A Note About My Cooking Style

As I've been writing my recipe posts, I've realized that there's something very important I should discuss with my readers - my cooking style.  My cooking style is often reflected in the way I write my recipes, especially when I note that you should experiment with different spices or proportions of ingredients to suit your own tastes.  This also means that my recipe measurements are the best approximation of the amount of an ingredient I use - so it's perfectly fine if you decide to use a little less or more of something, or substitute an ingredient for something you are more familiar with, or simply add something extra.  In fact, I encourage this approach.  You aren't cooking for me (although that would be very sweet of you) - you are cooking for yourself.  Cook what will make you happy...cook like an Italian.

My cooking style is the result of growing up surrounded by Italian-style cooking.  If you don't know how that works, let me give you a basic run-down.

-  Cooking involves using your hands - be prepared to get messy.  Become "one with the food," so to speak.  When you put your heart and soul into a dish, it will show.

-  Measurements are given as "pinch, dash, eeehhhhhh that looks like enough."

-  Recipes are for the weak at heart.

-  Meals are once-in-a-lifetime events.  The proportions will always be slightly different, so you will never be able to exactly replicate a dish.  That's ok - it makes cooking an adventure!  It also helps you to cherish each and every meal.

-  No two people will cook the same way, or use the same amount of a particular ingredient - this is what makes Nonna's pasta sauce hers, and why, try as I might, the same exact "recipe" will never let me make Nonna's sauce - only my sauce.

-  The only way to learn to cook is to roll up your sleeves, and get into that kitchen.

To sum it all up is a quote that I have hanging in my kitchen: "Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon."



So what's the moral of the story?  Read a recipe I've written and try it out.  Add more or less of a spice.  Substitute olive oil for butter for a different taste.  Don't go out and buy ground beef - chop up some of the chicken that's already sitting in your fridge.  Take my recipe and make it yours...make it work with the ingredients already sitting in your pantry.  Yes, it's scary the first couple of times you try this because it may not work out.  But you'll never get there if you don't give it a shot!  In the words of Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"