When I cook I work very loosely from a recipe if it is something new to me or I don't use a recipe at all if it is something I already know how to make. My technique is constant taste testing from the beginning to the end of a roux, sauce or any other mixture of ingredients while continually adjusting the seasonings until I feel they are perfect. Thats why I am usually not very hungry by the time I finish cooking something. How do you cook? Do you follow a recipe by the letter or do you experiment the way I do?
recipes are just a guide that should be modified based on what you know and your personal tastes. if it calls for high heat and you're not comfortable going there then cook on medium to medium high a little longer. never be shy about changing the ingredient mix to suit your own tastes. i modify recipes all the time.
With alot of things I just kind of make up my own recipes. Just go with what I think would taste good, and it usually turns out delicious.
one last thing on cooking by taste. it works fine when you are making stews, gumbos, sauces, soups, chili, and things like that; however, when baking be very careful. there is more chemistry going on in baking and altering key ingredients can result in less than desirable results (i.e., i being the genius who put too much buttermilk in my biscuits last nite and had to add more flour and work it in......what happens is the more you work the biscuit dough the tougher they are.....still turned out ok but not as good as they could have been).
That is how I invariably cook. I never follow a recipe to the letter. But there is a danger: several years ago I made the best potato salad I have ever eaten. Just threw in all kinds of stuff from the fridge and pantry - green olives, crumbled seasoned feta cheese, a dash of this and a dash of that. The next time I tried to make it, I couldn't remember what all I had put in or in what amounts, and the next effort wasn't nearly as good - nor have been any of the ones since.
That is why Good Eats is such a good show. Once you learn the science of cooking you can apply it an any other area.
