A New Recipe Represenation Format
Recipes have traditionally been written like lab procedures, with two parts to them:
* things needed
* step-by-step procedure
That's cool! Only that, sometimes, the procedure becomes a wordy discourse, giving the opinion that its harder to read than to make the dish. Well, that's from the recipe-reader's perspective.
From a writer's perspective, unless ardent or atleast regular, recording a recipe is a pain.
Recipes are no more shared by a selective clique, or passed down the lineage -- they are widely shared. Cooking is no more considered an art. With some interest and discipline, anyone can master it.
With these thoughts, I was motivated to come up with a format for representing recipes. These were the requirements:
1. It should be simple to read and write
2. It should be able to show possible areas of improvement
3. It should cover most aspects of a recipe. Subtleties could be mentioned seperately.
* The indgredients make the rows. The steps of the procedure (tasks) make the columns.
* The ingredients are grouped in the order used in the recipe. The sequence of tasks follows the order of the columns from left to right. Parallel tasks are shown with a dashed line between them.
* The first task on an ingredient is what comes against the amount of the ingredient. In the table above, Onions are Chopped first followed by the Saute.
Eagerly awaiting your comments ...
* things needed
* step-by-step procedure
That's cool! Only that, sometimes, the procedure becomes a wordy discourse, giving the opinion that its harder to read than to make the dish. Well, that's from the recipe-reader's perspective.
From a writer's perspective, unless ardent or atleast regular, recording a recipe is a pain.
Recipes are no more shared by a selective clique, or passed down the lineage -- they are widely shared. Cooking is no more considered an art. With some interest and discipline, anyone can master it.
With these thoughts, I was motivated to come up with a format for representing recipes. These were the requirements:
1. It should be simple to read and write
2. It should be able to show possible areas of improvement
3. It should cover most aspects of a recipe. Subtleties could be mentioned seperately.
| Sambhar /4 | CHOP | SAUTE | BOIL, MASH | SIMMER | GARNISH |
| Olive Oil | 2T 1t dash | Add water, salt to taste and simmer low for ~10 mins | Garnish the gravy with the sauteed leaves | ||
| Mustard seeds | |||||
| Asafetida | |||||
| Onion | 1B | Add after mustard sputters and until onions become translucent | |||
| Tomato | 1M | ||||
| Thai g.pepper | 5 | ||||
| Toor daal | 1C 1t | Mashed daal | |||
| Cumin seeds | Coriander powder | 1T 1t ½ t | Chilli powder | ||
| Tamarind paste | |||||
| Curry leaves | ½ C ½ C 1t | Sauteed leaves | |||
| Cilantro | |||||
| Ghee |
C = Cup, T = Tablespoon, t = teaspoon, B = Big, M = Medium, S = Small
Suggestions: Add crushed black pepper while simmering.
How to read the format?Suggestions: Add crushed black pepper while simmering.
* The indgredients make the rows. The steps of the procedure (tasks) make the columns.
* The ingredients are grouped in the order used in the recipe. The sequence of tasks follows the order of the columns from left to right. Parallel tasks are shown with a dashed line between them.
* The first task on an ingredient is what comes against the amount of the ingredient. In the table above, Onions are Chopped first followed by the Saute.
Eagerly awaiting your comments ...
posted by Ram at 1:15 AM
4 Comments:
Within a column, does the sequence of steps go from top to bottom?
I see no suggestions on improving the sambhar. Has it reached perfection? :)
Not necessarily. It's more flexible that way.
For instance, the sauteeing of curry leaves is an independent task. Because garnishing is done in the end, you'd want to saute just before it, to save the flavor.
Excellent effort and good creativity! Definitely beats reading down a long list and missing a key step in the middle. One question though... how do you show steps that could be performed in parallel?
In most situations, we dont do things parallely. So when we say 2 tasks are parallel (like the Sauteeing of onions and the Sauteeing for curry leaves) we mean that they are not tied to any sequence, and hence they are independent.
I guess, you could say all tasks that come under a column are "independent".
Sauteeing of onions and Sauteeing of Curry leaves are independent, while Sauteeing of Curry leaves and Garnishing are dependent.
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