WHEN RECIPES GO WRONG: SALT, TASTE, QUESTION!

The number of friends texting me that they are making my recipes seems to have increased significantly this year. It’s so exciting!! Most of the time, everyone has very positive feedback. But now, more than ever, I want critical notes. If things are not working I need to know so I can keep improving my craft! I did have some critical feedback recently, which leads me to this post about why recipes go wrong sometimes.

A short side tangent: When I first realized that my level of obsession with food and cooking was significantly different than your average Jane, and when people started telling me I should start a food blog, I shrugged it off. “There are so many food bloggers!” I thought, “That market is saturated, I wouldn’t be able to bring anything new to the table.”

Slowly but surely, I have been realizing that my way of cooking, or my approach to food, or my recipes, or my passion, or something else I’m doing (?!) resonates with people. It has taken me a while to acknowledge that maybe I DO bring something new to the table. That even though cooking is as old as mankind itself (in fact, some argue that cooking is what makes us human!!) - there are always opportunities to innovate. There is always room to see something new in something old, to bring new light to an ancient craft.

After “making my own culinary school” by getting my “10,000 hours” of cooking over the last 2+ years, I can finally say with confidence that the world of food and cooking is where I’m supposed to be. And in accepting this, I have entered a new creative mindset in which I realize that I see food and cooking with different eyes than most people. My new eyes tell me that this space IS, in fact, RIPE for innovation and creativity and a new perspective that I can bring. 

One thing I've realized I'm good at is putting words to the instincts of a good cook. When you know how to cook, you don't have to think about what to do, you just DO it. I want to help uncover and explain - for the beginner cooks especially - the behaviors, tricks, and questions that good cooks employ instinctually while cooking. I hope this will help new cooks become confident more quickly. What follows will hopefully illustrate some chef-like instincts that anyone can put to work for better results in the kitchen.

So- let’s talk about recipes! Chefs (including me) kind of HATE recipes. That is a gross generalization but I’d bet money that if you ask, you’ll find it’s true. To a chef, cooking is art. The recipe is not the art - the recipe just happens to be the language that’s required to allow other people to attempt to make the art. Someone recently told me that compared to visual art, he prefers music, because when he plays a piece of music, it is never the same thing twice - it is always a little bit different depending on the location, the crowd, the setting, his own mood, etc. I realized that the same thing is true about cooking - and that’s one of the reasons it’s my favorite creative outlet. A dish is NEVER the same twice. And this is why recipes are really only a guideline. You can never truly create the exact same environment in which to EXACTLY replicate a dish. There are a million things that are different each and every time you cook - even if you’re cooking the same thing. 

This has been tippy-top of mind for me lately, and I am planning to start writing all my recipes in a new and different way - so they can act as more of a roadmap - open for twists and turns - versus a strict list of instructions. Hidden in the language of a recipe, there exists a wealth of knowledge about the chef. This knowledge and reasoning is often unexplained, because short and succinct recipes sell better than long and detailed ones. It makes sense, but it’s kind of a tragedy. 

So - here is my advice to help your recipes turn out well (and all of this will make you a better cook, too!).

PRACTICES OF A GOOD COOK:

