OK. Here’s the deal. You will mess up. You will burn stuff. It will taste bad. But you can’t learn and grow as a real home cook if you don’t try. Come on! You can always order out for pizza if it’s a total disaster. (That reminds me, you should have a fire extinguisher within easy reach in your kitchen. I won’t have you burning the house down on my watch.)
Here are some tips to make improvising recipes easy, painless and tasty.
1. Choose a genre of food and stick with common ingredients in that food group.
For example: Italian. Basically anything that goes well on a pizza- tomatoes, onions, garlic, mushrooms- will go great in a pasta sauce. You can take any type of pasta… and I mean ANY type from Spaghetti to Macaroni to Cannelloni… whip up a pan of sauce with your favorite pizza ingredients and pour it on. You can even create baked pasta dishes by layering any type of pasta and sauce in a casserole dish. Just add some mozzarella and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
2. Study up on your selected genre.
Go to any reputable food website, search for your genre (or click on these links: Italian, French, American, Portuguese, Moroccan). You will find a plethora of great recipes. But do NOT use them. READ them. Yes, READ at least 10 recipes from beginning to end and learn the common ingredients for that genre along with the cooking methods and any special equipment you might need.
3. Cook something.
That’s it. If you’re worried the first time, print a couple of recipes and mishmash them together. Keep the phone and the pizza number nearby and you’re set.
If you’re still worried about improvisation, my next entry will be a recipe: One Really Great Tomato Sauce.
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