In a recent article I talked about bravery in the kitchen. After speaking with my Aunt, well, my favorite Aunt as she wants to be known 🙂 she agreed. In the end, it is only food. Food has been experimented on since the beginning of time and I would guess a good percentage of food has ended up in the trash.

Many of us grew up with the mantra not to waste food, and this is a good rule to live by. However, the creative cook cannot survive if they worry about ruining food while they try to create new dishes.

One comment I get a lot when I present a dish that people enjoy is “I have never had this quite this way before!”

To me, that is a compliment. Many people do not always want to try brand new things, but are comforted by familiar recipes. This is when taking an old recipe and making small changes can make it shine.

How does one go about this? Well, it has been my experience that the first time I try and create something, I follow the recipe to the letter and see how it tastes. Ninety nine percent of the time I usually find I want to add this, to alter that. The next time I make it, I play around with my ideas. Every time I make the dish, I change things until I get it the way I want.

Sure, there is some risk to this approach. I have actually thrown out a forty dollar rib roast when I completely over spiced it so that every bite was like chewing on a slab of kosher salt. However, that forty dollars was well spent in the end. I learned something that probably would have cost ten times that much to learn at a culinary school.

The next time I prepared the dish, I altered my spicing and created a wonderful recipe. It was so delicious, I have had no need to really alter it since. Sure, on occasion I will fool with it a bit, but I already know that if I am making it for an important dinner, I have a unique recipe already in the bag.

The lesson here is, do it once by the book, then the next time, do it the same way except add your creativity! After all, that is the best ingredient to any dish.