What do we mean by cooking without recipes?
Making a start on answering that question.
It was a hot night. He had clarity on a decision that had been looming like a brooding storm. The decision was made, the clouds had parted, he was coming for dinner. Some sunshine yellow vine tomatoes had just been offloaded at the market. They caught my eye. He loves chilli and garlic, I thought. There was fresh spaghetti at home. I remembered an off-the-cuff Aglio Olio e Pepperoncino-esque pasta with cherry tomatoes cooked for me once. I knew what to do.
This was a couple of weeks ago, and it gets right to the heart of what we mean by cooking without recipes. It’s about feeling alive by connecting with a particular moment in time: the weather, what’s growing, your current mood.
It means starting in a different place: with the ingredient, not the recipe. If the starting point is a recipe, we are recreating another moment in time – one that someone else documented. One to which we may or may not have a connection.
We’re not against recipes
That doesn’t mean we don’t cook from recipes or that you shouldn’t either. But if you can get to a point where you are able to cook without recipes, you will access a far richer experience of cooking and of life. It means we’re looking to inspire a way of thinking – and a way of being.
It doesn't mean that we don’t feel challenged by how to convey what we do without defaulting back to writing a recipe; it’s what we grew up with, it’s what I did as a food editor – right down to the quarter teaspoon, and it’s a format that’s widely used and understood. The question is: how to extract value and not be at its mercy?
Brandon, who was once a card-carrying member of The Magic Circle, uses the analogy that you’re trying to identify exactly when the sleight of hand happens in a magic trick. That way you are learning from the recipe but are not necessarily tied to it. It’s why we lead with understanding core concepts.
The roast tomatoes we’re sharing here are well and truly about method. Anyone who has met Brandon and I knows we come at the world differently, which includes how we roast tomatoes. I hover over peak-summer tomatoes watching closely until they’re just right. Brandon is more forgiving in method and choice of tomato and makes his all year round.
I’ve roasted them at a lower temperature for longer and recently heard of another take with small Sicilian tomatoes, each pricked individually so they don’t burst but the juices flow. If you don’t have lemon peel leave it out, if you have thyme not rosemary, use that. Tip them onto spaghetti as I do or spoon onto grilled sourdough toast like Brandon. The key understanding is roasting intensifies flavour.
Update: This, our very first post, introduced the menu header How to Cook without Recipes, which is now titled Inspiration.
For both the Nikki and Brandon methods, click the link below.
