How to define a recipe? Adding stuff to stuff is perhaps a quick, effective, true, and intuitive answer, but I prefer to craft a response that considers the intellectual gap between food and recipe! Theorem: a recipe is the
rational combination of two or more edible ingredients that cannot be separated anymore. Moreover these ingredients must be raw and non semifinished produces (like puff pastry for instance): the union of these two components turns into a new element, as
Hydrogen consists in one proton and one electron.
Monsieur La Palisse (or better the incorrect memory we keep of this man and his lapalissade) would emphasize my opinion stating that one ingredient alone cannot be considered
a recipe, otherwise some fruit and vegetables could have been labelled as
recipes. They are nourishments, this is obvious, but they need a process, through which they evolve into something new.
Some friends benevolently contested that several recipes
I edited where apparently too complicated..."you need a professional cupboard to store all those tricks"! So I opted for an easier, every day POV: this happened to be also an omen, since in Paris à l'internat de l'ENS the chance to cook properly is more or less a vain illusion. This experiment wishes to demonstrate how
very simple combinations may radically change your approach to cooking. At the same time, a no-fuss effort is required and your meals may jump to a nice different level. At this
stage, it is not anymore a matter of difficulty, but laziness. What i suggest is to armonise only two things!
 |
| Chapeau! |
Extra-virgin olive oil, pepper (or chilli)
and salt are definitely ingredients, because they enter (from the Latin ingdredior: to gent into, to enter, to move…to walk into
something) into preparations: nonetheless,
because they are pretty much always necessary in recipes, I consider them as a
pre-requisite linked to personal taste. Try to make a pasta tomato sauce
without basil and garlic and you will taste something miserable. Actually, I
often consume my salad as it comes (mud excluded)
Here
are then some examples of two ingredient recopies:
 |
From the freezer to the pan: Waitrose organic spinach,
finally drizzled with organic soy-sauce. |
|
 |
| We aren't frozen anymore |
|
 |
| Almost ready |
|
 |
| The garlic moves as a moon |
|
 |
| Salmon fillet and lemon juice |
 |
| Kindly provided by Duchy: Bread and Butter |
 |
| Chocolate bread and butter |
 |
| Hedgehog of organic potatoes with matured Waitrose brie |
 |
Raspberries and chocolate:
it is not an idea of mine,
yet worth sharing! |
 |
Roasted chicory with sweet balsamic vinegar
&
bresaola wrapping a goat cheese |
In the end, two ingredient recipes came out as an homage to couples, where two separate ingredients are mingling well together:
