I am going to share something that may or may not shock the cooks out there in the blogosphere: I don’t like to follow recipes.
I know… it’s kind of weird for someone who loves food and food blogs as much as I do. I have good intentions… really I do. I have a huge list of recipes that I want to try that just gets bigger the more blogs I read, but my problem is this: every time I start something, I realize that there’s an ingredient in it that I hate (like raisins). Or room to make it closer to my tastes (I like everything spicy). Or a way to make it lower in fat or calories. Or a way to make it HIGHER in fat or calories. Sometimes I realize I just made a mistake and didn’t buy what I was supposed to, or I bought too much of something. Sometimes, I just say, “well I don’t FEEL like doing it your way.”
Some recipes were built for improvising, like Jaden’s Slow-Cooked Salmon and most recipes for soup and chili. Ree’s recipe for Asian Noodle Salad was like that, and I love her for it. I didn’t have the spinach, I didn’t FEEL like using Napa cabbage (mostly because what the heck is a single girl going to do with two heads of cabbage?). I had just run out of olive oil, but I had some of that other mysterious “vegetable” oil (what kind of vegetable, I ask you?). I also felt like having something hot, so I didn’t rinse and cool the noodles… I just threw them in with the rest of the veggies, along with a touch of pasta cooking water. And I wanted to use more veggies than pasta… so I did. And you know what? It was still amazing. Some recipes just can’t be made badly, no matter what you do to them.
I saved some of the veggie mix and ate it with extra dressing for lunch the next day. Also amazing.