Try to follow along closely to the recipe
Johnny’s Issues
The holiday season is quickly approaching and with that comes a significant amount of cooking among family members. Although I am far from a gourmet, food for me (along with many others, I am sure) is one of the more memorable parts of the holiday season. The holiday meals help to make memories, along with making stomach aches from overeating. I presume that children are still being schooled at home on the basics of cooking: How to boil an egg, for instance, or how to make a decent bowl of grits, or a plate of spaghetti without overcooking it. But from then on, it is usually left up to them to develop a passion for food if they are so inclined. If they do not, they may spend a lifetime trying to find a store-bought substitute or locate a restaurant that most closely captures the flavor of the homecooked original dish long remembered from holidays past. The word “foodie” is a relatively new term and has several meanings. To me, it refers to someone who has found that passion and developed it into more than a passing interest through either cooking or eating.
Back to the holiday meals and making memories, this is where families can contribute to that desire to learn by serving and passing along long-held recipes. Recipes that oftentimes harken back to the very roots of the family, which are then passed down from generation to generation. Family recipes can provide a multi-generational bridge that is hard to replicate through any other means.
There are a few caveats with regards to the passing of family recipes. First, the recipe must be recorded accurately to begin with. Grandmama may have made the best biscuits and gravy. But if, when writing it out, she neglected to mention a key secret ingredient for fear that it may fall into the wrong hands, all may be lost. She may have even passed along the secret ingredient verbally to a trusted family member. Who knows? But without the secret ingredient, the dish will never taste quite the same.
Even if the recipe is written with accuracy and with specifics in terms of measurements, cooking times, etc., the success or failure of the dish still falls into the hands of the preparer. Is that person willing to commit to the recipe, to follow along as prescribed with no shortcuts and no substitutions? Sometimes, that can be asking a lot for someone who is not a foodie. But that is the only way the taste of your memories can be replicated, by following along to the T.
On a semi-related note, I was recently eating at my favorite Indian restaurant and wanted to get the bread recipe from them. The owner had no problem with that but made me sign a naan-disclosure agreement first.
The column represents the thoughts and opinions of Johnny McNally. Opinion columns are NOT the opinion of the Navasota Examiner.
Johnny McNally is Grimes County’s Best Dressed Businessman advocating for Grimes County and writes a bi-weekly column for the Navasota Examiner.