The Culinary Rules

When cooking I want authenticity, I want to create something from nothing, that is why I have certain rules when it comes to recipes.

1. All Ingredients Must Be Easily Found

Some of the more uppety cookbooks have ingredients that there is no way I'll be able to find, even in a well stocked grocery stores or world markets. That is why I'm limiting my cooking to foods that we can all make, thankfully Canada ia multicultural so ingredients from other countries is not going to be too difficult with a little bit of hunting and the occasional stink eye from the regulars. I'm talking about the foo-foo nouveau chefs who put "wild squirrel cheeks in truffle sauce" in their books and expect any of us not to roll our eyes. Might be fun to post some of these up though just for gits and shiggles.

2. No Healthy Conscious Substitutes

There may be a need to substitute or omit some ingredients from time to time, but when a recipe asks for whole milk, I'm assuming it comes from a cow and not a soy bean. For the sake of authenticity and getting as close to what the chef had in mind, I would like to stay as true to the ingredients as I can. No low-fat, vegan alternatives unless this is specifically what the recipe asks for.. There will always be an issue when making recipes from countries with no GMO as the food quality is much better there IMO.

3.  Everything From Scratch

Well, maybe not everything. I'm more talking about recipes that include sausages, pre-made puff pastries, cans of soup, etc. Sure your food is going to taste good if you buy the pre-made flavour base. I don't want to make food taste better by adding better tasting food, I want to make it out of the raw ingredients, from scratch, so I know exactly what is in it and I know I can reproduce it without having to rely on some pre-prepared ingredients. Maybe I'll give condiments a pass, but I've made my own mayo and it is a thing of beauty.

4. Simple Accessible Tools

I do not own a sous-vide machine or even a stand up mixer. Although I do have a food processor (daddy loves you) an air fryer and slow cooker, but that's about it. If a recipe calls for the use of a stand alone, uncommon tool, I'll exclude it. I'd love to buy an ice cream machine, but it would have to make bread, self clean and do my taxes for that amount of money.

5. There Is No Five

Four rules doesn't look too cool so I made this one. I'm sure as I'm going through recipes something else will come up. But I'll reserve the space.