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comment by someguyfromcanada
someguyfromcanada  ·  3009 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Metaphoria, my blog, is now up!

As little as possible. I just want to figure out the timing needed and adjust any ingredients/spices if I think the recipe can be improved upon.





user-inactivated  ·  3009 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I have this problem some of the times. What helps you figure the timing out?

someguyfromcanada  ·  3009 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That is a tough question. Experience is the best way of course but If I am doing something new I tend to write down my cooking plans and work backwards from when I want everything to come together. (eg. - 4 hours: make broth; -45 minutes: chop onions and garlic; -30: warm broth; -35: start risotto; -2: add truffles; -1: add Parmesan). Then I put the instructions for all the dishes in order so everything comes together on time. That will also let me know when I need someone to help as some tasks have to be done at the same time. I keep these plans to use in the future as well. And right before I start I will change the minus times into exact clock times so I do not have to do math in my head as I cook. (eg. -45 becomes 7:00; I have a bad habit of inviting people over at a reasonable time and then getting caught up in conversation and drinks so I tell people when they come in that I have eg. 55 minutes of work to do so that they can tell me to get off my ass and start cooking at a decent hour.)

Recipes are also only used as general guidelines and I like to adjust things like spices or cooking times to my liking so sometimes it says eg. cook for 40 minutes but I would find out that in my oven it is better for 35 or 45 minutes. Or I find that something can be done ahead of time and the taste does not suffer if I let it sit.

Sometimes it could also be something as basic as thinking I could get an ingredient easily but it turned out that it was way too expensive or it was impossible or very hard to get so I needed a day or so to adjust my plans or find the ingredient. So if I look for it the day before I have 24 hours to solve any problem that may arise.

user-inactivated  ·  3007 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks. I'll see if I'm to make use of that soon enough.

On the sidenote, it's amazing how varied and off-topic discussions and conversations on Hubski can be. Here we are, talking about how to prepare for a massive cook-off under the flag of me advertising my blog. That's cool as ice. :)