Caveat Restaurant Recipes

  It doesn't matter which chef created the recipe for which restaurant, when you make it at home, you make it at your own risk. We have all heard horror stories from amateur chefs who tried a restaurant recipe for a certain vegetable dish or dessert only to have it fall flat and instead of praise, elicit a comment more like, "Are you sure this is how this is supposed to taste?" So was the recipe all hype to begin with? Should the chef who created the formula for the orange-flavored gateau or the layered salad in question go back to culinary school? Not likely. The fault, dear cooks, usually lies in ourselves.

In my lifetime, I have known four kinds of cooks: Intuitive cooks or inspired cooks, precise cooks, indifferent cooks, and cooks who were totally clueless. Be warned - these last two, the indifferent and the totally clueless, often masquerade as each other to 1) avoid embarrassment and/or 2) avoid having to actually go into the kitchen and make something.

Intuitive cooks are men and women who were born with floured thumbs. These are the folks who "eyeball" almost everything, who use pinches instead of teaspoonfuls, who "throw stuff together" and come out with a cake that wins a blue ribbon at the Ohio State Fair. It is a safe bet these cooks are not only gifted, but experienced as well, spending lots of hours in the kitchen and enjoying every minute of them. Without consciously thinking about it, they know from experience how ingredients will react with or respond to each other. Fine and innovative cooking were probably traditions in their families. By doing and by just being around others who cooked well, they have absorbed the unwritten rules of roasting and baking. It might not be stated directly in a recipe, but they know exactly when they should use a cast iron skillet. If these cooks cannot coax a fine dish from a restaurant recipe, no one can, including the chef who created it. Note: In all fairness to chefs, they don't always do their own writing and editing for publication. Misprints do sneak in from time to time.

Precise cooks are the women you see pictured in the cookbook's general directions section. These ladies measure ingredients precisely, taking away the soft little mound from the top of the measuring cupful of flour, so that it is exactly one cup. Such cooks create from the intellect and are less inclined to trust their results to chance. To them, cooking is important WORK accompanied by the danger of the waste that comes from ruining a whole bowl of ingredients. They follow restaurant recipes with methodical precision and sometimes much angst. Their results are almost always very good to excellent. These cooks, too, spend much time in the kitchen, but being there with them can get pretty dull.

Indifferent cooks will cook if they have to, but would rather go to a poetry reading. They are not inclined toward excitement about a new restaurant recipe because to fix it would require time. Because they have spent little time in the kitchen, they have had little experience with preparing food. They know there are implied rules for poor preparation, but they don't want to have to dig around or work through trial and error to discover them. Why doesn't the recipe just tell you everything? To make these folks cook is to make them feel pressed into service. They would probably enjoy the movie Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? At best, their approach to a recipe is haphazard. They often find themselves disgruntled at the prospect of having to fix a special dinner for in-laws and so forth. No matter how good the recipe, their results usually fall somewhere between so-so and unrecognizable. They are better at apologizing than at cooking.

Genuinely clueless cooks are...genuinely clueless. What implied rules? They don't know there are such things. They mean it when they say they're baffled by all those measuring spoons and can't figure out which end of the flour sifter is "up." Don't give them a food processor. They will get hurt on it. They long for a non-critical mentor who will come to their house and under the guise of teaching them to cook will instead prepare dinner every night. They're prouder than proud of themselves when they manage to produce a mound of fried Hostess Twinkies.

These cooks could benefit from using restaurant recipes as long as they choose simple ones with a limited number of non-exotic ingredients. Until they find a few dishes they can prepare well, don't hesitate to say, "No, thanks," to their watery gelatin molds that threaten to slide across the serving plate into your lap.