1. SALT - This is likely the number one thing you are doing wrong if your food doesn’t taste good. When to add it and how much salt to use is the first thing I would ask you about if your recipe doesn’t turn out well. I recommend reading SALT FAT ACID HEAT to learn more about this. Here is my number one trick for salting: You have to teach yourself and practice the ability to identify when a dish does not have enough salt. The way that you do this without ruining all your food is to use what I refer to as the “tasting bowl practice,” which coincides with my second point:
2. TASTE - As you are cooking - you HAVE to be tasting your food along the way. This is the only way you learn how food changes as it cooks. Eventually you won’t have to taste as much, but when you are first learning to cook, it is SUPER important to understand changes of flavors over time. Now - when food is PIPING HOT, you cannot fully taste it because you are overwhelmed by the temperature. This is why I recommend the use of the tasting bowl. Get yourself a little ramekin or small bowl, and put a bite or two of whatever you are cooking in the tasting bowl. Allow it to cool for a minute or two if needed. As you are learning to cook and experimenting with how much salt is appropriate, you are going to TEST new additions by adding them to the tasting bowl first instead of the pot or dish. This will prevent you from over-salting or ruining your dish, because if you don’t like what you added, you’ve only ruined one bite!! So - what you’ll do is, after tasting it, add some salt, taste it again! Keep getting new bites in the tasting bowl and adding things until it tastes good (or until you mess up and over-salt it). When you figure out what you like - you can add it in a larger quantity to the pot - again, tasting as you go to determine if you need more. As you practice this, you will slowly learn what food tastes like when it is under-salted and you’ll be able to recognize it straight away.
3. QUESTION - Right along with the salt, you are also training your palate to recognize flavor balance. I have found that most people don’t know what questions to ask themselves in this stage. The skill of knowing what a dish “needs” only comes with practice - this is a life-long thing that you will get better at the more you cook. Also - and this is very important - there is no “right” answer of how much is enough. YOU are in charge - so the answer is always: what tastes best to YOU? THAT is the correct answer. Whoever wrote the recipe wants it to TASTE GOOD! So do whatever you have to do to make it taste good to YOU! Below I've listed the questions you should ask yourself. Note that you will likely have to take more than one taste to be able to answer these questions:
   1. Does it need more salt?
   2. Does any one ingredient’s flavor stand out more than the others? If so - is it in a good way or a bad way? (Add more of something to the tasting bowl to find out!)
   3. Are any of the ingredients I added undetectable*? If so - is it in a good or bad way? (Add more of something to the tasting bowl to find out!)
   4. What flavor am I getting the most of: salty, sweet, bitter, acidic, umami? Do I want more or less of any these flavors? (To help answer this, try adding a little acid to your tasting bowl - or a little sweetness! See how that affects it and whether you like it.)
   5. TEXTURE - how is the texture? Is it too mushy? Is it not cooked through? Do I want more variety of textures? Texture will be harder to fix if you’re not happy with it - this is where practice and creativity and chef skills come in. I’ll have to address this more in a later post. 

*The magical part of cooking is that ingredients combine to become MORE flavorful than the sum of their parts. I’m not saying that you should be able to detect the flavor of every single thing in the dish - usually you won't be able to - that's the magic! I’m simply pointing out that this is a question you should ask yourself to determine if maybe you want to add more of something that will help make the dish better.

In conclusion, there are countless reasons why a dish might not turn out - maybe some of your ingredients were old/bad/spoiled/just a dud without great flavor. Maybe you over- or undercooked it or made some other kind of mistake. Maybe there was residue in your pan that you didn’t even see and that threw it off. Or maybe it’s actually a bad recipe that wasn’t well-tested and it’s the chef’s fault. OR - maybe you just have completely different taste than the chef and you did absolutely everything right, and you just don’t like it! On these last two, you’ll have to determine the possibility based on your knowledge of the chef and what kind of recipes she’d be willing to publish. Personally, I would never publish anything I didn’t think was well-worth taking the time to make. There IS a chance that I didn’t test my recipes well enough - or that mine are written too loosely and my instructions aren’t quite clear. Those are both things I want to know, so if you make something of mine that didn’t turn out and you think it might be for one of these reasons, please PLEASE tell me!

To close, I will leave you with a Julia Child quote that I remembered recently:  "The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude."

Don’t be afraid of failure in the kitchen! I always tell people that mistakes in the kitchen are the best opportunities to learn - because when you have an epic failure in an activity that employs all five of your senses, you will NOT forget it. Therefore, you will learn from it and likely not make that mistake again. The more you learn, the better you’ll get at knowing whether a “failure” was yours, or that of the chef/recipe author. And the better you get, when a recipe does “fail” you - you’ll know what to do to fix it - and by then, you are a chef yourself :). Happy cooking!

Musings on a family recipe: Carne Sorpresa (affectionately known as "surprise meat")

Hello!!

It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I last wrote a blog post. I was struck by some deep thoughts while cooking yesterday, so much so that I felt compelled enough to write them up and publish them here! (Also realized I've been in a writing rut and need to get out of it to finish my calendar!) So here you go:

my Italian great-grandparents, 
Nicola and Jennie Romito

Yesterday I did a “big cook” for my dear friends Heidi & Adam who live down the street and who recently had a baby. For their baby gift, I gave them two weeks of personal chef-ing, and since sweet Paige is already three months old, it’s about time I got at least a week’s worth of cooking done for them!

