Incredible! And coming from someone who is so associated with French cooking, which mistakenly got turned into this pseudo-science for home cooks, with thermometers, precision measures, mechanical timers, so removed from the living realities of individual ingredients produced by nature.
Something you see in Italy all the time is (a) children being so much a part of the preparation of food so, as Phreddy points out, adult cooks already have the understaning that any “recipe” is ultimately subjected to a “feel test” or a “smell test” to determine “rightness” and also (b) no fear of invention at the stove (adding water, raising heat, lowering heat, etc) – although that means you do need to watch food and work with it, not just set a clock and walk away.
When I moved to Italy, I encountered a lot of ingredients I didn’t “understand” at all, and while I tracked down recipes, my Italian wasn’t good enough to get the subtleties of many of them. It dawned on me one evening that you can tell when things are going right with many Italian “recipes” by how the cooking food releases its aromas. That is so difficult to write down or convey in a recipe.
Bravo too that JP mentioned the seasonality of food, and how even in just one season the crop varies and you must be willing to work with the food as it has been given to you. Yay yay yay.
I tweeted it to everybody I know!
