Did you notice that our quantities are comically imprecise? We firmly believe that recipes are guidelines. They are not commandments. Our friend Alice Waters says it best:
Something can be lost in writing down a recipe. People can become so focused on measuring ingredients that they’re not tasting as they go along, and at the end of it, they don’t have the confidence to cook without a recipe. I like great cookbook writers… who describe the raw material in a beautiful way, encouraging you to go out to the farmers’ market and experience it all for yourself. That’s where the real learning happens.
The famous French chef Alain Ducasse says, 85 percent of cooking is shipping; it may even be more than that; it might be 90 percent.