I chose two recipes for chocolate chip cookies, by two different chefs from The Food Network.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
by Giada de Laurentis (from The Food Network)
(The original recipe calls for hazelnuts and toffee candy, but they are excellent without these ingredients.)
Ingredients
* 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
* 1 cup sugar
* 2 large eggs
* 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* 1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate chips
Directions
• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
• Line 2 heavy large baking sheets with parchment paper. Finely chop the oats in a food processor. Transfer the oats to a medium bowl. Mix in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
• Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars in a large bowl until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and stir just until blended. Stir in the toffee, hazelnuts, and chocolate chips.
• For each cookie, drop 1 rounded tablespoonful of dough onto sheet, spacing 1-inch apart (do not flatten dough). Bake until the cookies are golden (cookies will flatten slightly), about 15 minutes. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely. (The cookies can be prepared 1 day ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)
The Chewy
by Alton Brown (from The Food Network)
Ingredients
* 2 sticks unsalted butter
* 2 1/4 cups bread flour
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 egg yolk
* 2 tablespoons milk
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Hardware
* Ice cream scooper (#20 disher, to be exact)
* Parchment paper
* Baking sheets
* Mixer
Directions
• Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
• Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.
• Pour the melted butter in the mixer's work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
• Chill the dough, then scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.
Giada’s title (originally Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies, before I modified the ingredients) is very straightforward and accurately tells the reader what can be prepared from the recipe. Alton’s title is much more ambiguous and requires the cook to read the full recipe (including the directions) to figure out what it is for. However, it retains the same whimsy of old, even less-descriptive recipes, such as “A Tart to Provoke Courage in Either Man or Woman” mentioned in “Claiming a Piece of the Pie” (Cotter 60).
Both recipes call for similar ingredients. Giada’s recipe calls for oatmeal, baking soda and baking powder. She is specific about the temperature of the butter (“room temperature”), as well as the brown sugar (“packed”). Alton leaves out oatmeal and baking soda, but includes kosher salt and milk.
The format of both recipes are very similar. This may be because both were taken from The Food Network’s website, but they appear to have a similar format as the recipes from my mom’s cookbooks at home. Alton also lists “hardware” and even lists the recommended size of ice cream scooper. (I wasn’t aware that there were different sizes of ice cream scoopers!) Hardware, including a food processor, is incorporated into the directions in Giada’s version. While neither chef frequently uses incomplete sentences, transitions words such as “then” “next” or “after that” are left out completely. This adds clarity to the directions, even if they aren’t written in the smoothest English.
The directions for both recipes include detailed instructions to help amateur cooks prepare the cookies as a professional chef might. Giada advises creating “one rounded tablespoonful” of dough per cookie, and spacing these and inch apart on the baking sheet. She advises baking them until they are golden brown, and even writes that the “cookies will flatten slightly.” Alton suggests using a “heavy-bottom medium saucepan” to melt the butter, and creaming the butter and sugar on “medium speed.” He also recommends chilling the dough before scooping it onto “parchment-lined baking sheets, six cookies per sheet.” Alton also advises baking the cookies until they are “golden brown,” and even instructs the cook to “rotate the baking sheet for even browning.”
Both of these recipes cater to inexperienced cooks. They are the epitome of the modern recipe in that they list specific ingredients and then clear directions with descriptions of the outcome (“golden brown”). I find this very helpful, because like many cooks in the second half of the 19th century, “the details of food preparations [are not] self-apparent” to me (Wexman 348) and I need more than a “set of hints and guidelines” if I am going to prepare food (Wexman 347). In this way, I agree with M.F.K. Fisher’s opinion that “a recipe is supposed to be a formula” with “no little secrets” left out (20). However, I did find it amusing to read Fisher’s citations of old recipes that were highly ambiguous and called for huge quantities of ingredients.
As I mentioned before, I found both of these recipes on The Food Network’s website. Before they were available online, they were probably shown on the chefs’ TV shows (which I do not watch). In “Claiming a Piece of the Pie,” author Colleen Cotter states that recipes “can be viewed as a story, a cultural narrative that can be shared and has been constructed by members of a community” (53). But what kind of community is a cable TV network that has it’s own website? It is definitely not a personal one; no matter how friendly Giada and Alton seem on TV, the average person will never have a conversation while preparing a meal with them. Giada’s and Alton’s neighbors and friends are not the only ones who have access to these recipes; anyone in the world can make these cookies if they have Internet and the right ingredients. By learning to cook from watching TV rather than from parents or friends, some of the hand-written variations and distinctiveness—and thereby the community element—of cooking seem to be lost. Yet at the same time, our horizons are widened and perhaps our confidence in making something we have never heard of is increased. Giada, Alton and other TV chefs make cooking look easy that even reluctant cooks like myself are enticed. Perhaps this signals a change in our definition of community, rather than a loss of community; a definition that includes many, many countries, not only the one in which we live.
That said, I will continue to enjoy perfecting and sharing my own recipe for dolmas, itself a combination of a recipe from a book and a friend’s recipe that she learned from her mother-in-law. And when I grow up, I will probably cook my favorite foods that my mother and my grandmother cooked for me throughout my childhood.
Monday, September 29, 2008
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1 comment:
nice! I really like your point that the use of bulleted lists in recipes means that there are no discourse connecters like "then" or "next". i also agree that some of the structural similarities are probably due to both recipes coming from the food network.
and the whole question of community, and what it means to promote community in a commercial context like this is really interesting! this was a nice discussion in class.
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