From left to right:
- Nicola Romito
- Samuel Lioon (my grandfather, "Pap Pap" who was born in Lebanon) 
- Jennie Romito
- Jacqueline Romito Lioon (my grandmother, "Nonna")

Cooking big batches of things for 4 hours straight in my own kitchen is something I actually haven’t done in a long while and I enjoyed it SO much. H&A requested my “surprise meat” that they had eaten at one of my dinner parties a few years ago - it’s a family recipe from my Nonna. It's a part of the meal my immediate family always requested & enjoyed whenever Nonna & Pap Pap had us over for dinner for birthdays. I know the name does not sound very appetizing, but it’s the best, most garlic-y Italian comfort food. It’s beef - a chuck roast - into which you cut little holes everywhere and then stuff them with garlic + parsley “surprises.” You then simmer it for 3+ hours with onions, tomatoes and some red wine until the meat falls apart. When you eat it, you’re sure to get several “surprises” and go home with a full heart and a mouth full of garlic breath. The emotional connection to this meal is so deep that if I close my eyes and imagine hard enough, I can essentially smell it in my brain and feel the comforting joy of one of those dinners at Nonna's house.

One of the most memorable steps at the beginning of my personal cooking journey took place in college, when I decided I should write down and learn to make my favorite recipes from Nonna so I could pass them on to the next generation someday. I’d go to her house on winter breaks and we’d make meatballs, sauce, and surprise meat. The next semester, I arrived at school with a freezer full of my favorite Italian comfort foods. 

Yesterday, since I was making surprise meat, I looked back at what I’d written in my old notebook at Nonna’s house so long ago. It was dated June 2010! Seven years ago! It’s crazy and cool to think about what a different cook I am now compared to then. 

Immersed in my “big cook” yesterday, as I was cutting and stuffing the little holes in the surprise meat, I got lost in some deep thoughts. My Nonna learned to make surprise meat from her mom - my great-grandmother, Jennie Ferraro Romito, who was born in Italy and came to America in 1912 at the age of 22 with her husband and first son {She bore a total of 12 children(!!!!!) - 7 of whom survived, including my Nonna, Jacqueline, the youngest}. This got me to thinking - did my great-grandmother come up with this recipe herself? Or where did she get it from? Whose idea was it to stuff a piece of meat with all these little surprises? It’s kind of a weird thing to do and pretty time-consuming! My chef brain was thinking "there has to be a way to achieve the same flavor without all the stuffing," but my nostalgic self was more interested in the legacy of this recipe.

My great-grandparents' grave in Newell, Pennsylvania, which is where they lived.

My imagination took off - transporting me to my great grandmother’s first kitchen in Italy - or maybe her mother's kitchen where she learned to make this...? I started thinking about all the ingredients in an Italian setting: 

Olive oil. Maybe from the nearby hillsides? Did she make her own? I wonder if that's even possible to do at small scale... (adding it to the research list).
Onions and garlic. Surely she grew these herself. What was the growing season? Did she store them all year?
Beef. I’m sure she knew her butcher… it was probably a neighbor who lived down the street… maybe she even walked past the cows on her way to the village or wherever she went. Chuck roast is a less-expensive cut of beef. I wonder if meat was a special occasion food, or if this was a normal weekday dish…? (Nonna later confirmed on the phone that Jennie generally made this for a Sunday supper.)
Parsley. I feel 99.9% sure she had it growing outside, among lots of herbs.
Red wine. Very likely local, especially since she lived in the Abruzzo region which is where Montepulciano is grown.
Tomatoes. Again, I feel 99.9% positive she grew and canned her own. 
Time. She probably spent most of her days in the kitchen. :)
That’s it. Those are the ingredients in this dish. So simple.

Then I started thinking about the the beginnings and the trajectory of this recipe. I imagined her cooking in her kitchen one day. Maybe the piece of meat she was working with on that particular day had some openings in it. (There are usually some natural openings in this type of cut.) Maybe she decided to stuff some herbs in these openings, and then maybe she was bored and just decided to make some additional little holes. And then what if, when she served this for dinner that night, her husband, my greatgrandfather Nicola, was like “Jennie! This is the best meat you’ve ever made!” And then just like that she probably had to make it all the time! (My Nonna says her name was Jennie, but thinks it was an Americanized version of an Italian name - maybe Giovanna or Giacomina.) I wonder what kind of woman Jennie was. What was her own favorite food? Was she stuffing these surprises with all the little kids running around at her feet? Or a baby on her back? What did she do when she came to America? Could she still find all the ingredients?

Then I thought about Nonna learning it from her. And me learning it from Nonna. And me making it for my friends at an “Italian Feast” I threw a few years ago. And Heidi and Adam liking it so much that they remember that and have now requested it 2 years later when they have a new tiny human that they made and they could probably use some comfort food. And now I’m here, stuffing this meat and thinking about my great grandmother’s kitchen. And wishing I could ask her all these questions. And hoping that one day, maybe I’ll get to ask her…? I sure hope so!!

Food is powerful. Especially if and when you make it yourself. I’ll just leave you with that. Oh, and my recipe for surprise meat, just in case you want to channel my Italian great-grandmother and try it out yourself someday. Although, I think I’ll rename it "Carne Sorpresa" since that sounds much sexier :).

