Last week I spoke on a panel with my friend Melissa Clark at the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference in New York. The topic was recipe voice. As I was considering what I might say, I asked myself what it is that I hear when I read a recipe and what I want my readers to hear when I write one. I immediately thought about Judy Rodgers' book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, and how it was her recipe voice that first caught my attention as something unique: it was playful, breezy, sometimes annoyingly lengthy, and full of wit and memorable lessons, particularly her five-page recipe for roast chicken.
On the morning of the panel as I was about to run out of the apartment on my way to the conference, I realized that I had invited a few extra people to my dinner party that night and I should probably prep some extra protein. This was an emergency of sorts, so I grabbed two fresh chickens and looked at the clock. A copy of the Zuni recipe peeked out of a file in my bag. It's chicken, I told myself, there are a million ways to do this. Use what you have.
I scanned the kitchen and found two Ziploc bags. I dumped in some salt, brown sugar, my favorite ground chili pepper flakes and some grated zest from a dried out old lemon on the counter. In went the two birds. I shook the bags then plunked them down on the refrigerator shelf. On the train uptown I tweeted the "recipe."
Of course there was no way to communicate the entire Zuni chicken method in one tweet; it was more about the flavors. The assumption in the tweet is that a cook would use their own method. But it begs the question about recipe voice and how important is it to a home cook these days. What is a recipe? Does it need ingredients and a blow-by-blow method? Or do 140 characters suffice? I wonder how many people used my tweet to inspire their dinner, combining it with the knowledge they already had about how to actually roast the chicken once the flavors are set.
At the panel, Melissa and I talked about this idea of long versus short form recipes and how do people really learn to cook. Is it changing? Have the internet and social media changed recipe voice? Both of us agreed that the future of the recipe is not threatened. I reminded the audience that the first recipes were in the oral tradition. How many of us learned to cook something by watching, not reading or listening to a recipe? The question is, how do we pass on these recipes?
That afternoon I went home, removed those birds from their zipped bag bath, and roasted them. About thirty people came through the apartment that night, many of them plunging their bare fingers into the quartered chickens I set out on a big wood board. There was buzz — why was this chicken so good? — and I tried to answer. I use the Zuni method, I said, except this one had a bunch of lemon zest, brown sugar and Espelette Pepper Powder. Shake it all up in a bag with the chickens, let them sit, then roast like Judy Rodgers. An oral recipe. Arguably shorter than the Twitter version above, and certainly shorter than Judy's five-pager.
Being comfortable in the kitchen is about knowing your methods and understanding how from that skill you can do something a million different ways. For my part, to this day the method Rodgers describes in her recipe is still the method I use when I roast a chicken — the overnight salting if possible, the high heat cast iron skillet sear of the back, the flip and then the final flip with fingers crossed that the skin doesn't split — and after doing it hundreds of times, it is mostly by heart though I have a Post-It note-sized version of it stuck to the inside of my spice cabinet that works as a short reminder if I forget the timing or the temperatures.
That's the freedom in cooking. Know your method and you are free.
Reading the long form from the masters teaches us something invaluable. But I am also grateful for formats like Twitter that offer the opportunity to get an idea out in an instant and possibly inspire something in someone that will get them to make a recipe their own, be creative, use what they have on hand and make dinner at home.
It's the book with the splattered pages and wine-glass stains. It's the book I will pass down to my daughter, yet she will already know the method from watching and hearing it from me all her life. She'll learn that cooking is about using a million senses at once.
More Thoughts on and Recipes for Roast Chicken
• How to Roast a Chicken, Zuni-Style
• The Naughty Way to Roast a Chicken (Barely suitable for work!)
• Sunday Dinner: 7 Takes on the Roast Chicken
• Lemon Roasted Chicken: Lemon Inside or Out?
• How to Carve a Roast Chicken (video)
• Spatchcoked Ricotta Chicken
Related:
• Zuni Cafe Cookbook
• Roasted Chicken with Gremolata from Melissa Clark
(images: Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan)
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Do you think the key to the short form recipe working for home cooks is that those cooks are already comfortable in the kitchen? It seems like the students in my cooking classes who are new to cooking need more explicit instruction. (Okay, so do some more experienced cooks, but that's another story)
(So sorry I couldn't make it to your panel at IACP...)
I think it really depends on who's reading the recipe. A first-time cook, nervous about getting everything right, might depend more on specific instructions, illustrations, etc. Somebody who's already roasted 400 chickens is going to need a lot less, and will be more likely to experiment or substitute.
I've been reading a lot lately about the cast-iron skillet method of roasting chickens; it seems to be the latest thing. I've always used the roasting pan/rack (which are a big pain to clean), so I may try out my old Griswold skillet this weekend.
Being an experienced cook really allows you much more freedom, doesn't it? (Well, I'm out of ingredient "X," but I'm sure ingredient "Y" will do just fine.) It makes cooking lots more fun, and allows you to get better and better, so that eventually you don't rely on recipes except for brand-new things.
Very well said. Voice in a recipe has always interested me--you always know a Bittman or Clark recipe, just from the tone. I think rambling headnotes can really depend on the situation-a lot of times I find myself scrolling down food blogs just to get to the damn recipe, while other times I want to indulge in them as if they were literature (like the ones in Clark's recent book). Thanks for recapping your IACP talk!
