Principles

Working at selecting, testing, and refining the recipes, we became conscious of a number of general principles which inform our choices of foods, our style of preparing them, and our preferences in enjoying them.

• Fresh herbs make an enormous difference in the look and taste of most foods. Most involved cooks yearn for an herb garden. Ours begins with rosemary and includes oregano, chives, sage, basil (when we win the battle with the slugs), thyme, tarragon, and mint. Drying oregano, rosemary, and thyme for winter use with the aid of a microwave oven is a simple way to eliminate your dependency upon commercially packaged alternatives.



• With rare exception, you should not sweat precision in the measuring of ingredients. The quantities given in most recipes for most ingredients should be read as guidelines. One tablespoon tells you that a half cup is too much and a half teaspoon is too little; it doesn't attempt to distinguish between a level tablespoon and a rounded one. The most obvious exceptions to this principle are the very pungent or "spicy" ingredients, such as red pepper flakes.



• Good and appropriate music enhances the enjoyment of both the cooking and the eating. For cooking, the music should be energizing and powerful; for dining, more melodic and subtle. Beethoven's Missa Solemnis or his Ninth Symphony would be great companions while you sautéed some leeks but would guarantee indigestion when you ate.



• A menu planner has to be alert to and balance the often conflicting interests and perspectives of the cook and the diner. Two dishes which, from the perspective of the diner, seem beautifully complementary might, from the perspective of the cook, be an impossible combination because both are slow roasted--at significantly different temperatures. Or both require close attention for the 10 minutes immediately before they come to the table.



• As a menu planner, you need to respect your limitations as a cook and your preferences as a diner. One new dish is all most of us can take on at any one meal. The night you experiment with a recipe for bluefish, complete the meal with a simple salad and steamed vegetables. If you have little interest in complex desserts, don't feel a need to apologize for sprinkling a handful of fresh blueberries on a bowl of vanilla ice cream.