Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
You had to, didn't you?
Now she just wonders where I 'learned to cook like this, as I have never had any practice.' Well, I just follow the recipes, and I find out how long each ingredient takes to prepare. Then I order them from longest to shortest time needed, so they are all done at the same time. I set my timer on when to start with the next ingredient, not to how long an ingredient needs to cook/soak/prepare/whatever.
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Not me. I barely use a timer--pretty much only for baked goods in the oven. Even then I eyeball the results. Get done on time? If they are done, I start serving them or I put them in the toaster oven on "keep warm" until the other stuff is done. I'm not a perfectionist in the kitchen; I'm essentially there to eat! I fling food into the pan while I'm still chopping other things. I may or may not have a salad started whilst the stuff in the pan cooks. Once the salad is done, we are likely to eat it while I finish cooking the other parts. Husband cooks too. He is often outside grilling the main meat while I am inside making sweet potato fries/chips. Just yesterday the pasta salad was done long before the pork chops so we had a bit of the salad while we waited for the grill to finish its job. Then we had more with the pork chops and katsu sauce (the katsu sauce was from a jar so no prep needed). Dessert was peanut butter chocolate chip cookies--I put those in after we were done eating while we did the dishes. When the timer beeped, I checked them, decided they were a little soft so left them in the oven, but turned off. They were cooled about five minutes after we finished the dishes so I served them up on a plate.
That's a pretty typical style dinner for us. When we have company, we're more formal, but not by much. I tend to serve an appetizer or finger food to keep everyone occupied while I finish cooking or get everything in order. Everything in order can mean various things...
I can be a real stickler for organization on some things (travel plans, for example.) But when it comes to cooking and gardening it's more like a random number generator. Anything can happen! Here's a blog post I did a long time ago on me following a recipe (the post happens to have a link to a fiction book that I was reading at the time, and it's an associate link so if that puts you off, you've been warned.) I started out intending to follow the recipe, but yanno. Things HAPPEN.
http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/hob...n-improvision/