recipe? what's that????

Tonight for dinner we had eggplant parmigiana (I was just going to call it "parmesan" but blogger marked that as incorrect spelling and suggested "parmigiana" instead. Fancy). It was dreamy.

I don't have a picture. After a day of playing GM and a dog walk and cooking dinner, I was so starving that the plate was half empty before I considered that I might write a blog about it.

"What's so great about eggplant parm," you may find yourself asking... Well, it is delicious. The eggplant looked glorious at the grocery yesterday and I decided it needed to be served. It's crispy on the outside and creamy in the middle. I am completely infatuated by it, despite 8+ years working almost solely in Italian food which has left me generally turned off by a lot of things involving garlic, basil, tomato sauce or pasta. "Please can we have pizza?" Pete will beg. "I had pizza for lunch... again..." I will sigh.

"Wow Lia, I'm totally sold, give us the recipe!!!"

And that brings me to the real subject of this blog. I feel like the most frustrating thing I do as a cook is pay hardly any attention to what I put into a meal in order to make it turn out well. I didn't get far enough in my culinary education to tell you why things work for me... but most often, they just do. I've never in my life used a 5 ingredient recipe because even if I did, I would open up my spice drawer and throw in some other stuff (that should work out well). You know those blogs that you read with a fabulous recipe and as you scroll through the comments, you find that comment (you know the one I am talking about, there is at least one on EVERY recipe posted online, ever). It reads something like, "This is such a great recipe!!! I just.... (and then they list 17 changes and substitutions and why they made them) and it turned out amaaaazing! This is the best recipe for ______ EVER!)

Those people bug me. Me! Who is admitting to being... less than great at following recipes (except when my career depended on it. I have never altered a company recipe while on the clock, but I did learn to cook in a commercial kitchen that would often just list the ingredients and describe the process and let me go at it.) But if I were to post a comment below a recipe I try it would probably look like this. "Great recipe. I didn't really measure, I made some adjustments, I was out of a couple of ingredients so I switched them.... I can't really remember what I did, but it turned out awesome. Thanks for the inspiration."

We eat great around here. But could I tell you how to do it at your own home? Probably not. Could I make it exactly the same again... eh, probably not. I feel snobby saying that cooking just comes naturally to me. Its funny that even genetically, it is kind of half and half who could cook because of a lot of concentration and science to make things work and who just threw things together. I grew up around both. My dad's mom, cooked with recipes. Everything I can remember from her kitchen was awesome and wonderful (case in point, hot fudge pudding cake, mmm). But looking back at her procedure, there was always a recipe propped up in her recipe book holder. I possess her "Joy of Cooking" now and there are handwritten notes where she adjusted some recipes for high altitude. "Oh grandmom..." I think, "I have never taken such efforts to adjust for altitude, nor have I had a problem. What's the big deal?" (She did live about 1,000 feet higher from sea level than I do... that could be something) I admired her cooking as much as I admired her organized recipes and cookbooks. That I still aspire to. But since I don't really use them, it is hard to be motivated to organize them. And then there is my other grandma. My mom's mom. I've never seen her use a recipe. Ever. I can remember one particular visit to her house and enjoying chicken fingers with honey mustard for lunch, pancakes and waffles in the morning... never a recipe. Never even a break in the flow of the conversation as she mixed and heated and created and served... I gained experience in both. I started in a couple of kitchens in Fort Collins during college where chefs just kind of shouted imprecise instructions at me while doing something completely different. But at home I used recipes to become familiar with the things I wanted to cook. At school I learned about getting nutritional information for recipes, costing recipes... And I moved to places like the Olive Garden and a 5 star 5 diamond hotel where everything was a carefully formulated recipe that was expected to be followed to the letter. I never cooked at the O.G. though. And at that hotel, they referred to measurements but did not provide very many implements with which to measure. And since I didn't carry them in my knife bag (where I was expected to bring any sort of instrument I may need to complete my shift), I kinda... fudged some of those.

So back to tonight. I thought the tomato sauce was amazing. I made it from scratch. But that was... a month or so ago for a night of spaghetti and meatballs. (the leftover has been in the freezer since) I remember that I pureed it because I used like... every vegetable that was about to be trash in my fridge. I think there were tomatoes, onions, maybe some mushrooms, some squash of some kind.... I added canned tomatoes (or maybe tomato paste, I remember having some leftover about that time), broth? and some spices... maybe some basil from our garden? I don't know. I wish I could clone it. Or at least make it again.

Pete mentioned that this version of eggplant was particularly good. Well, it was a good one from the produce section. But I also didn't have enough breadcrumbs to use them solely. I added nutritional yeast and hemp seeds to supplement. I only used a dip in egg whites to help the coating stick, not the traditional flour, egg, breadcrumb procedure I usually follow simply out of laziness.

But then, by the time we ate, I was starving and I think he was too. Maybe that is all it was.

Its hard to be sure. I wish I could give someone the recipe so they could try it out and let me know how it is really.

But alas! The recipe does not exist. Like so many others that have been delightfully invented and carried out in my home, it is just a figment of a full belly and many a conversation until I make the next "best eggplant parmesan ever."