Carne Sorpresa (ie, “Surprise Meat”) 

Notes:
1. Regarding the name, I do not speak Italian - I just translated this on google and did 5 mins of research on Italian adjective/noun placement. So, if anyone knows Italian & has a better way to say this, please advise!
2. This is my own slightly adapted version based on my Nonna’s recipe. Family members, you may notice small changes.
3. I don't really expect many of you to make this, but if you do, maybe you'll have deep thoughts about your ancestors like I did while stuffing garlic parsley surprises into a hunk of animal muscle! 

Ingredients: 

• 3-4 lb beef: chuck roast, shoulder, or “English Cut”
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 medium yellow onion
• about 1/2 bunch of parsley
• 1 28oz can tomatoes - crushed, diced, or whatever you have
• about 1 cup red wine
• sprig of basil (if you have it)
• salt, pepper and olive oil

Equipment: dutch oven or large pot; this can also be done in an Instant Pot using the saute function and then slow cooker. Or you could pressure cook it as well - probably 45 mins.

Instructions:

1. Set up a nice, clean work surface and then open up your meat. (I like to open the butcher paper carefully and use it as my work surface that I can easily throw away after.) Season meat on both sides liberally with salt and pepper. Then wash your hands.
2. On a separate, clean cutting board, smash, peel and mince at least 3/4 the head of garlic, although you will probably need the whole thing. Yes, I know it’s a LOT of garlic. Rinse about 1/2 a bunch of parsley and pat dry, or wrap it in a kitchen towel and shake it out to dry it. Pick off the leaves. 
3. Bring about half of the garlic and parsley over to your meat station to start. (This is just because you’re going to contaminate the piles of parsley and garlic since you're touching the meat, so by starting with half and then adding more later as needed, just in case you chopped/picked too much, if you have extra you can save it for another use, whereas if you contaminated it with the raw meat, I wouldn’t recommend saving it.)
4. With a small, sharp knife, pierce + cut open little holes all over the meat, as many as you can fit. Stuff each one with a little garlic and a parsley leaf or two. When finished with one side, flip it over and repeat the process on the other side. You might think that you’ll hit all your holes, but I rarely ever pierce into an existing “surprise” - somehow there is a lot of room in the meat for surprises! Get more garlic + parsley from your uncontaminated pile as needed, and/or chop and pick more if you run out.
5. When finished finished with the meat, wash your hands well and on your clean cutting board, peel and dice the onion. 
6. Get out your dutch oven or large pot - the meat should fit in the pot so that the largest surface area of the meat touches the bottom of the pot, ideally with some extra room. Heat olive oil in the pot over medium high. Add the onion and cook for a few minutes until soft. Scoot onion to the sides of the pot, add a touch more oil, and add the meat. Allow to brown for a few minutes, then flip and brown on the other side. Add your wine, and let it cook off for a minute or two while you open the can of tomatoes. Then add the tomatoes. Stir/move the meat a bit so the liquids can get to the bottom of the pan. Scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen any brown bits. If using whole tomatoes, break them up a bit with your large spoon.
7. There should be enough liquid so that it comes about 3/4 of the way up the meat. If not, you can add a little water or more wine. Add a sprig of fresh basil if you have it.
8. Bring to a boil if it’s not bubbling already. Once bubbling, turn down to a simmer - there should be a small, slow but steady bubbling. Put the lid on, leaving a big crack for steam to get out.
9. Simmer for 2-4 hours, checking every 30 minutes or so after the 2 hour mark - cook until the meat is starting to falling apart. If the sauce seems too liquidy, remove the lid and simmer it uncovered to let it cook down a bit.  
10. Optional: When the meat is done, if you like a smoother sauce, you can remove the meat and then blend the sauce with an immersion blender to make it into more of a gravy. Otherwise, keep as is with the tomato and onion chunks.

Serving note: this is a rich and hearty dish. Growing up, we ate it at Nonna’s house along with spaghetti and meatballs and a Lebanese salad (mixed greens with fresh mint, tomatoes, feta, lemon juice, and olive oil). Nowadays, if I was serving this by itself, I might make roasted potatoes and a big salad, or maybe some broccoli or escarole, or perhaps some red-lentil pasta cooked simply with olive oil and fresh herbs. You want accompaniments with lighter flavors to balance out the richness and supremely garlic-y flavor of the meat. Or you could also stick it on a sandwich with some arugula and call it a day. 

breakfast obsession: three ingredient banana power pancakes

Making pancakes will forever hold a special place in my heart. For the few short years that I was an only child, my dad and I would make pancakes every Saturday morning. As a kid, I remember the magic of watching the soupy batter transform into a fluffy stack of deliciousness, the sizzle of the butter as batter hit griddle, and the excitement of "the flip" to find those crispy golden edges on the pancake underbelly. My favorite part of pancake making was the little dribbles of batter that would hit the hot griddle and become tiny bites of crispiness. I liked these so much that I my dad and I named them “dingle-hoppers,” and I requested we make as many of these baby pancakes as possible.

