A loose definition of the word improvisation is to invent, compose, or perform something extemporaneously. For example if you’ve ever seen a Woody Allen movie, laughed at a sketch on Saturday Night Live or heard Miles Davis play notes of music not bound by this earth, you’ve experienced improvisation in action. As it is in movies, sketch comedy or jazz the joy of improvisational cooking is in the results that spring forth from inspired creation.
How do you use a recipe? Do you follow each step and measure each ingredient with the precision of a chemist? Do you nervously meter out the baking time of your cookies by tapping your foot to the cadence of the timer? We perform this culinary art to please more than our stomachs, the reasons too numerous to mention. Whatever the reason we usually approach it with recipe in hand. Often times a recipe we don’t understand. The essence of Improv Cooking, with it’s somewhat Zen like approach, demands you’re imagination and instinct to help you solve the riddle of the recipe.
The Steps Towards Improv Cooking
Improvisational cooking is not so much reading and following a recipe as it is using skills and techniques to take a recipe to another level or create a recipe out nothing more than a larder full of ingredients. You have to possess a certain amount of skill and understanding before plunging in to any kind of cooking. Improv Cooking is no different. It forces you to trust your instincts as well. Follow these seven simple steps and you’ll soon be free to open the fridge and just start cooking.
#1 Taste As Many Different Styles of Cooking as Possible
This is probably the simplest of all the Improv techniques to learn and master. Just eat as many different cooking styles as you can. The axiom is straightforward. The more you’re exposed to, the more imaginative you’ll become. Fill your headphones with nothing but Britney and it certainly would be difficult to imagine Charlie Parker’s saxophone. Consequently, eat nothing but the same restaurant or home cooked food all the time and your cooking vocabulary will reflect it.
#2 Understand the Basic Fundamental Techniques of Cooking
You can’t pick up a trumpet and expect to sound like Miles Davis without knowing a few things first. I won’t go into all the things that could and will go wrong. I’m sure you get the picture. Well, Improv Cooking follows the same rules. You can’t expect to be able to whip out a perfect Coq Au Vin without knowing the techniques involved to do so. But, the rewards will be greater once you do. The following list is more than just the basic fundamentals though. I’ve listed all the techniques and methods that matter to the experienced cook.
The Oven Group
Roasting – Cooking with dry heat that surrounds the food with as much direct heat as possible.
Pan Roasting – The wary little secret of every professional kitchen. This is a combination of method of starting the food in a hot sauté pan then finishing in a hot oven.
Broiling – A cousin to grilling, this is direct heat cooking with the heat source above the food instead of under it.
Braising – Moist heat cooking usually achieved in a sealed container like a Dutch oven, tagine or stoneware crock.
Baking – A dry heat method of cooking usually referring to breads, pastries etc.
The Wet Group
Boiling – Cooking in a large quantity of liquid, usually water.
Steaming – Cooking in a sealed container with a small amount of liquid (usually water but not especially) with the food suspended over the liquid so that it only comes in contact with the steam vapors.
Poaching – Best known as a method to cook egg, fish and perhaps chicken. This is cooking in a hot still liquid where the liquid never reaches more than a bare simmer.
The Frying Group
Sautéing – Cooking in a hot pan with little or no fat (butter, oil etc.)
Pan Frying – Very similar to sautéing, except done with more fat. Sometimes enough to almost immerse the food.
Stir-Frying – The Asian method of cooking in an extremely hot pan, usually a wok, with very little fat while keeping the food almost in constant motion.
Deep-Frying – Cooking by totally immersing the food in hot fat. The fat does the job of cooking by encircling the food with heat, thereby allowing it to cook faster sealing in natural juices and flavors. If done properly it’s not the health demon most people assume it is.
The Outdoor Group
Grilling – Cooking over direct heat with the food usually supported by a grate of some sort. This method can be performed indoors as well with the right equipment.
Smoking – This is actually two sub groups. Hot smoking is cooking at temperatures that will cook the food at the same time it infuses the food with smoke flavor. Cold smoking is done with the heat source separate from the cooking chamber so the food is enveloped in low temperature smoke that will infuse flavor without cooking.
Rotisserie – Like grilling, this method does not necessarily have to be done outdoors for the lucky few that have the capability in a well-equipped kitchen. Either way this is cooking with the food suspended over or next to direct heat and rotated via by some mechanical means.
The Sauce Group
Here’s where it gets a little dicey and can separate the cooks from the pretenders. Some of these techniques are best learned at the elbow of someone who’s been there before. But don’t let that stop you from digging in and trying on your own. You may come with some pretty awful stuff, but the attempt will teach you a lot.
Stock – A cornerstone of cooking, whether, meat, fish, poultry or vegetable. A low and slow cooking that’s meant to draw the true essence of flavor into a liquid form.
Brown Sauce – Usually made with beef or veal, but can be made with any brown stock made from roasted bones, flavored with aromatic herbs and vegetables.
Demi-Glace – Similar to brown sauce only made without a thickener and reduced to thicken and intensify flavors.
White Sauce – Also known as Béchamel, made with milk and or cream and thickened with a roux (flour and butter paste)
Veloute – Constructed very much like white sauce, except the milk is replaced usually by a light colored stock of either meat or poultry. It is often enhanced with egg yolks and butter at finishing.
The “Aise” Family – This includes Hollandaise and all its progeny like béarnaise, choron etc. and mayonnaise and all its descendants like aioli, remoulade etc. These are all emulsion sauces with egg bases and a body made mostly of oil or butter.
Other Emulsions – This can range from aiolis or butter sauces to vinaigrettes, to pan sauces that are thickened or finished last minute with butter and or cream.
Gravy – A sauce in loose terms only. Gravies are usually made with the juices collected from roasting meats or poultry. The non-thickened varieties are sometimes called “Jus” in modern menu vernacular.
The Soup Group
The Hearty Family – This includes all the varieties you want to serve in meal-sized bowls like beef stew, chicken and dumplings, chili, chowder and minestrone.
Bisque – Usually and intensely flavored soup that’s been thickened with rice, potatoes or a flour paste called panade.
Purees – Similar to bisque in nature but usually made with a single vegetable flavoring and thickened by pureeing the entire mass via some mechanical or manual means. Often times these soups are finished with cream.
