Earlier today I made some pakoras and this evening, after tending to the current batch of cheeses, I've broken the habit of a lifetime and followed a recipe for "Cambodian Black Pepper Pork" to the letter.
I'm someone who cooks very much by instinct. Don't get me wrong -- I love recipe books, but usually they're not the sort of recipe books a purist would like. I like big colourful pictures, descriptions of ingredients and cultural links but usually couldn't care less if the recipe itself doesn't work. I absorb the ideas and over time they filter into my approach to cooking along with things I've tasted, seen or just imagined.The problem with this is that I'm getting into a rut. I can, for example, cook a variety of Indian and Thai style curries, stir fries and so on but attempts I make at Vietnamese influence taste, well... like Indian or Thai or Indonesian with a bit of Vietnamese influence. So I'm making a conscious effort to follow recipes for a bit rather than just glance at them and then interpret them. From the smells coming from the kitchen right now I'm cautiously optimistic.
The recipe I'm following tonight[1] is actually very simple: diced pork (300g) simmered for an hour and a half in a mix of soy sauce (1 tbsp), fish sauce (1.5 tbsp), pork stock (1 pint), grated ginger (20g), garlic (two cloves) and copious quantities of black pepper (1/2 tbsp). I wouldn't have thought to use both soy and fish sauce, and I probably wouldn't have used that much pepper without any other spices. But the real point of this is that it's a first step. Today the challenge was not to deviate from the instructions. Next time I might pick something where the instructions are more complex.
[1] From Vietnamese Food & Cooking by Ghillie Başan, Anness Publishing
