The Ricecapades: Confessions of a Haphazard Chef

(As promised, some lighter reading this time around!)

I love cooking. And several people in my life (my mother, my grandmother, even my first boyfriend) went to great pains to set me on the right track and instruct me in that mysterious art of turning raw eggs, dry beans, and baking chocolate into omelets, soups, and cakes. In fact some of my most cherished moments past and present are exchanges of recipes and cooking secrets, but sometimes I do get the feeling I’m probably the most recalcitrant student who ever entered a kitchen.

You know how everybody jokes that if you put a sign up next to a red button that says, “Do not push,” you’re effectively guaranteeing that the next person who stops by will reach right out and push the button? I’m rather like that in the kitchen: let a recipe say, “Fold, do not stir,” and I’ll immediately start to wonder, “What would happen if I stirred?” And so I do. Of course, if the recipe had said, “Do not stir or your meringues will turn to toffee,” I would have folded. I learn either by thorough explanation or by (sometimes calamitous) experimentation—those are apparently my only two methods.

One of the reasons for my cavalier attitude toward instructions, I suppose, is that following them does not guarantee smooth sailing. Take, for instance, the instructions on the rice bag: “Fluff with a fork.” The first time I tried that I hit a pocket of steam that burned my knuckles. Instinctively I pulled my hand away, with the fork still in my grip, thus flinging sticky rice ALL OVER THE KITCHEN. I was cleaning rice off the stove, the floor, the walls, the cabinets, and even the window for a week. Laughing the whole time, by the way. More recently, an attempt to pour rice one-handed out of the bag and into a measuring cup resulted in at least half a cup of rice scattering in all directions across the counter and the floor. Hence the title of this post. At least it wasn’t sticky this time. Apparently I should just be forbidden from cooking with rice—though I have to say I never burn it to the bottom of the pan!



But my other reason for disregarding instruction is the sheer joy of experimentation. I’m like a kid with a chemistry set, only I get to eat what I make (if it’s palatable) instead of just having to clean it up afterwards. What’s the fun in following a recipe when you think you might have a better (i.e. tastier, or maybe faster) way of doing it? Sometimes your way turns out to be the wrongest way possible, but you never know until you try.

Therefore, I substitute shamelessly, and I measure with the precision of a chimpanzee. My excuse for the first is that while I lived in Philadelphia and was cooking on a shoestring budget, it became a bit of a game of mine to substitute or completely replace at least one ingredient in every recipe I made. My excuse for the second is that when I was in Ireland I had no measuring cups or spoons and learned to cook using the hit-or-miss “eyeball” method. One steers clear of messing around too much with the chemically reactive ingredients, of course (yeast is yeast and baking soda is baking soda, and neither—I have discovered—is the same thing as baking powder), but everything else is fair game! Real cooks will no doubt be horrified by my propensity to substitute a tablespoon of “Italian Seasoning” for pretty much any savory spice I don’t have on hand or have never heard of. “Use 1 C butter, not margarine.” Why not? In goes the Country Crock! I should note that I have never had a disaster caused by substituting margarine for butter. “Add a dash of cayenne pepper.” Is a dash bigger or smaller than a pinch? Shake the spice bottle over the pot until something comes out. I should also note I’ve never had a disaster caused by using a pinch instead of a dash—though shaking spice bottles without a shaker lid can, indeed, cause catastrophes.

Here, for your entertainment and not necessarily for your reference, are some substitutes I have tried in recent memory, for better or for worse:

Honey is NOT a satisfactory substitute for syrup when applied to pancakes. Syrup, however, can be a tasty substitute for molasses in bread dough.

Italian Seasoning, however flexible, is NOT good in three-bean salad that calls for fresh basil.

Skim milk CAN stand in for whole milk, whatever they tell you—nothing is going to blow up or fail to bake because it’s got less fat in it. It may turn out less thick or less moist, but that’s what you’ve got to expect when you’re cooking with milk-flavored water instead of the real thing!

Likewise, I’ve never, ever been able to tell the difference in baking and cooking with non-fat sour cream as opposed to full fat. Though maybe I’m a philistine.

Canned chicken works just fine in pies and chicken salad—any dish that has enough other flavors to disguise the slight tuna-fishiness that the can leaves behind.

If you’re going to substitute cocoa powder for baking chocolate, use shortening and NOT vegetable oil if the chocolate is supposed to set (like in icing)! I had a very droopy cake result from using oil instead of shortening. Think of that scene in Sleeping Beauty where Fauna the fairy decorates the cake before she bakes it.

Blueberry pie filling is NOT the same as canned blueberries. Pie filling can, however, make a very nice pancake or bread loaf—but it will turn out the color of Barney the Purple Dinosaur. So will your teeth.

And of course we’ve already established that salt and baking soda do not accomplish the same thing when added to boiling pasta. (See my blog from last September.)

I make myself out to be a real dunce in the kitchen, but I promise I actually make very tasty things—or at least they’re tasty to me. And I’ve only given myself food poisoning once! How else are we supposed to discover new things? (Though suddenly I’m foreseeing a precipitate drop in the number of invitations I receive to potluck dinners….)