I don’t believe in playing by the rules in the kitchen. Why? It’s more fun to break the rules – just ask any teacher, nun, coach, or supervisory person who had me as a youth. My favorite thing to hear about my kitchen experiments are, “I never heard of that before,” or “How did you come up with that?”
My brother is a really good cook and nails his 10 go to’s every time. He does those dishes with a efficiency that comes from his time as a line cook in his youth at the Susie Q in Royal Oak, Michigan. Those standbys make his house a happy place.
I opt for the path of trying a new method or a new ingredient. Mixing things that may or may not go together is to me what makes the kitchen fun. For example, I make a hobby out of watching a cooking shows and trying to duplicate what they did without having the equipment or ingredients they used. Using a cooking technique I’ve never heard about without a tutorial, a book, or a trip to the Google is an ever present challenge.
So even though I said there should be no rules, here are three guidelines:
1. Experiment often so your confidence grows.
2. One reason you may have failed is you went cheap with ingredients. Stop that.
3. Have a group of taste testers to give you feed back.
4. Have fun! You can always hide any evidence of failures.
Dan's Food Blog 