The Four Stages of Recipe Development

Inspiration, attempt, despair, triumph

So optimistic, so full of hope.

When I worked at Bon Appétit (RIP), a huge part of my time was devoted to recipe development, and usually those recipes were not my own. That era of my life was a lot of things, but it was never boring. The way recipes shape-shifted was endlessly fascinating to me: from suggestions at ideas meetings, to first drafts ready to be tasted and refined, and finally to clean copy and arresting photos. It was especially rewarding when you factored in all the inevitable failures built into the journey.

Every food editor has a different process. Some of the people I know write up their recipes with actual amounts and fully-fleshed out steps, then head into the kitchen to cook along with the document, making adjustments in subsequent rounds. Some write a list of ingredients they anticipate putting into play, then cook instinctively and make notes as they go (that’s more my style). When an iconic dish is on the roster (ie, hummus, ropa vieja, spaghetti alla carbonara), most developers start by making other author’s versions, then edit, tweak, and personalize to create something new. Sometimes things taste great but look like a hot mess; problems like that also need solves.

I have worked with every type of recipe developer, and no one is above the cycle of anguish and triumph. When you are making a chocolate-caramel tart for the fifth time and the only thing that’s changed from the previous round is that the amount of cream has decreased from 1/3 cup to 1/4 cup, you still have to remake the dough, blind-bake the shell, make the chocolate glaze and the caramel, then assemble, chill, and present it to find out for sure. You will come to despise that tart and yourself for pitching it in the first place¹. But when you see the final version of your creative efforts photographed on a beautiful prop in beautiful light, and then see it being made and remade out in the real world, it will be worth it (usually).

It’s a rollercoaster out there, kids. Witnessing this recipe ruckus again and again led to my Four-Act Drama Queen Theory of Recipe Development. That classic narrative we know so well: calm, conflict, catastrophe, conclusion. When you think there’s no hope left, salvation comes:

Excitement. Frustration. Despair. Breakthrough.

Inspiration. Confusion. Anger. Clarity.

Discovery. Ambivalence. Heartache. Bliss.

Yes, we’re still talking about food. Or are we?

But seriously. For this week’s recipe, I culled from an abundance of crowd-sourced ideas and decided to pair soft tofu with crisp greens in a weeknight rice bowl-a-plenty. (My call for ideas also inspired this Spinach and Artichoke Lasagna.)

What doesn’t kill us makes us want to eat it again.

From the start, this tofu idea hinged on a made-up sauce in my head. I was going for something spicy, sweet, tangy and sticky. It had to be at least as good as chili crisp otherwise it wasn’t worth including. Since nothing will never be as good as Lao Gan Ma or Mama Teav’s, already I was in the hole.

The only thing that went right on my first round was the pot of rice that I already have a recipe for (That Sounds So Good, Perfect Stovetop Rice), and the store-bought fried shallots I tossed on top.

Mistakes: I simmered the tofu first, and then did the greens in the same pot, and unappetizing tofu bits got stuck to the stalks and leaves. (At least I got the weights and cook times for the greens!) There was way too much ginger, so the sauce was bitter and unbalanced. It also took a f*cking eternity to dice all that ginger; annoying. The cumin seeds I experimented with were—as Andy Baraghani once famously described cumin—obnoxious.

Eh.

The sauce almost broke me; I made it four more times and started to wonder if I knew how to cook. Less ginger (sliced, not diced) helped, but it still tasted flat. Vinegar and sugar were summoned. Even though I really wanted to include Sichuan peppercorns, I decided they were a) contributing to the bitterness I couldn’t shake and b) a potential deterrent for folks who couldn’t buy them without a special trip. Deciding not make a recipe over a single ingredient sucks, so I always try to include Spin Its, but an alt for Sichuan peppercorn is never not going to be an imperfect compromise. They were out.

I hoped to make the sauce in the same pot that was used for simmering the veggies (an effort to minimize equipment), but caramelizing a small amount of aromatics in a 3-quart pot is deciding in advance to scorch the whole thing. A small saucepan was required.

Round four? I think?

Finally the sauce was where I wanted it (thank you, coriander seeds!), so I asked my friend Ross to test the recipe and give me notes. He’s a great eater and good cook with a realistically-sized and equipped kitchen. He reported back that he doesn’t like soft tofu and also felt it was a lot of cleanup for a weeknight. Friends: You can use whatever tofu you like, and buying a container of cooked rice from a nearby restaurant is an easy workaround. This is why we cross-test recipes!

Weirdly, that artichoke lasagna, which I thought would require multiple tests to finesse the balance of sauce to filling and dial in the ratio of gooey to crispy, was pretty solid after one try. Let’s celebrate the little wins, the half-hour sitcoms that go down easy right before bedtime. You never know when a Shakespearian Mega-Drama will pop up next.

And now, for the actual freakin’ recipe and the video that goes with it!

1. I apologize to the food editor that I made do this only to find out everyone preferred the texture of the caramel at the original 1/3 cup amount. Still sorry!