and walnuts. There’s even a sauce recipe using just zucchini. Reading through them, I notice some require a quick cooking of all the ingredients at once while others require a few more steps.
Since I have lots of zucchini, zucchini blossoms, and basil on hand, I settle on something that uses all of those ingredients. Most of the recipes call for starting the sauce by sautéing garlic and/or onions in some olive oil and/or butter then adding the chopped veggies then the chopped blossoms and basil at the end along with some salt and pepper while at the same time getting the pasta cooked. If I’m going to use the zucchini I know I’m going to have to cook that a bit longer than the tomatoes so there’s no way I can just quickly sauté everything at once. Instead, I might decide to save time by not peeling and seeding the tomatoes because I don’t mind having peels and seeds in my sauce (if I was making it for company, I would probably take the extra step).
While I’m cooking, I might decide that the fresh oregano in my garden would go well with what I have so far and even add a few flakes of red pepper, just for fun. The whole meal might take 20 minutes to make and with a bit of parmesan cheese on top will far exceed any jarred tomato sauce for flavor, freshness, nutrition, and eye appeal.
After a few tries at experimenting, the rewards will so far outweigh the fear of failure, you’ll wonder why you ever followed a recipe in the first place. And then you may even want to learn to knit.


Fresh Tomato Sauce with _______
A “recipe”

Fresh locally grown tomatoes, any many as you need to feed who you’re feeding, peeled, seeded and chopped or just chopped
Onions and/or garlic and/or shallots, minced or chopped, to taste
Olive oil and or butter, enough to sauté all the other ingredients
Zucchini or eggplant or mushrooms or peppers or none of these things
Fresh basil and/or oregano and/or thyme, chopped or sliced or whole
Walnuts (toasted) or squash blossoms or pine nuts(toasted)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Pasta, enough to hold all the sauce, cooked while making the sauce
Parmesan or ricotta or goat cheese, optional

Sauté the onions/garlic/shallots in the olive oil/butter. Add the zucchini/eggplant/mushrooms/peppers. Saute 3-5 min until whatever you use is slightly softened. Add the tomato. Sauté for a few more minutes until the sauce starts to thicken. Add herbs and nuts or blossoms and salt and pepper. Serve sauce on pasta and top with cheese.