The sizzling sound of batter hitting griddle never fails to take me back to those happy Saturday morning memories with my dad… and that's probably one of the reasons I’ve been making these pancakes at least once a week since I discovered them a few months ago. Besides an excuse to reminisce, the simplicity of the ingredients, lack of measuring, and satisfying nature of these babies keeps me coming back week after week. Sure - some would argue they’re not comparable to real pancakes, but I think they’re just as good, especially because you can eat a full stack without feeling like you need a nap afterwards! Note that they do taste like banana, so if you don’t like bananas, they might be a no-go for you (but I say you should still try them!).

THREE INGREDIENT BANANA POWER PANCAKES
Recipe based on this guide from The Kitchn (although the olive oil + salt topping was my idea... I know it might sound weird but it's SO GOOD - give it a try!)

Ingredients:
- 1 banana, at least ripe enough to eat, but a brown one is fine too
- 2 eggs
- dash of cinnamon (I consider this an essential ingredient, but if you don't like cinnamon, you could certainly leave it out)
^I usually double this and make extra to eat the next day or for a snack

+ butter or neutral oil for cooking

To top it off, I recommend:
- olive oil + salt
... but you could also do nuts, yogurt, maple syrup, berries, or whatever you like!

Tools and stuff:
- medium bowl
- fork and spoon
- thin spatula for flipping
- griddle, cast iron pan(s), or other wide non-stick pans

Instructions:

1. Place banana(s) in a medium bowl and mash with a fork until it’s as liquified as possible. 
2. Add cinnamon and mix in.
3. Crack eggs into the bowl, right on top of the banana mixture. Using the fork, break the yolks and gently scramble the eggs until combined, trying not to dip down into the banana (but don’t worry if you do). Sometimes I add a pinch of salt here to help break up the eggs. Once the eggs are mostly scrambled, mix down into the banana and stir until fully combined. There might be some egg whites that don’t blend completely - don’t worry about it.
4. Heat up your griddle or cast iron/other nonstick pan on medium high. Lightly coat the griddle/pan with butter or cooking oil of your choice. 
5. Spoon batter onto the griddle using a normal size spoon. The batter will spread pretty thin so it’s best to keep the pancakes small. Allow the pancakes to cook for a minute or two (you can gently check the edges for done-ness), then carefully flip them. They are much more delicate than normal pancakes but as long as the first side is golden, they should flip just fine. 
6. Cook for another minute or so until done, then stack on a plate. Continue cooking pancakes, adding more butter/oil as needed to keep the pan lightly coated - this is what gives you the crispy edges! Note that because these pancakes are so thin, they cool pretty fast, so when you’re done with all the pancakes, you may need to rewarm them really quick on the hot griddle before eating.
7. When you’re ready to eat, arrange in a pile or stack, drizzle with olive oil and a pinch or two of salt. The pancakes are already a little sweet from the banana, so I love this savory topping, but you can definitely top with whatever you like!

Additional notes: 

1. I find that for one person, a double batch usually makes enough for two breakfasts plus a few “snack” pancakes, so adjust your quantities as needed depending who you're cooking for. The ratio is 2 eggs for every 1 banana - pretty easy! Store in an airtight container in the fridge and the next morning you can warm up in the toaster oven or pan in a few minutes.
2. I’ve experimented with adding a bit of baking powder at the same time as the cinnamon - it makes the pancakes rise nicely while cooking, but they lose the fluffiness as soon as you take them off the heat, so I left that out of this recipe, but feel free to try on your own (plenty of other ideas/suggestions in the Kitchn guide)! If you want to add other spices, make sure you add them to the banana BEFORE you add the eggs, otherwise you’ll get little clumps of powders, which are really annoying to break apart.
3. If you have a griddle, this will help make the pancake-making process quicker! If you’re like me and don’t have a griddle, I’d recommend using at least two pans going at once to speed the process. If you’re using cast iron, the good news is that the pan stays pretty clean, I just let it cool down, wipe excess oil with a paper towel, and call it a day!