A Rant and a Rage

I was paging through some 15-minute recipes in A Modern Way To Cook, and just as I've done many times before, I objected.  I only know of two REAL 15-minute recipes: a grilled cheese sandwich or a bean burrito. That's about all I can prepare from scratch in 15 minutes.

How to define scratch? To me, it's simply this:
    A cook walks into a bar...uh...no...try again....
    A cook walks into a cold kitchen....
That's all; period. Nothing can be peeled, measured, chopped, or sliced. The knives, forks and spoons are in the drawer; the spices are on the rack; the cans, bottles and jars are unopened.  And--since this is real life not a cooking show--at least one essential item has been misplaced and will take five minutes to locate.

I'll allow the use of canned food, pre-made picante sauce, and grocery store tortillas; I'm not expecting you to grind your own corn or mill your own flour. But there ought to be a certain amount of contact with raw ingredients. Does making waffles mean flour, salt, milk and eggs, or does it mean a box of Aunt Jemima's? I'd say it's the former but someone with a box of Leggo waffles in the freezer might say the latter.  So let me lay down my own personal rules, and I'd love to hear how they differ from yours.

1. If the recipe calls for one clove garlic, minced, then the peeling and mincing time needs to be included.  I certainly hope a cookbook author wouldn't use the pre-minced garlic that comes in a jar. That's yucky.
2. If it calls for things like bread crumbs, chicken stock, or cooked beans, then they can be made in advance.
3. If something needs to be zested or grated or squeezed, the author needs to assume you're doing this with a hand device--not a power tool.

Given these sort of rules, I say that 99% of 15-minute recipes are lies. I'm not the only one to notice this. Here's a great article--
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2010/11/the_worst_of_times.html

and another
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/scocca/2012/05/how_to_cook_onions_why_recipe_writers_lie_and_lie_about_how_long_they_take_to_caramelize_.html

But, let's get back to discussing A Modern Way To Cook.  She doesn't deviate from my stated rules above, but I still have issues with her time estimates. One comment said, "The timings are rounded down a bit," and gives an example of one which is notably off--if you simply add up the 'grill times', they exceed the total time. But other people say that they like the grouping of recipes into 15-minute, 20-minute, etc., because that gives them a good feeling for how long it will take. "No matter how little time you have, you can prepare a great meal."

So what's the answer? Is bad data better than no data at all?

I say NO, and I double-dare anyone to choose three recipes at random and complete any two of them in the listed time.

I'm not trying to give her a hard time (pun intended), and I certainly don't expect her to pad her numbers to reflect the misarrangement of her reader's kitchens.



(My starting point)



 
I simply think they're ideals, not realities. I'm going to copy out three recipes that appeal to me, trying hard to ignore the times and concentrate only on what I'd like to eat. I'll start the clock at "a cook walks into a kitchen." Then I'll get the ingredients and tools together; take the plastic wrappers off things and open all tamper-resistent packages. At that point I'll mark the time--just for future reference--and then, reset the clock and start the race.

All ingredients and tools are on the counter, but nothing will be cut, measured, or grated. Lids will be on jars; skins on onions; florets on heads; oven on zero.

Stopwatch ready--
Go.
I'll post the results as soon as I can. Most of them call for fresh tomatoes and they're not in season yet and supermarket tomatoes are vile.