I love this idea! I post recipes on my blog for family and friends, but I hardly ever cook a dish the same way twice. In particular when I roast chicken: If I need it done in an hour, I cook it on 450, if I have more time, I might cook it at 325. If I have lemons, I'll stuff 'em in... if not, salt and pepper's just fine. As long as I have a cast iron skillet and an instant-read thermometer, I'm good to go.
Thanks!
-Derek
I attended the panel on recipe voice and found the whole discussion really interesting. The verbal tradition of recipes is such a fascinating topic, especially as I read MFK Fischer for the zillionth time. A lot of what she learned, it seems, came from just being in the kitchen and absorbing things, and it's those experiences that made her such an eloquent writer. In an era of blips and instant everything, it's recipes like the Zuni chicken that will stick with us, I think, because there's narrative there. Well, if not narrative, at least 4 pages of instructions! Thanks for the lovely photos and the great class!
The first time I cooked the Zuni Roast Chicken and Bread Salad, I spent the better part of the day reading and re-reading Rogers' instructions, worrying about the amount of salt I used, prepping in advance (the raisins, the bread, etc.). I was so concerned with getting it right, and I just didn't have the confidence then that I do now. I laugh at my old self now, obsessively poring over the details of the recipe, but I firmly believe that it's a necessary step in improving any skill. We need the long form when we're learning, but once we've mastered enough of them, we're free to go off in millions of directions. Throughout the week, I often change my pre-set menu based on what I'm craving, not what I wrote up over the weekend. Roast chicken breast with steamed broccoli and rice may turn into soba noodles with chunks of chicken breast and broccoli covered with a miso dressing. I do this because I have confidence in myself and I no longer need the long form. I get frustrated with people who say they never use recipes. Recipes serve an important purpose: they teach us the fundamentals of cooking. I firmly believe that a cook who can't roast a chicken or cook an omelet is not much of a cook. Not using recipes is the Cliff Notes version of cooking; we miss so much when we ignore those detailed instructions, those explanations from the masters.
Why a bag?
One of the best parts of the Zuni method is that it allows the skin to dry out because it is exposed to air. The dry skin combined with the missing backbone make the skin superior. My husband often allows the skin to dry out for more time but even 12 hours makes a big difference in texture. If you store your chicken in a bag, you miss out on the superior skin.
A whole roast chicken is one of my favorite things and I make it often, but I've always done it the same way. Thanks for encouraging me to get out of my comfort zone and be creative. I very much enjoy reading you every day.
My roast chicken recipe:
Preheat oven to 450F
Make a dry rub with whatever looks good in the cabinet, and perhaps take a walk around the neighborhood with scissors looking for fresh rosemary.
Rub bird inside and out with spices.
Put bird in oven on a roasting pan with a some water in it, roast at 450F for 30 mins, then drop the temp to 400F until the breast meat reaches 170F.
Eat.
Ta-daaa!
IMHO, cooking is meant to be experimental, not a set of rigid rules to follow and if not obeyed the food is 'wrong'.
Enjoy your time in the kitchen... it's not meant to be so stressful :)
This post gave me goosebumps. Cooking is many things to me - a creative outlet when work is tedious and a quiet moment when life seems to loud. It's my way to decompress from a long commute or a tough day at work, as well as how I like to celebrate happy life moments with the people I love. The recipes and ideas you write about here never cease to inspire me, and though I'll admit I rarely follow them line by line, I constantly come back to them for ideas, alternatives and tried and true classics.
As I prepare to move away from my best friend and roommate for whom I've cooked for almost daily for four years, I'm trying to put together a few recipes for the simple favorites I know she'll miss and can replicate when she's forced to cook for herself. I've been considering the best way to put them together for her and this was exactly what I needed to read to get the project going. So thank you from both of us!
I tend toward short versions because I usually (sometimes erroneously) assume a basic level of kitchen understanding. I've only recently realized that what I take to be basic knowledge that I've picked up along the way is not necessarily general knowledge. It's rather amazing how much you pick up just from watching people cook and trying things out. The most important thing is to not be afraid of making mistakes. You can take a short version and do what you think with it, and it might not turn out the way the author intended but it's not wrong.
My vegetarian equivalent of roast chicken is a pie with roast chickpeas!! It also has roasted mushrooms, tarragon and smoked cheddar. And the crust has lemon zest. It's quite "meaty" in texture and flavor, and very satisfying!!
When hubby left work and became a house husband, he decided he wanted to learn to cook. His first major dish was a casserole, I lost count of the number of emails that passed between us on that day as he asked questions while I was at work, but he wrote all these down on the recipe page. Almost 2 years later with 100s of recipes, when he finds something new he'll make a note of the change/observation etc. This has become the way he cooks. For him, cooking is scientific process to be followed strictly.
As for myself, if I make a change or observation, I hope I'll remember it, if not it doesn't matter - I rarely make notes in my cookbooks. For me cooking is an organic creative process. I guess it helps that I know what works, whereas he is still learning this.
But my point is that even amongst us home non-cookbook writing cooks, there are differences in the way we read/listen that voice. I'd take Sara-Kate's recipe and run with it, Peter would become distressed at the lack of instructions.
Learning to cook a dish is much like learning to do anything else. Practice makes perfect. Personally, I would not have a problem with your short recipe because I regularly make roast chicken. However, whilst I appreciate the simplicity of this recipe, it does not sufficiently pique my curiousity. I am often seduced into trying new things, or different versions of old favourites, by a particularly engaging 'recipe voice'. The appeal lies not so much in the method or novelty of a recipe as in the personal and unique observations of the writer. There is a skill to good recipe writing, which can be appreciated by both experienced and novice cooks.