On Recipes

One of my favorite food blogs, 101 Cookbooks, posted a great entry yesterday about recipes and cooking. I encourage you to check it out and read the whole thing. I'll quote my favorite part here:

Recipes are not assembly manuals. You can’t use them the way you use instructions to put together your grill or the rec room Ping-Pong table. Recipes are guides and suggestions for a process that is infinitely nuanced. Recipes are sheet music. A Bach cello suite can be performed at a beginner’s level or given extraordinary interpretation by Yo-Yo Ma—same notes/ingredients, vastly different outcomes.