Have you ever cooked something that you quickly put together with very few ingredients, a sprinkling of this and that, and have it turn out tasting so darn good that you attempt to make it again with what you consider to be the “right” ingredients, only to have it taste blah? If you answered yes, you are so not alone.
There have been so many occasions when I am tired, or not tired, and need something to eat that I cobble together a few ingredients, assembling them, improvising, creating at times something out of bare essentials. The results are more often deliciously surprising. I’d make a note to try making the dish, or sometimes it is a sandwich with “proper” ingredients not just the bits and pieces I had had available. Almost on every occasion whatever I make then turns out tasting fine but seems to be missing something, the taste or texture is just not right, and then comes the ah-ha moment. The moment in which I realize that when I made the dish, there was a certain freedom, haste, a lack of preparation and perfection with which I went about cooking. There was no pressure to produce food for anyone or an occasion. The only expectation and satisfaction that I had to live up to was my own.