Cooking Experiments

The rule I know but somehow cannot learn is: one experiment at a time. If you are trying something new, an interesting recipe with one of those awesome pictures and the directions say "beef, pork, chicken, or duck..." it is probably not good to say "Duck! Why didn't I think of that!?" New recipe. Stick to the first three.  And if you are operating from the this was really good at that restaurant/Barbara's house/ the food festival in Boston you are in even more danger.

First make the dish as close to the one you were so impressed with first. Because you will learn things from that. Do not switch in the duck or the salmon, and dear God not the the prawns or the shrimp on your first attempt.  I say this to you with great severity, because you should know this, you stupid person. And also because I keep getting this wrong forty years out. 

Next, because you agree with me and know that I am right but find yourself doing it anyway I will tell you the next rule. Do not even consider a second experiment.  This is not only because you double the chances of something not being quite right for unexplained reasons, though that should be enough, you fool, you fool. It also doubles the chances that you will not have quite the right ingredients. You always have both kinds of soy sauce, or a little smoky bacon in the back, or (almost) fresh rosemary in a little bag in the cheese drawer, leftover from a few days, week, okay week-and-a-half, uh, three weeks ago...gee, where is that now...

I admit that I have had culinary experiments where I am on my fourth substitution - but not terrible because the third and fourth ones were ingredients where I had two tablespoons but not a third and zipped in some worcestershire/lemon juice/almond flour instead - but these have been rare.  Hardly ever have I done this. And hardly ever was I in a hurry so that I decreased the time for cooking and upped the temperature 25 degrees.

It occurred to me that there was a parallel from my theater education and likely there are parallels in every field. Do the simple thing first.  See how that went. In theater I was competent in acting and literature before I took a single course.  Not brilliant, but... But in Theatre 202 (second semester: technical theater), we had to design costumes for a something, then design a set, then a lighting design. They told us to keep it simple, and in fact insisted on it.  Design a box set. Something like Chekhov, or if you want something Significant and Serious, Synge or Miller (yawn). Not I-think-"Macbeth"-on-playground-equipment-would-be-so-deep. Costume something that other people have actually heard of and you might be asked to do if you are ever stuck being the costume designer for a light opera company in Des Moines...not a 1952 Scandinavian novel that no one has ever made into a playscript. Or light the basic set with little equipment - because as the high school drama coach you will have no budget - for Tennessee Williams, not Maeterlinck.  You ain't there yet, dude.  You ain't playin' at that level.

Let me point out, in case you missed it, that the bad examples above were not made up.  Okay, I was 18.  So sue me. Though as I turned 22 for my final project I was still attempting to be Ionesco or David Garrick, and going down in flames. 

I can see it in the career I eventually had as well. Don't give the intern the unclear-diagnosis murderer as a therapy training ground.  8th-grade Home Ec was right: sew a drawstring bad. Cook biscuits.