Improvisational Cooking

I cook without recipes almost all the time. Sometimes this leads to disasters, most of the time it makes for decent food and sometimes it makes for sublime eating. Nancy often says she would prefer if I take my nose out of cookbooks and just cook my own way, which to me is a massive vote of undeserved confidence. I would be confident doing so if I had the mastery of say, Jacques Pépin. But the sheer number of bellyflops deters me from such overweening certainty. My culinary inconsistency seems to stem from an imperfect understanding of improvisational cooking and probably no small measure of impatience. I'm working on impatience, a lifetime struggle. As to the other:

"The Improvisational Cook" is my favorite cookbook of the moment. It was a brilliant birthday gift from Nancy, and I've looked at it every day since. The style appeals to me because I learned to cook using what was in the larder, which forces improvisation. And it fills a vacuum, which hits me hard: all the great cooks eventually talk about going into the market to see what looks good and cooking from there, but almost none close the loop on how to take advantage of that great-looking salsify, or those gorgeous tomatoes, or the perfect melon.

Author Sally Schneider takes unrehearsed cooking to a new level, by engaging the reader in a conversation about the process of improvisation, with plenty of examples (including exact recipes for those who aren’t quite ready to let go of the safety net of the tried and true -- and variations for those who are). It is marvelously freeing to connect with a cook who loves the moment of discovery as much as the moment of delivery. One example is her garlic and fried sage infused oil, which led me to the discovery that I too, can make infused oils (and even vodkas!) that work.

But the star example is her base recipe for Chocolate Wonders, which is almost guaranteed to provoke the response, “These are the best cookies I’ve ever had!” Duly tested, duly proven by actual responses from recipients of our Christmas cookie packages. These ARE the best chocolate cookies in the world. That alone is worth the price of admission, but to me, the lasting value of the book is the empowerment she provides by giving us a way of thinking about cooking, that allows us to cook in the moment.