Roberta wrote:msolga wrote:Sounds like one has to know what one is doing, Roberta! I imagine that the necessary skills are picked up via years of watching (as children) the expert/s at work in the kitchen. Always amazes me how much information gets tucked away in the brain for later reference!
So true. I've thought about this over the years. The things I make the best are things I learned not from a recipe but from being with people who were doing it, helping them, and getting a sense of what needs what.
And an added incentive, Roberta! Food which makes the mouth water, just remembering how
fantastic it tasted! We want to have it again!
On the childhood recollection thing: my niece, in a recent phone conversation with me, told me how proud & delighted she was to have produced her own
vareniki (sp? ... sort of half moon dumpling-like dish with potato & cottage cheese stuffing, then cooked in boiling water, like stuffed pasta. Many Eastern European/Jewish versions of the same/similar dish exist, but this version calls itself
Ukrainian). She remembered how to make them from watching her grandmother (my mother) make them for years & years in her kitchen. After a few goes she finally got it right. Her incentive was that her grandmother can no longer produce her favourite Ukrainian dish & she figured this was the only way she could get a fix!
