Molly Stevens Why Recipes Don't Work...

We caught up with the one and only Molly Stevens--author, co-author, or editor of many cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winning All about Braising.  She's also a contributing editor at Fine Cooking and teaches cooking classes throughout the country.  She provided us with a rare insight--from a cooking teacher's perspective--on why cookbooks can only take us so far.

I met a colleague in Washington, DC recently, and when he arrived from the airport, he couldn't wait to tell me about a conversation he had on the plane. On his flight in, the woman next to him noticed he was reading a food magazine and she started up a conversation. Turns out she loves to read about food, and she bragged about her 1000-plus-page scrapbook that she had filled with her favorite recipes from various cooking magazines. My colleague innocently asked if she had cooked all those recipes. "Oh no!" she blurted, "I don't cook-maybe someday I'll get around to it."

Ever since hearing about the "scrapbook non-cook", I can't help but wondering what role, if any, recipes play in inspiring people to cook. We have more recipes at our fingertips today than ever before. Even if you don't have a personal cookbook library or a catalogue of cooking magazines, an infinite number of recipes sit only a google search away. And yet evidence keeps piling up that cooking skills are being lost and that, as a result, we eat more and more of our meals away from home.

The truth is recipes can only go so far in teaching someone to cook-or encouraging someone to even try. Even the most basic recipes are filled with coded language (sear, deglaze, blanch, etc), assumptions and leaps of instruction.  Certainly some recipes are easier to follow than others, but no recipe can cover every little detail of kitchen knowledge you need to make you a better cook. Over the years I've heard far too many stories from people (often students in my classes) who have tried recipes and failed, and, here's the part that upsets me the most, they often indict themselves and their lack of cooking skills. I don't blame people for feeling discouraged after investing time in shopping, money in ingredients, more time in cooking, and possibly even inviting people over adding an element of embarrassment to the mix-it's enough to drive anyone to the nearest prepared foods department of their local market.

As a cooking teacher and someone who writes recipes for a living, this leaves me in a sort of quandary. While I do my best to include instructional detail in my recipes (making me too long-winded and causing my editors to pull their hair out), the reality is that the best way to learn to cook is simply start cooking and keep cooking. If you can find someone who knows how to make a dish you like (and it's a someone whose company you enjoy), ask them to teach you and then start making it yourself. Just like learning to play the piano, you need to learn the basics and practice before you're ready for a full-course symphony. Find a dish you like, for instance, risotto, and start making it, and keep making it until you can make it without a recipe. That is, after all, the sign of a truly good cook, one who approaches the making of a meal with a sort of cavalier confidence and without recipes. Once you have a few basics down, then it's time for recipes-and they will work, because you will know how to make them work.