The recipes provided on this page follow four essential secrets:
Intuition,
Generosity,
Creativity,
and Love.
Mathematical precision has no place here.
Bread is often taken for granted. Before any cooking activities, this prayer should be kept in mind.
Art is a way to escape dull routine & boredom.
The genius eye of a cook observes the ordinary in ingredients with curiosity, generosity & a new power of imagination, transforming the usual & boring into less ordinary.
A cookbook after all is not very different from a grimoire.
"Bunch of Asparagus" by Edouard Manet, 1880.
The pizza philosophy goes by the rule:
ONE OLIVE PER BITE.
The one essential secret of a good cook is Generosity. Especially when it comes to olives. Stinginess destroys recipes.
Portrait of the artist's mother following the pizza philosophy rule, by James McNeill Whistler.
"Ne se mettre à genoux que pour récolter le persil et les feuilles de menthe pour fair du Tabboulé."
- Jacques Brel (edited)
Sometimes, less is more. This also applies for food. I recently discovered one of the best sandwiches I've tasted in my life in a little old snack in Portugal and it consisted of just two ingredients.
Cooking is not only about ingredients but cooking tools! Storing olives in a clay jar is not the same thing as storing them in plastic.
Mathematical formulas for cooking can only be applied as following: Cooking food in a clay pot ≠ as cooking in metal.