None of the recipes I post are mine
Wait, what?
Hold on, I can explain.
Several years ago I shared a recipe on the blog for pan-fried trout, and today, it’s being shared again on my friend's fishing travel site. Pete and Hanna are long-time friends from way back, and Pete and I worked together for Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits. Pete is a freelance writer for the fishing magazine I still edit and publish for the bait company.
Outside of GYCB, I don’t know if our paths would have ever crossed, as they are right-coasters (Virginia), and I’m a left-coaster (Washington state), and I’m not really into fishing. I worked for a fishing lure manufacturer for 24 years but didn’t really fish, which a lot of people found odd.
The decisions we make and the steps we take today have the potential to put us in the path of some amazing people, and that’s what happened with me and Pete and Hanna. Their website, Half Past First Cast, is a culmination of the wisdom and knowledge they’ve gained over the years traveling to amazing places, meeting cool people, and catching exotic fish. Their mission is to let both veteran and potential anglers know that living their best fishing life is possible. From lodge and guide recommendations to step-by-step instructions on packing tackle efficiently for travel and insider insight into what lures you should bring with you to the Amazon, Pete and Hanna have you covered.
Luckily for me, they also love to eat, which is why they wanted to share some of the recipes from my site that might be amenable to folks wanting to enjoy their fresh catch. But here’s the real “catch”: while the recipes I post on my food blog have spoken to me in one way or another (they might recall a fond memory or experience, or just be really freaking good), none of them are my original recipes. They might be tweaked here and there with an ingredient trade-out, or massaged gently if I felt the directions didn’t produce what the cookbook claimed it should, but ultimately, my blog is made up of recipes I’m sharing from other people’s genius.
There. I’ve said it. I am a recipe tester, not a recipe developer. For some time now, that knowledge has made me feel somewhat guilty writing a food blog, because most of the food bloggers I follow are churning out original recipes and cookbooks of their own. My blog has been more about telling my readers what I cooked recently that worked, what I’d cook again, and whether or not I’d recommend the cookbook I was sharing the recipe from.
Wait, does this make me a food critic? Maybe a cookbook or recipe critic. In my backwards brain, everyone must like me, so I never feel the freedom some experience when shredding another person’s work and livelihood. That’s just not me.
When I first got serious in the kitchen, over 25 years ago, I remember reading about Mark Bittman’s 4 Stages of Learning to Cook (I think it was from an essay in one of his newsletters). Basically, he explains the transformation from novice to mature cook thusly:
First, you slavishly follow recipes; this is useful.
In Stage two, you synthesize some of the recipes you've learned. You compare, for example, Marcella Hazan's pasta all’amatriciana with someone else's, and you pick and choose a bit. … You learn your preferences. You might, if you're dedicated, consult two, three, four cookbooks before you tackle anything.
The third stage incorporates what you've learned with the preferences you've developed, what's become your repertoire, your style, and leads you to search out new things. What are the antecedents of pasta all’amatriciana? What's similar? … This is the stage at which many people bring cookbooks to bed, looking for links and inspiration; they don’t follow recipes quite as much, but sometimes begin to pull ideas from a variety of sources and simply start cooking.
Stage four is that of the mature cook, a person who consults cookbooks for fun or novelty but for the most part has both a fully developed repertoire and - far, far more importantly - the ability to start cooking with only an idea of what the final dish will look like. There's a pantry, there's a refrigerator, and there is a mind capable of combining ingredients from both to make dinner.
I feel I’m a solid 3.75 at this stage in my culinary career, but I honestly don’t think I’ll ever move forward into that special sphere of recipe creation that’s unique to me. Instead, I’d rather write about how insanely amazing someone like Mandy Lee (The Art of Escapism Cooking cookbook author and ladyandpups.com blogger) is and how innovative and mouth-watering her recipes are. Then encourage my little band of home cooks to try the recipe I just did because it’s totally doable.
Go see for yourself. You’ll notice that I credit pretty much every recipe on my blog to its original creator because where there’s one good recipe, you’ll usually find more. See? I’m giving you way more bang for your buck. We all lead busy lives. I know it’s a big deal to get people to stop what they’re doing and go visit a website for more detailed information. And really, reader, that’s where the good stuff resides. Not on the surface, not always in our direct line of sight.
So thanks for reading what I have to say about the people I enjoy cooking from. And if you’re thinking about fly-fishing in Montana or peacock bass fishing down on the Amazon, you know where to go.
