One of my pet peeves recently reared its ugly head: Poorly written and/or edited recipes. Especially when printed in food and/or wine related magazines, it’s just unacceptable. When I was working for Wine Enthusiast Magazine, I discovered why these recipes could sometimes look so wrong – they’re written by restaurant chefs.
Why would this pose a problem? Reason 1: typically, restaurant chefs don’t write recipes. Their expertise is making the food. Reason 2: The recipes these are based off can have a yield of “serves 25” or “serves 50” Frequently, proportions can’t just be cut in half or a sixth or more without needing to make other modifications.
An even bigger pet peeve is when non-food magazines print recipes – and badly. If someone is getting a recipe from People magazine, that person is most likely not a seasoned cook. This means that EXTRA care should be taken to make sure the recipe is clean, concise, CORRECT and printed WITHOUT typos.
In People magazine’s April 27, 2009 issue, there is recipe printed on page 94 from a Mario Batali cookbook. Here are my biggest issues with this recipe [that’s printed for non-cooks]:
• The quantity for the Linguini pasta is 1¼ lb. to feed 4 people. Noone is going to open or buy two boxes of pasta to get this quantity. Come on people, scale the recipe so it makes sense and people will actually have a chance at making it correctly.
• Since it doesn’t say otherwise, I have to assume that the pasta is dried from a box (as opposed to fresh). Therefore, the cooking time of 1-2 minutes is ridiculous. I’m assuming they meant 11-12 minutes (which is standard for a dried linguini).
For someone who doesn’t know how to cook or doesn’t have confidence in their cooking abilities, how do you think they’re going to feel when they’re pasta is crunchy and essentially raw??
I have nothing against People magazine at all – in fact, it’s one of my favorite guilty pleasures. But please, take a few extra minutes to proof these. I wouldn’t want to see Mario mad.
No comments:
Post a Comment