A Good Recipe Is Not To Be Ignored...

If a recipe captivates your attention, then make it. If you love it, and can’t stop thinking about eating it again, then make it the same way twice. There are many types of cooks; slavish recipe followers and never-do-it-the-same improvisers. Be here’s the thing. Picasso was a master of anatomy before he started throwing a few geometric shapes on a canvas.

We think that once you make a recipe taste really good, deviate only if you don’t have a called-for ingredient on hand. Then experiment with potential substitutions. This beautiful platter of chicken wings comes from the chair-mans recipe. He made it, and we wrote everything down. We made it again and it tasted just like the best version of his recipe. Now here’s the problem. He never follows that recipe, and there is no guarantee that it’ll always taste delicious. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s not ok with us. If you know how to make it delicious, then stick to the plan. If you are a riffer or improviser at heart, then make sure you learn a few great cooking techniques so that you will at least have a somewhat predictable outcome in the end. If you eat with other folks regularly who, let’s say, love your crunchy sesame chicken wings, then they probably want it to taste the same the next time they eat it.