Seasons by the Sea: Online Recipes: Gack!
How does Spam tonkatsu sound to you? Would you like to try a tasty paleo breakfast burrito with ham and not much else? Let’s find a recipe for Cowboy Casserole; this is a mixture of Tater Tots, canned soup, canned vegetables, and cheeeeeese. Christmas will be upon us before you know it, so why not perfect your Christmas crack now, your dentist will thank you! This is a mixture of Saltine crackers, lotsa sugar, a cup of butter, and melted chocolate.
And who doesn’t appreciate a culinary mash-up like butter chicken poutine? This would be a combination of a wonderful Indian dish poured on top of one of the more disgraceful Canadian national dishes — French fries with gravy and cheese curds.
For a while I have been thinking that the Internet could be the best/worst thing to happen to medicine (self-diagnoses) and online dating (self-doubt and lies). I have recently come to the conclusion that it is also the best/worst thing to happen to cooking.
This frustration usually takes place when I am attempting recipes using coconut oil instead of butter, or cauliflower in lieu of pizza dough (see frustration episode # 1067 in last week’s column on cauliflower). Don’t get me wrong, there are a gazillion great food websites and blogs. They may even test the recipes for you and illustrate them with actual photographs of that recipe. But then there are the doozies, the sprawling petabytes of bandwidth extolling the virtues of family, hearth, frugality, comfort food, and some of the worst, without-a-doubt-untested recipes you will ever waste your time on.
I think if you stick with the good ones — Food 52, Epicurious, Smitten Kitchen, David Lebovitz, Saveur, and many more — you’ll be okay. But when you venture into Pinterest territory, all bets are off.
First of all, when I look at Pinterest, I feel like I’m watching Japanese anime cartoons. It’s so busy, I think I’m going to have a seizure. Then there are the blogs/websites that get all personal and say things like “this recipe will make you sit down and reminisce.” No, it won’t, it will make me sit down in front of reruns of “Real Housewives of the Hamptons” and wonder why I tried your recipe for porcinis, foie gras, and Douglas fir.
Another recipe claims to “ground you in that okay place.” I ponder what could be my okay place. Perhaps the bathroom after I’ve indulged in Sandra Lee’s Kwanzaa cake (pre-made angel food cake, canned frosting, canned apple pie filling, and corn nuts — gack).
There are “homesick” cooks, “prairie” cooks, “pioneer women” cooks, and “detoxinistas.” I like the last one because she admits that the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe for mac’n’cheese is her favorite.
There are entertaining names for many of these cooking websites: Offalgood, Meathenge (“this Kaliflornia kid kan kook kewl”), Punchfork, Shiksainthekitchen, Veggienumnum.
The Food Network is for sure guilty of posting some nonsense recipes. How about Ellie Krieger’s “recipe” for “Dark Chocolate as a Snack.” Ingredients: one ounce dark chocolate. Brilliant!
From there, let’s try Rachael Ray’s “Late Night Bacon.” Basically, you just nuke eight slices of bacon in the microwave.
Paula Deen shares her scintillating recipe for English peas: one can of peas heated up with half a stick of butter. Robin Miller’s Carrot Ginger Salad is a bag of shredded carrots and bottled dressing. No doubt about it, these inspiring recipes transport me to my okay place.
Lastly, back to Sandra Lee. I enjoy wondering if she captured the heart of Andrew Cuomo with her recipe for white chocolate polenta?
Often the problem with these online recipes is that they haven’t been tested, tested, and retested. Sometimes the viewer/reader making the recipe is not terribly adept in the kitchen. As a professional chef, I am confident in my abilities with just about any moderately simple recipe. Read it through first, do your prep, and follow to the letter. Even the most reliable and foolproof recipes can be flubbed by a careless cook.
While it’s fun doing a bit of recipe-bashing, even I have been the recipient of some online bullying. I have contributed several recipes to the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and TV show, most notably sticky toffee date cake. One day I read the comments section for this recipe. Most were positive, but one person wrote “supposedly Laura Donnelly writes about food for The East Hampton Star and she’s a pastry chef.” The next comment was “she sounds like a moron!” I’m not sure which of these two occupations makes me a moron, but I was thrilled to have evoked such a visceral response. Now let’s try some “recipes!”
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