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How to Cook Without Recipes
'How To Cook Without Recipes' is all about setting the home cook free. This little book will teach you to understand the recipes you follow, why they sometimes go wrong, and how to cook independently and invent recipes of your own.
266 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 9, 2016
This ought to be a classic, but isn't.
I loved the basic premise that you don't need to follow recipes if you know what flavours go together. That has a kind of Nigel Slater kind of vibe. Follow your heart and your tastebuds. Make it up as you go along. It's not as difficult as the celebrity chefs make out.
And if that was what the book gave us then I would be singing its praises to the rafters. Five stars. Every food lover should have a copy.
Unfortunately there are problems. For one thing Glynn Christian adopts a slightly nagging preachy tone. Instead of the liberating premise, we get lectured on the "right" way to do lots of things. We shouldn't do X, we should do Y.
I wouldn't mind that if his opinions came across as consistently insightful. But they don't. We get slightly odd messages such as "deep fat fryers aren't as unhealthy as you might think", and a surprising number of references to the wonders of the microwave.
On one page we get a lecture about how frying meat certainly doesn't "seal" in the flavours and we should stop saying that it does. Then a few pages later we get a discussion of frying in olive oil to ... ahem ... seal in the flavours. Well, which is it? To seal or not to seal? That is the question.
And then there's all this complicated stuff about five different types of taste and three different types of flavour trails. It turns out that in Glynn Christian's world you don't need recipes but you do need either a lot of experience or lots and lots of lists. Frankly, you might as well have the recipes.
There's a slightly weird introduction which doesn't seem to have much bearing on the rest of the book. It's mostly random historical stuff about old recipes. It feels more like the author showing off how much he knows than a genuine introduction.
But there's a bigger problem. Unlike books by Nigel Slater, this book didn't make me feel hungry. I didn't get a sense of passion about food. Or enthusiasm. Or love for the ingredients. It didn't inspire me to want to do some cooking because the writing is strangely cold and analytical. The fact that there are few recipes and no photographs doesn't help.
And yet ... and yet ... there is a good book in here struggling to get out. There is wisdom and experience. You have to work at it and persevere with the hectoring writing, but there's some good stuff in here. I suppose I could just about make a case that someone who learned from this book would get a better fundamental knowledge than someone who simply followed recipes. But it's pretty dry going - like trying to eat muesli without milk.
It's a shame. With a bit of judicious editing, this could have been a fabulous book. As it is, it's a diamond in the rough. It relies on the reader to do the polishing.
I loved the basic premise that you don't need to follow recipes if you know what flavours go together. That has a kind of Nigel Slater kind of vibe. Follow your heart and your tastebuds. Make it up as you go along. It's not as difficult as the celebrity chefs make out.
And if that was what the book gave us then I would be singing its praises to the rafters. Five stars. Every food lover should have a copy.
Unfortunately there are problems. For one thing Glynn Christian adopts a slightly nagging preachy tone. Instead of the liberating premise, we get lectured on the "right" way to do lots of things. We shouldn't do X, we should do Y.
I wouldn't mind that if his opinions came across as consistently insightful. But they don't. We get slightly odd messages such as "deep fat fryers aren't as unhealthy as you might think", and a surprising number of references to the wonders of the microwave.
On one page we get a lecture about how frying meat certainly doesn't "seal" in the flavours and we should stop saying that it does. Then a few pages later we get a discussion of frying in olive oil to ... ahem ... seal in the flavours. Well, which is it? To seal or not to seal? That is the question.
And then there's all this complicated stuff about five different types of taste and three different types of flavour trails. It turns out that in Glynn Christian's world you don't need recipes but you do need either a lot of experience or lots and lots of lists. Frankly, you might as well have the recipes.
There's a slightly weird introduction which doesn't seem to have much bearing on the rest of the book. It's mostly random historical stuff about old recipes. It feels more like the author showing off how much he knows than a genuine introduction.
But there's a bigger problem. Unlike books by Nigel Slater, this book didn't make me feel hungry. I didn't get a sense of passion about food. Or enthusiasm. Or love for the ingredients. It didn't inspire me to want to do some cooking because the writing is strangely cold and analytical. The fact that there are few recipes and no photographs doesn't help.
