Today, I’ll be discussing how to make a recipe. You might think it’s really easy, just write some steps down and give them to people but in reality there is so much more work that goes into the process before you even write down the list of ingredients.
You have to factor in certain things. You need to think about the colour, the flavour, the texture, the smell. You want to create a dish that’s pleasing to all the senses and is unique, otherwise who is going to to try your recipe? I’ll structure this post in true food blogger format, with a whole load of exposition before I get to the important content. Why? Because it’s 9pm and I think it’s a good idea.
It was a cold, winter’s day in London, and I sat by the window staring pensively outside, a mug of hot chocolate in my hand. Looking down at sweet drink, I thought that it would be well complimented with a chocolate fondant, complete with fruits and a caramel sauce. The word chocolate comes from the Aztec word xocoatl, which refers to a bitter drink made from cacao beans. Cacao is pronounced, ca COW. Ow, I say to myself because I’ve accidentally spilt my hot chocolate on my leg because I was too busy thinking pensively. As the snow falls, I notice how it contrasts with my leg, which is painfully hot. But the pain is not as much as the mental pain I’m going through of really wanting a chocolate fondant. The recipe I have attached is coincidentally not for a chocolate fondant, or for hot chocolate, but for making a recipe, because what are we, if not recipes for living?
Ingredients
- Time
- Patience
- More food ingredients than you think you’ll need
- A device with internet connection
- Paper and pen
- People willing to eat your various drafts
Methodology
- Think about the dish you want to start developing and make the most basic version of it. If you want chocolate chip cookies, find the most generic chocolate chip cookie recipe you can and make it.
- Write a review of what you’ve just made on the paper, with everything good on one side, and the content that needs improvement on the other.
- Make a note of what you want to change to make the recipe suit your tastes more. If you want the cookie to be softer, make a note of that, and write it on the paper.
- Figure out what in the recipe you need to adjust to make the recipe suit your tastes. This is when you experiment and add different ingredients. You’ll have to research what ingredient does what, which is where the internet connection comes in.
- After each completed dish, make a note of what went right and what went wrong and keep adjusting until you’re satisfied. This is where the patience comes in. If you’re like me, you’ll measure everything down to the teaspoon until the recipe is perfect and your mum hates you for wasting ingredients.
- You’ll probably have a lot of wasted products so be sure to give it away or eat it if you have the appetite for that.
If you follow these steps properly, you’ll be well on your way to developing and cultivating your own recipes. Seriously though, recipe development is fun and the process can be more fun than the eating. (At least for me.) I think spending ages obsessing over minute details is what will give your dishes and meals the refinement and the edge over people. Just ask my family. It took a year (between being busy with work, uni and sleep) to perfect the jerk spiced lamb dish, and I went through maybe 5 different versions of it until I found a combination that I loved.
Thanks for reading, have a lovely day 🙂