I'm getting better these days, though. When I first started out, I was terrified to make any substitutions. If I didn't follow exactly what the recipe said, my dish was doomed to fail, I was sure, and I would be left dinnerless and sobbing on the kitchen floor, a ruined mess of a defeated cook, never to attempt even the most basic recipe ever again.
Well, something close to that, anyway. I really don't like screwing up.
But over the years, I've learned when I can deviate from a recipe, what goes well together and what I can switch out for something else, fortunately without a lot of epic fails. Books like Kathleen Flinn's The Kitchen Counter Cooking School helped me realize that cooking is an art, and it helped me find my confidence as more of a wing-it home cook. (Truly, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's a delightful read, mixing both cooking information with the wonder of students discovering true cooking for the first time. I absolutely loved every page and was sad when the book ended. Five shiny gold stars for this inspirational book!) I'm still not great at creating recipes entirely from scratch, although I've definitely improved on that front.
So this week, I was throwing together a list of what I could make out of what I had on hand and what I'd be picking up at the grocery store, and one recipe that came to mind was The Prudent Homemaker's Chicken Fried Steak (which isn't steak at all, and we referred to as 'fake'. It's perfect for us, as I'm vegetarian). I'd never made this before, but it's been on my Pinterest for ages, so hey, why not tackle it and see how it turns out? I read through the recipe and paused when I got to the part about cream of mushroom soup.
Now, I'm not a picky eater whatsoever. I love trying new things, provided they fit in my dietary guidelines, but cream of mushroom soup, for me, is a hard no. Hmph. So I pondered over this, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit it took me a few days to come up with a decent substitute. I thought about making a white sauce and adding some sautéed mushrooms and garlic but was worried it wouldn't be thick or hearty enough, and then I thought about the recipe again and realized it probably needed a little more protein to make us feel full. And in the car, on the way from picking my son up from a friend's house, I got it.
White Bean Gravy! YES!!!!!!!
White Bean Gravy has been a family favorite for ages. I usually season it with rosemary, sage, thyme (no parsley, though; my apologies to Simon and Garfunkel), fennel, and pepper, and if I have mushrooms on hand, I'll sautée them and toss them in too. I usually serve it all over chunks of homemade bread, and it's wonderful and carby and comforting and delicious. White Bean Gravy would go perfectly in this, and I even had mushrooms.
I got the White Bean Gravy going first; it's super easy and comes together quickly, and then I got working on the chicken-fried 'fakes.' The mixture was a little wet and I needed to add a few extra handfuls of oatmeal, but they smelled and tasted wonderful once they came out of the frying pan (I had to try a few pieces, right?).
Since salad was on sale at Aldi this week, we had two bags of salad in the fridge, so I chopped up some veggies to toss in, and whipped up a lovely Italian dressing (The Kitchen Counter Cooking School absolutely convinced me that homemade salad dressing is the way to go. I've since stopped buying all bottled dressings. It saves money and as an added bonus, there are no preservatives or food colorings). After I picked my husband up, I threw everything together, and...
Pretty? Absolutely not! I'm about the worst food photographer (and regular photographer) ever to wield a cell phone camera, but it was delicious, it was made with ingredients I had on hand (no last minute trips to the store!), I figured out a solution to make the recipe work for me, and I've added a new recipe to my repertoire. I call that an all-around win!
Are you a genius in the kitchen? Or are you more timid like I used to be, and still am to an extent?
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