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The Formation of Family Recipes
Dec. 15th, 2022 06:14 amOkay, this is unlikely to ever actually become a handed-down family recipe because I'm unlikely to ever be in a position to have children.
But Mathfriend observed a couple of nights ago that it's interesting how quickly we've codified what we were making for dinner into an "our thing."
Because this was very much not set out as a "let's cook a thing and it will be special and wonderful." This started out with "There's something called 'jowl bacon' in the monthly add-on specials section of the meat share" and he immediately jumped to "That's delicious! I mean, I've never had it, but the cheek is always a very good cut on any animal." So despite an annoyingly high price-per-pound (my add-on choices tend to fall in the "cheaper because scraps and offal" category), I bought some for us to play with.
What we produced with it was largely his doing and very improvised based on what was on hand or could be easily purchased, because that was during the era in which I had absolutely zero spare spoons for planning ahead. The bacon, fried potatoes, avocado, scallions, and a little bit of lime juice squeezed over it, all wrapped in a tortilla. It was very good and I decided we should do it again. So we did. And then we did it a third time.
Every few meat share deliveries, I will say "it's been too long since we've done this" and get another one, and it's become the big special meal we do together. (While there's generally a substantial delay between adding one to my share and the share delivery, and sometimes they're sold out, I generally try to add one anytime something very good or very bad happens.)
And after he observed he'd been making it up as he went that first time, I wound up thinking about it, "is this how heirloom recipes get started? Two people messing around in a kitchen and deciding something is good and we're going to keep doing it?"
But Mathfriend observed a couple of nights ago that it's interesting how quickly we've codified what we were making for dinner into an "our thing."
Because this was very much not set out as a "let's cook a thing and it will be special and wonderful." This started out with "There's something called 'jowl bacon' in the monthly add-on specials section of the meat share" and he immediately jumped to "That's delicious! I mean, I've never had it, but the cheek is always a very good cut on any animal." So despite an annoyingly high price-per-pound (my add-on choices tend to fall in the "cheaper because scraps and offal" category), I bought some for us to play with.
What we produced with it was largely his doing and very improvised based on what was on hand or could be easily purchased, because that was during the era in which I had absolutely zero spare spoons for planning ahead. The bacon, fried potatoes, avocado, scallions, and a little bit of lime juice squeezed over it, all wrapped in a tortilla. It was very good and I decided we should do it again. So we did. And then we did it a third time.
Every few meat share deliveries, I will say "it's been too long since we've done this" and get another one, and it's become the big special meal we do together. (While there's generally a substantial delay between adding one to my share and the share delivery, and sometimes they're sold out, I generally try to add one anytime something very good or very bad happens.)
And after he observed he'd been making it up as he went that first time, I wound up thinking about it, "is this how heirloom recipes get started? Two people messing around in a kitchen and deciding something is good and we're going to keep doing it?"
