I was talking with a girlfriend recently about people who, when asked, will give you one of their recipes but then leave out a step or ingredient. We disagree on how these individuals should be handled - I argue for compassionate rehabilitation, she prefers the death (as in social death) penalty. My feeling is that if you don't want to share a recipe, you should be gutsy enough to admit it and not mess around with petty little passive-agressive dramas.


I, myself, have never knowingly sabotaged a shared recipe although I have been known to refuse a recipe request. I have been granted some on the condition of everlasting secrecy and I keep my promises. We all want to be special in some way and so there are some recipes I consider household-specific and they will be shared only with my children or, under some circumstances, with my sisters. Others I am happy to share and am thrilled to have provided enough pleasure to someone that they are prompted to inquire. In turn, I respect the inclination to not share, although I was once seriously torqued to find out that I was refused an recipe that was granted to another party-goer. I was steamed for weeks about that episode.


It's one thing to receive a recipe from a non-food professional but there's a side to the non-working recipe story, though, that is much more sinister. Deb writes about her troubles making a recipe out of a Martha Stewart recipe, troubles echoed in the post's comments. I have had similar problems with not only Martha Stewart, but also Emeril and Bobby Flay. And I'm not talking about the occasional recipe for which my skills or equipment are no match, but rather chronic, consistent failure. I don't know if inadequate testing is the problem or if there's some other factor at play but it really annoys me to spend time and money on a recipe only to have something either inedible or not resembling whatever it's supposed to be.


When I first noticed recurring failures I assumed that the problem was mine and I spent a lot of time redoing the work, making sure that I had lots of quiet (i.e., non-kid) time and a thoroughly prepared mise en place. When the outcomes were still bad (in some cases fabulously so) I had to assume that fault lie elsewhere.


Still, even with so much wasted food, money and time, I'm not Martha-, Emeril- or Bobby-bashing. They and their compatriots have done much for the state of entertaining and homemaking, giving us all a sense of possibilities and, in many cases, more courage to try more than we might otherwise might have. I look to them as more idea labs (like the famous Bell Labs of yore) than instructive resources. Like all those home renovation and decorating shows, gardening shows and endless rows of shelter mags, I think we'd be wise to remember (I know that I certainly would be) that what works on paper or in a photograph has little to do with what actually works in life. Some furniture arrangements I've seen lately, as lovely as they may be, might as well be courtesy of ILM for all the relevance they have to my own home.


And so it is with food. Tonight's roasted chicken, with garlic slipped under the skin and preserved lemons stuffed inside. might not be the stuff of glamourous culinary money shots but it's real and it's home. And I never need to worry if it'll work.