And yet ... and yet ... there is a good book in here struggling to get out. There is wisdom and experience. You have to work at it and persevere with the hectoring writing, but there's some good stuff in here. I suppose I could just about make a case that someone who learned from this book would get a better fundamental knowledge than someone who simply followed recipes. But it's pretty dry going - like trying to eat muesli without milk.
It's a shame. With a bit of judicious editing, this could have been a fabulous book. As it is, it's a diamond in the rough. It relies on the reader to do the polishing.
August 1, 2016
I agree with one of the other reviewers on Goodreads (Will Once) that there are aspects of this book that should make it a classic.
However, the highhandedness of the author makes it quite difficult to love it, regardless of how useful one might find this book. It might be the author's humour but he delivers it in such a stiff way that it doesn't quite have enough warmth to be funny. Instead, he often comes across like a stuffy old Englishman tutting at newfangled foods and cooking.
Some examples from the chapter on chillies:
"Chillies are not so much a flavour or taste as they are mouth trauma...That's why chillies are the refuge and culinary saviour of the poorest geographical areas of the world: Notting Hill Gate does not qualify."
"Over thirty years ago my friends Viv and Richard Furlong reckoned I changed their enjoyment of life, simply by saying I wouldn't eat with them again unless they reduced the amount of chillies in the curries they served. They did, and almost at once realised for years they had never really tasted any of the other ingredients they had used. Their cooking - and their palates - recovered and became wondrously fragrant and exciting. That's the promise I make to anyone who thinks hotter is better. Hotter is dumber."
Hotter than what? What is the baseline? I grew up in Singapore eating spicy food and therefore perhaps as a child developed a fairly high tolerance of spicy food. Since living in the UK for over 20 years, most of the meals I eat aren't spicy but when I do have something hot, I generally don't writhe in agony. Instead I am (sometimes) still able to taste the nuances of flavours in the chillies used (the Mexican chillies we had recently were pretty hot but really tasty for instance). And I'm aware that my tolerance has diminished over the years and so I'm probably nevertheless missing out on detecting much of the flavour.
The author seemed so forceful in his opinion that almost by reflex my mind produced the argument above even though I generally agree that it's probably advisable to slowly build up one's tolerance rather than bombarding the tongue with so much heat that it is unable to be taste the rest of the meal (as with the crazy "eat our hottest vindaloo and your meal is free" challenges in some restaurants).
"Any food writer who specifies exact amounts of salt for anything but a brine simply doesn't know what they are talking about. They should be telling their reader to season to taste, but even that can be challenging if you've never been taught to do it properly."
One way to teach someone "to do it properly" (I use that phrase very loosely) is to give them some calibration as what you mean by "add salt". In the main, an untrained home cook is more likely to under-salt than over-salt their food. Or add salt too late in the cooking - the later the salt is added, the more one tastes the salt.
And it's not possible to taste the raw chicken to see if it's "seasoned to taste" so giving the reader some indication of how much salt to use allows the reader to follow along the first time and then make appropriate adjustments from that calibrated point the next time.
I remember following a recipe for Indonesian Rendang when I was at university and suspiciously but obediently following the author's amount of salt to add to the meat at the start of cooking. It seemed way too much to me. But perhaps the richness of the coconut milk and the strength of all the other flavours required that level of salt. It turned out to be not just a flavourful dish but one in which the texture of meat was wonderful as well.
If I look past the areas where I found the author's writing difficult to swallow, then there were some interesting takes on how to view flavours and therefore be more independent in cooking. As the other reviewer mentioned, it feels like there's a better book that could be chiselled out of this one.
However, the highhandedness of the author makes it quite difficult to love it, regardless of how useful one might find this book. It might be the author's humour but he delivers it in such a stiff way that it doesn't quite have enough warmth to be funny. Instead, he often comes across like a stuffy old Englishman tutting at newfangled foods and cooking.
Some examples from the chapter on chillies:
"Chillies are not so much a flavour or taste as they are mouth trauma...That's why chillies are the refuge and culinary saviour of the poorest geographical areas of the world: Notting Hill Gate does not qualify."
"Over thirty years ago my friends Viv and Richard Furlong reckoned I changed their enjoyment of life, simply by saying I wouldn't eat with them again unless they reduced the amount of chillies in the curries they served. They did, and almost at once realised for years they had never really tasted any of the other ingredients they had used. Their cooking - and their palates - recovered and became wondrously fragrant and exciting. That's the promise I make to anyone who thinks hotter is better. Hotter is dumber."
