The Flexibility of Cooking

One thing I like about cooking is that you have both a rich tradition AND endless flexibility. Last night, for instance, I went to cook a reciped I'd gotten from a friend many years ago: Red-Cream Lentils with Polenta. It's a German dish, and I remember it being creamy and having a unusual but mild herb flavor.

I had some seitan already cooked, so I substituted that for the lentils, which take a while to make. And, I had some already cooked rice in the fridge, so I figured that could be a good stand-in for the polenta. Ah, yes- I didn't have cream. Some half and half will suffice. The recipe calls for marjoram, which I usually have, but I was out... so I substituted poultry seasoning, which has marjoram as the third ingredient (of about ten!). I had the onion and the vegetable broth, that the recipe called for. I had to leave out the tomatoes, though, as I didn't have those, and I didn't bother grating the hard cheese I had in the fridge, either.

OK, so there were a FEW substitutions, but the dish turned out OK after all, if a little bland. It needed something. I had some dried curry leaves (used in Indian cooking but NOT part of curries), so I ground up some those in the seitan/onion/poultry seasoning. Just right! Good cooking is as flexible as a determined yogi.