Why do I cook free style (i.e. without recipes)?
How my 'free style home chef' lifestyle and blog was born!
Hi! I’m Andee, a self-proclaimed home chef (outside of my day job).
Ever since I asked my mother to teach me how to make dough when I was 10, I have been drawn to the kitchen. The feeling of dry flour between my fingers, the mixing of water turning parts of it into paste, the kneading of it to make an elastic dough - it all felt so *satisfactory*. That said, I regretted asking her to teach me because after that first day she would ask me to make dough ALL THE TIME (insert eye roll). However, that sparked the joy of cooking in me.
But it had to be without rules (aka recipes). Recipes, ingredient lists, instructions, side notes, blah, blah, blah bored me. I just wanted to head directly to the kitchen and do things with my hands, not read pages and pages of text (I did plenty of that in school). In a subtle way, early on in life, my ‘free style’ aka ‘cooking without recipes’ home chef journey began.
The journey took off when I was in 2nd year of college and I had to learn how to feed myself (no dorm or dorm food after the 1st year). Since I had an aversion to recipes, I cooked food however I felt like… and in the beginning there were definitely many many disasters (accompanied by hilarity or tears, depending on how classes were going). But over time some disasters started turning into tasty meals. And I’ve continued this way ever since.
Free styling and cooking without recipes has its pluses and minuses. While it can foster creativity (thanks to my advantages), it can also yield questionable results (see my disadvantages). I welcome it all. This has helped me be fearless when I create food experiments out of my head (or heart).
My advantages:
I love food.
Not just eating it, but thinking about it all the time. Ingredients, planning meals and menus, shopping at farmers market/grocery stores, identifying the punchline in a restaurant dish, etc.. When it comes to food - I am ALL in.
I love Indian style food.
I was born to parents who emigrated from India so I have baseline skills and tools to cook North Indian food. I adapt a lot (and I suppose easily) from this baseline.
I love the kitchen.
It’s my favorite place in the house. I could tinker in there all day long (if I didn’t have to work). In the morning I might lay out non-perishable ingredients I am thinking about using for dinner so I can look forward to cooking the dish (and brainstorm variations throughout the day). After dinner I might be preparing milk to make homemade yogurt.
I love making things from scratch.
Over time my health goals include eating more natural and unprocessed foods as much as possible, which inspires me to cook from scratch. That said, as all busy professionals, I do make use of some processed foods (e.g. pastes, sauces, etc.) to make life easier. However, when I retire - I am going ALL in from scratch (can’t wait).
I love chopping ingredients. So bizarre but it’s my favorite part.
I love vegetables.
Somehow, thank the lord, I have fallen in love with most vegetables. The gorgeous bountiful seasonal vegetables fill my eyes, belly, heart, and soul. There are a couple of exceptions though. I have tried to like or even tolerate Brussels sprouts and celery but with little success (I have explicitly asked my weekly produce delivery to never send me these).
This also means most of my cooking is vegetarian dishes.
My disadvantages:
My dishes fail ~20% of the time.
But I am ok with this. Since I loosely reference recipes and cook mostly from my baseline skills, my brain will sometimes come up with a combination of ingredients or techniques that moderately or completely fail. I rarely throw away the dish as usually it’s edible enough, just not what I envisioned. This is part of the process and I’m using it to learn for future iterations.
I run out of inspiration/creativity sometimes.
I’ll often have a good ~1 month run in the kitchen. But then my brain will be empty and unmotivated. My creativity might as well have moved to another galaxy. In these cases I fall back on eating prepared foods (restaurants, grocery stores, etc.) until I get so sick of eating them that my desire to eat good homemade food inspires me again. This usually takes ~1 week.
I hate following recipes (in case you didn’t get the memo already).
It’s just really really hard for me to follow recipes. I feel constrained and the joy of cooking completely vanishes. I hate it. My compromise is to loosely reference recipes. I might read a few different recipes for a dish and then cook with a combination/method that makes sense in my head. (I don’t bake much, but there, I’ve learned the hard way, I must follow the recipe - while gritting my teeth).
I don’t enjoy cooking meat.
I grew up in a vegetarian household. This means I don’t cook with meat too often. In the rare occasion that I do, it’s usually chicken. I mainly cook vegetarian dishes and that is what I’ll mostly be writing about.
I think free style cooking is the ultimate fun, high, adrenaline rush, rollercoaster when it comes to preparing food and I am here for it all. With this series of posts, I hope to share my experiences, how I get inspired by a certain ingredient, the things I cook, the way I cook them, and pepper this with some food philosophy (puns usually intended).
I invite you to come along for this free style ride and maybe I’ll inspire you to dabble in the kitchen without a recipe (gasp) and create some tasty winners or edible disasters.
I welcome you to subscribe for free today!
I absolutely love writing these food stories, despite this endeavor seeming scary at first. Please help me reach more readers by sharing this post.