I am often asked—strangely enough, even by people who actually know me—why I don’t include recipes here in my column. Have you people actually read my columns? (I wish to enter my column dated April, 2004, “High Altitude or Lousy Attitude” as exhibit “A,” and further to this, please accept my column of March, 2005, “Converting Nigella” as exhibit “B.”)

Just because you can write about cooking and on the odd occasion pull off a spectacular meal, this is no guarantee that you should even think about spreading this joy to others in the form of a recipe. I have been burned by far too many supposedly “brilliant, new kitchen talents” and their fancy cookbook/coffee table books to ever wish to impose my haphazard methods of cooking, especially baking, on others.

Admittedly, some recipes are just, plain nasty by nature. Take lasagne as an example. How many times have you gotten to the bottom of the two pages of instructions, with either “1/3 of the red sauce” unused, like the left-over screws from that new barbecue or “nap the remaining 1/3 of sauce…” Yikes! Doesn’t that make 4-thirds? Most lasagne recipes are too long and are awkwardly written so that you are left with a sink of dirty bowls and possibly left-over ingredients. The trick with a lasagne is to improvise; never follow a recipe; go with your gut feeling and whatever you can find in the fridge! Now do you understand why I shouldn’t be writing recipes?

My biggest issue with recipes is deciphering measurements. Not only is it annoying when cookbooks vary from imperial to metric, but that whole “measurement by volume vs. measurement by weight” thing is dreadfully confusing. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the math is telling you; you just know it looks wrong!

I have accepted that books by British authors like Nigella Lawson will be a bit of a challenge, but when I found my latest cookbook, one written by a Vancouver Islander, also presented me with equivalence issues, I was surprised.

I had daringly volunteered to make dessert for a ladies’ dinner party. I guess I keep hoping that one day the Goddess of the Light Touch will bestow me with supernatural powers. I went to my new cookbook which has gorgeous photos of every recipe, and found a tart recipe that not only looked fairly safe but contained “normal” ingredients. (One of my other cookbook turnoffs is a pompous use of impossible to find ingredients outside of Vancouver, Toronto, or Rome.)

The biggest downfall to this recipe and granted, a large one, was the type of bakeware used; what I call a “pretentious use of baking terminology.”  Without a picture of the required “round metal rings or fluted brioche moulds” I was hooped. This necessitated a trip to the Cook’s Nook in Nanaimo, where I managed to spend a good chunk of change on ten fluted mini-flan pans that store owner Jenny felt would work. This was going to be another one of those cooking experiences that turned out to be costly, like the candy apples I once promised the PTA for a fundraiser that netted me my first copy of Joy of Cooking (a good thing) and a candy thermometer. There was also that very expensive frittata pan I bought just so that I could cook eggs like an Italian! (See “Exhibit C,” my column from June, 2003, “The four-hundred dollar egg supper.”)

Now that I was home with the pans I prayed would work, I began to measure the pastry ingredients…it wouldn’t take a Julia Child to recognize that there was no way one egg and 6 tbsp of butter were ever going to hold together 8oz. (2 cups) of flour and 3oz. (1/2 cup) of sugar. As much as I gathered and kneaded that mixture, I was not going to end up with anything that would “form a flat ball” despite hours chilling-out in the fridge.

With the front of an anxiety attack moving in, I reached for my perennial saviour, my now tattered Joy of Cooking. I flipped to “pastry” and quickly located a short pastry that was similar but with one significant difference: for the same amount of liquid ingredients, there was only one cup of flour. I doubled this recipe and… it wouldn’t take a Julia Child to recognize that this pastry felt and looked like it should.

The mini-flan pans worked perfectly, and I think I may have actually found a “fancy” dessert style that I can repeat. It even passed the Jordan “Did you cut back on the sugar again?” taste test.

Later, in a moment of relative calm and open-mindedness, i.e., when I didn’t have the pressure of baking a special dessert looming over me, I sat down with my new cookbook. After scribbling, “DO NOT USE!” and “See page 641 of Joy of Cooking,” across the offending pastry recipe, I thumbed to the front of the book and began to read the forward and notes on the recipes. And while I still believe that the pastry measurements were incorrect (but I could be wrong) and I truly believe that a photo of speciality bakeware should be included for us non-baking school graduates, I began to feel foolish and ashamed of my harsh judgement.

The author writes that while he prefers certain local ingredients such as salal berries, sea asparagus, fish and seafood, he will always give substitutes for harder to find ingredients. He also discusses why he prefers using imperial measurements and dry weights for certain ingredients. And although he suggests that a kitchen scale is preferred when measuring baking ingredients for accuracy, he offers a conversion table for those who prefer otherwise.

You may also find it amusing to read this quote: “Some of the recipes may look difficult at first but once read through they can be broken down into their various parts and executed with time and a little patience.”

The book is, Flavours of Cooper’s Cove Guesthouse, by Angelo Prosperi-Porta. I would highly recommend it for “not-your-everyday” cooking. As for recipes that I talk about in my columns, you can always email me or just phone and I can send you a copy, but only of those that have been tested in Kerry’s Test Kitchen first!