Mi'sen

The equipment used is a big one. I might have something frozen that I can purée perfectly and quickly with a pacojet that would take much longer without one. Factoring in those different techniques to get to the same result changes the viability of the recipe for a home cook

Ingredients too. Restaurants buy things in large quantities not available in stores. So making the conversion between a huge bag of dried beans that I’d soak over night to a 19oz can of beans in water is something you have to be careful about for clarity.

You’ve also got a different audience and can’t take certain cooking skills for granted in the way you would with someone who has been trained. Trained people also have the experience/intuition for when things are done (color, smell, taste, etc) that you can’t take for granted

... and have to be more explicit about. Approaching it from first principles in case someone is starting from 0. It’s also an opportunity to teach people basic techniques for cooking or prep though.

It’s interesting isn’t it. ‘Opportunity to teach basics’ is a big gap in cookbooks; which partly explains why Samin Nosrat has done so well, approaching it from a frame of general heuristics before object level recipe details. Communicating across skill asymmetry is so tricky.

You mentioned learning how cookbooks are built; is this something you’re working on for a project? Or is it more interest led (if that split makes sense)?

I also think there is a sort of meta level of skill which some books communicate well, which is to do with appreciation, learning to love food, a sort of aesthetic sensibility in one’s approach. Not cooking in a professional environment, allows you to luxuriate. Love is cheap!

Yeah the foundational skills are an area that gets overlooked. How do you get someone interested in cooking? It’s not by teaching them to make something complicated—but teaching them how to make something simple well that they can combine with other things or vary on their own