Perfecting a recipe

Herbie

Herbie

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How many of you work on a recipe until you perfect it (for your taste)?


This is something my husband has asked me to do for years as sometimes a dish would be really good and the next time not as good and I would not remember what I had done previously.

We were looking through some photographs the other day and there were photos of some of the Pakistani dishes I used to cook, but I can't remember what they were so am working from the pictures to identify the ingredients so I can try again.

I used to spend ages thinking about a recipe, cooking it, then getting bored and trying out something new. This was mainly when I worked full time and spent hours commuting each day. Now I have more time (less money) and will buy ingredients and play around with the same dish until I have it right to our taste.

Writing up recipes here on cookingbites really helps me focus. So in the past few weeks I have been working on humus, falafel and now dukkah and today (hopefully) gluten free pita. I'm picking a theme :)

Pakistani dishes will be next, I think.
 
Yes - I'm pretty fanatical but I do get bored if it doesn't work after a few attempts! I, too, find that writing up recipes for the Forum has helped me focus.

My curent mission is vegan burgers. I had a disaster earlier - I thought I'd add vegetarian suet to provide a nice fat content to a bean burger. All I can say is - do not try it! :sick: I'm now working on another attempt. If it works I'll post it up tomorrow...

Good luck with gluten free flatbread. I could have a bash at that - chickpea flour perhaps?
 
I spent quite some time experimenting with a chilli con carne recipe (obtained initially from "Supercook" (1982) - a fortnightly publication in UK). It is now geared to my taste with the proviso that determining the number of fresh chillis to use can be a headache given the different strengths of "like" peppers available here.

Chicken curry also took me a time to develop to my taste which I have now achieved. The basic recipe was by David Smith (an unlikely Indian name) which I've adapted. Again though, the strength of the chillis used affect the final dish's hotness.
 
Yes, I do this. I'll tweak a good recipe till I'm happy with it. I will also try to tweak a recipe that was 'yuck' to try and rescue it but I won't go overboard as you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
 
I have vamped and revamped, lol, and with main recipes and sides both, desserts, and smoothies also.
As well, I have really not quite settled on any one of my recipes yet, they are all open books and actually, I think they'll stay that way, in a constant state of adjustment... because that's truly just the way I tend to cook, I'm beginning to believe. I am one that is still trying out many new ingredients and that isn't afraid to do so, and when I'm in the kitchen preparing something, I"m always experimenting and adjusting flavors, their amounts and levels of prominence... so, each time I make the same recipe, it's never really truly the same, although I am learning to adapt things 'more to my liking', along the way, definitely. I think as we age we learn more about our own tastes, so there we go.

But, there are two dishes that I often making and often playing with these days (and I have been doing so for years now), and more than others... they would be my homemade pierogis, my hummus, and my wonton-filling. With the pierogies, I use different cheeses and adjust the dough recipe here and there, I've used roasted garlic for a batch rather than just simple fresh garlic, etc. With the hummus, I like experimenting with different lentils and beans as my base, different spices, and different textures too, as I make it in my 'Ninja' mini food processor. And then, the wonton-filling mix is always a blast to make because I really enjoy trying different foreign ingredients in general, and I get to play with sauces and spices, both ground meat and minced vegetables of so many types, and try to find a lovely sort of a balance within it all.

I think that 'tinkering' with recipes is the way to go! :okay:
 
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