Hotter than what? What is the baseline? I grew up in Singapore eating spicy food and therefore perhaps as a child developed a fairly high tolerance of spicy food. Since living in the UK for over 20 years, most of the meals I eat aren't spicy but when I do have something hot, I generally don't writhe in agony. Instead I am (sometimes) still able to taste the nuances of flavours in the chillies used (the Mexican chillies we had recently were pretty hot but really tasty for instance). And I'm aware that my tolerance has diminished over the years and so I'm probably nevertheless missing out on detecting much of the flavour.
The author seemed so forceful in his opinion that almost by reflex my mind produced the argument above even though I generally agree that it's probably advisable to slowly build up one's tolerance rather than bombarding the tongue with so much heat that it is unable to be taste the rest of the meal (as with the crazy "eat our hottest vindaloo and your meal is free" challenges in some restaurants).
"Any food writer who specifies exact amounts of salt for anything but a brine simply doesn't know what they are talking about. They should be telling their reader to season to taste, but even that can be challenging if you've never been taught to do it properly."
One way to teach someone "to do it properly" (I use that phrase very loosely) is to give them some calibration as what you mean by "add salt". In the main, an untrained home cook is more likely to under-salt than over-salt their food. Or add salt too late in the cooking - the later the salt is added, the more one tastes the salt.
And it's not possible to taste the raw chicken to see if it's "seasoned to taste" so giving the reader some indication of how much salt to use allows the reader to follow along the first time and then make appropriate adjustments from that calibrated point the next time.
I remember following a recipe for Indonesian Rendang when I was at university and suspiciously but obediently following the author's amount of salt to add to the meat at the start of cooking. It seemed way too much to me. But perhaps the richness of the coconut milk and the strength of all the other flavours required that level of salt. It turned out to be not just a flavourful dish but one in which the texture of meat was wonderful as well.
If I look past the areas where I found the author's writing difficult to swallow, then there were some interesting takes on how to view flavours and therefore be more independent in cooking. As the other reviewer mentioned, it feels like there's a better book that could be chiselled out of this one.
September 8, 2022
English below
A ideia é central é muito boa. Ensinar combinações básicas de ingredientes e técnicas para que você não precise usar receitas para cozinhar boas comidas. Tem algumas informações úteis mas o estilo é tão pretensioso que foi difícil gostar do livro.
English
The core idea is great. Show you some basic combinations of ingredients and techniques so that you don't really have to follow a recipe to cook good food. Some useful bits of information but the style was so pretentious that it was hard to truly enjoy it.
A ideia é central é muito boa. Ensinar combinações básicas de ingredientes e técnicas para que você não precise usar receitas para cozinhar boas comidas. Tem algumas informações úteis mas o estilo é tão pretensioso que foi difícil gostar do livro.
English
The core idea is great. Show you some basic combinations of ingredients and techniques so that you don't really have to follow a recipe to cook good food. Some useful bits of information but the style was so pretentious that it was hard to truly enjoy it.
Want to read
November 25, 2019Referred to by Peter Hertzmann in a paper about food communication.
November 13, 2025
Great premise, poor execution.
August 9, 2013
Somewhat opinionated, but he also gives the impression that a lot of cooking is based on opinion - people have different tastes.
If you want to start looking at why recipes work, what ingredients are actually necessary and how to branch out into experimenting this is a good book.
Its also focussed on the home cook. You won't find advice suited to a commercial kitchen - in fact he takes some chef authors to task for this.
If you want to start looking at why recipes work, what ingredients are actually necessary and how to branch out into experimenting this is a good book.
Its also focussed on the home cook. You won't find advice suited to a commercial kitchen - in fact he takes some chef authors to task for this.
December 14, 2017
A tradução é péssima - se puder, leia em inglês. Se não puder, mesmo assim vale a pena. Os livros de culinária que nós vemos por aí não estimulam a criatividade do cozinheiro amador como esse pequenino faz por um preço muito mais acessível do que o livro de técnicas do Le Cordon Bleu. É repleto de curiosidades, derruba alguns preconceitos e tem exercícios bem bacanas para que o leitor descubra a sensibilidade do seu paladar.
February 23, 2014
I enjoy reading the eccentric writing of Glynn Christian. There's information in here amongst the strong personal opinions of the author. I also have his delicatessen book which I love although it is a bit dated now.
June 10, 2016
So far so good. It was not that I did not know it pretty well before.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews