The Nobody Has Died Cookbook
I never cook
with a recipe. More often, I have no idea how a dish will taste
until it's done, and by then I have moved on to the next project.
Sometimes I'm not even sure that I can duplicate the recipe, or
remember each ingredient and their order. I have memorable dishes
which I didn't track and therefore only remain as a flavour, such
as the rich biscuit cake I made for camping and cutting trails
when I was volunteering in the Canadian winter and the avocado
green curry which my friend Colleen fondly recalls. Although the
flavour remains, the rich sensation of raisins and dates and molasses
and the order and amounts of ingredients are long forgotten. Other
dishes suffer from a lack of ingredients, such as Tofu Surprise,
which is not really the same without the spicy olive juice that
is no longer available.
Although I
occasionally record what ingredients I have combined to make a
dish, I normally view them as ephemera. That has changed with
this project. Acting on the delight of my various guests, I have
decided to collect my recipes and concoctions for all to enjoy.
Since I never read recipes, and am making my own cook book without
outside influence, this collection is inevitably idiosyncratic.
For example, I have organized the recipes by their cooking method
instead of type of dish, and interspersed small essays which refer-by
times loosely-to food and food production.
I mean for
the book to be an examination of the cookbook genre, as well as
a text savoured as an exercise in writing even while people try
making the dishes. I hope that people will modify my recipes to
make their own creations and that my recipes will come back, changed.
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