Recipes: It's all jazz

As a musician, I have never played jazz, but in the kitchen... oh yeah. I can never just follow recipes. Often, I don't quite have one of the ingredients -- say, I might have powdered sugar but not granulated -- or maybe I don't have the kind of pan it calls for. No sweat. With a couple decades of cooking experience under my belt, I have at least some sense of how to wing these variations.

Besides, sometimes the recipe is in conflict with what is actually happening. It says "Cook 30 minutes until brown on all sides," but I can see with my own eyes that it is not anywhere near brown after 20 minutes. So I can choose: raise the temperature, or keep it the same but go well beyond 30 minutes. The best choice depends on what else is going on-- say, if lengthier cooking will dry it out too much.

Not that it always works. Some dishes are testaments to the precision needed in following the directions. Stray a bit and you pay. Over time, I've learned a little bit about which modifications are fatal or at least drastic, but there's always more to learn!

Recipes are nothing but guidelines. How can they be? They really bear little resemblance to the food that supposedly results from them. In fact, the dish includes some interaction from the cook.

The reason Aunt Millie's brownies never taste the same when you make them is very simple-- you made them, not Aunt Millie. They must be different. A trumpet solo by Wynton Marsalis is not going to sound identical to one by Dave Brubeck, even if they play the same notes.

For Thanksgiving dinner, I made chocolate cinnamon meringue. Perhaps not so traditional, but folks appreciate having a light option for dessert. And it came out darned good, if I do say so myself. Even though I only had dark brown sugar instead of light brown, used extra large eggs instead of large ones, and made the mini chocolate chips myself by slightly grinding frozen regular-sized chips. Oh, and I increased the chips slightly because I didn't include nuts as the recipe called for.