Have you ever put together something from odds and ends, had it come out rather tasty, and then been frustrated because you will never be able to have it just that way again?
Today I finished a project that took me a while. I totally cleaned out and reorganized my refrigerator and freezer. A long story, and a couple items were tossed. I had also some odds and ends that seem to have been hanging around. From Monday I had an unopened container of mild salsa that hadn’t been needed at a dinner. I had three little portions of a spicy dip from food truck meals. Two packets of duck sauce from Chinese meals. I stirred all that together and added some minced garlic, along with some extra onion I chopped, a chopped bell pepper, and a chopped and peeled cucumber.The additions added about 60% to the volume of the base salsa. It’s divided into two small jars now. I tasted it and, if I do say so myself, it’s good. But no matter how good it is I’ll never be able to have it again once it’s eaten. Frustraing.
All the time. My gf even more so. She often finds stuff that needs to be tossed or used, so she begins playing around in the kitchen. Hours later we sit down to the best meal we’ve had in a while.
We never have it again, because it was never written down, it just transpired. Which is kinda cool.
Oh, yeah. I rarely measure anything, and very often add some of whatever happens to be around. The results are almost always edible (I can only think of one that wasn’t), often quite good – and once in a while spectacular. But I have no way of replicating the occasional spectacular ones, because I don’t know more than very approximately what I did.
Once in a while, if I’m trying to work something in particular out, I’ll make notes as I add things. But I don’t do it usually.
All the time, my best meals often come on a Wednesday or Thursday and are made from left overs from the first half of the week. I’ve made peace with the fact that it was a one off dish and we’ll never have it again.
Rarely, because I don’t frequently have materials that I didn’t cook or purchase myself. So I can normally manage to recreate something I put together myself. But it’s true, sometimes you do something (cook it just perfectly right, add a step, or throw in something in a moment of inspiration you never remember later) to make a dish far more significant than it would otherwise have been.
A related issue that’s more common for me though is that a key purchased ingredient is no longer sold, the company goes out of business, or is only available at a major premium!
Several hot sauces that I used to use religiously were local, small batch, and when they went under (years ago) I could no longer make quite the same dish. Close, sure, but never the same either.
A second related issue, which happens a lot more for me is the intrinsic randomness of any fresh produce. You buy your lovely anaheim or other chile and ponder: is it the lady or the tiger? Is it so mild you are bored, or hotter than normal? Is it sweet like a ripe NM hatch, or is it a disappointing bitter bell-pepper wannabe. Is the lemon you purchases juicy and and tangy, or dry and taste more like lemon-scented cleanser?
So many variables. Part of the joy and tragedy of cooking.
Just last week, my daughter and I were making wings. We added a little of this, a little of that and they turned out very good. We both said, we’ll never recreate the sauce.