Turkey Success!
We hosted Thanksgiving at our house for the first time this year, and since my mother-in-law offered to cook just about everything (yes!), all I needed to do was cook the turkey. I'll admit it was daunting at first, but I had lots of good advice floating around my head, including some from our very own Chef Sam, and the built-in excuse that I'd never made a turkey before, so how good could they expect it to be? [read on...]
Amazingly, the turkey turned out great! And now I'm thinking that the whole trauma around cooking turkeys may just be a big conspiracy designed to intimidate cooks and impress guests. Of course, I may have just lucked out--I'll let you know next Thanksgiving.
In the meantime, the success of my improvisational cooking inspired me to create an entire new category of recipes: Approximate Recipes. While a lot of people are loyal to their cookbooks, there are also a lot of other people who like to make things up as they go along. Here's a happy alternative for people willing to play with their food.
Approximate Recipes are born out of dishes that we've made up, altered, thrown together and been happy with. We reconstruct them as best we can, and then let you feel your way around the recipes. Add what you want, leave out what doesn't suit you, make your changes and then feel free let us know what you did by commenting on the recipe. We look forward to hearing from you, and to learning for your own kitchen experiments!
(Oh yeah--here's the approximate recipe for the Lemon-Garlic Roasted Turkey!)