Do you know how to read a recipe? Or, better yet, do you understand the recipes you read?

You might be looking at me like I’ve got a balloon whisk for a head but I do have a point, here. The more you cook, the more likely you’ll run into subtle variations in written recipes that can make a difference in the finished product.

There’s a way to read a recipe (preferably before you chop your first vegetable) that will prepare you for making a dish the right way the first time and never having to call for take out due to user error.

Once you’ve read through your recipe fully to make sure you’ve got all the ingredients and tools you need and find out if it’s going to take 2 hours in the oven or only a few minutes on the stove, look a little bit closer at your ingredients list.

There’s an order of operations that takes place with some ingredients that should be noted. For instance

1 cup flour, sifted  vs 1 cup sifted flour
1 cup cheese, shredded vs 1 cup shredded cheese

The things that happen after the comma happen after you’ve measured the ingredient in question. In the case of flour, settling occurs during packaging and shipping and sitting on your shelf. Some recipes (mostly baking, in the case of flours) are so fine-tuned that the difference in weight or volume between a cup of sifted flour versus the same cup of flour straight out of the bag can change the end results in not good ways.

The cheese is a little different but easier to see. If you buy a block of cheese to save money (you pay more for pre-shredded, after all) and remember reading somewhere that 1 cup equals 8 ounces, you might go and grate that whole 8-oz block of cheddar thinking you’re in the clear.

If the recipe called for 1 cup shredded cheese you’re going to end up with twice as much cheese as you need! Why? Magic.

No, not really–shredding cheese spreads out something that was very tightly compressed and it takes up more space.

Does food always grow when you break it down?

Nope.

Cubed bread into crumbs in an excellent example of how much certain items can compress when it’s shredded or ground. If the original state is light and fluffy or groups of them don’t fit together perfectly (nuts, I’m looking at you), breaking them down into smaller units allows them to fit together more tightly and get rid of all that trapped air.

And let’s not even start on rice. Read carefully, my friends, because 2 cups of cooked rice is very different from 2 cups rice, cooked. (We’re back to the expanding thing, again, if you weren’t sure.)

Next week we’ll talk about weights and measures and when conversions can be safely made! Until then… have you ever had a recipe mishap or seen something you just didn’t understand? All comments welcome!

Except for a few cocktail orders I haven’t been drawing much the last month and a half–I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get back into the habit of sitting at my drawing table. Hell, even just being in the Abyss (my office). I’d been working on the laptop from the comfort of the couch whenever I wasn’t drawing or editing photos. (Mostly because the television in the Abyss got zapped months ago by lightening and I like to catch up on DVR while I work on other things.)

Still, despite the schedule-shift I’ve got the first 6 pages laid out, lettered and loosely penciled. A slow start but one that will be built upon this week and continuing. For a fleeting moment I thought it would be feasible to finish the comic art in 6 weeks–sounds okay, right? Until I realized that it would mean 15 pages a week and, well, I’d have to quit my job and invest in mega wrist braces to manage that. So we’re looking at at LEAST through September before the art will be complete.

Not that I’m not going to try and speed things up! I’ve even given up sleeping in on weekends to allow more time for drawing! This may not seem like a whole lot but, well, I love my weekends when I never see the a.m. side of noon. It’s what gets me through the week! But I’m committed to this project, even if it means losing my luxury lie-ins.

Another thing we haven’t seen around here, lately, is a Food & Game Pairing. There’s a reason for this: they take time to research and prepare. I have the next one picked out but it’s probably going to wait until I’ve cleared some other things from the to-do list. In the mean time I’m going to be putting up some posts on basic recipe skills, pantry basics and must-have kitchen tools to get you ready to explore your kitchen. For instance, do you really know how to read a recipe? Know what should be weighed or measured and when conversions are equal and when they are not? Do you know what that tool does?

Stay tuned…

Oh. Yeah.

Another round of high-5s, gang: the scripts are finished!!!

The last 3 are longhand in my go-everywhere red notebook but they are finished. Come to think of it, there should have been more celebration involved when that last word was written.

Except that the work is far from over.

Sure, I’ve got scripts but now I’ve got to actually draw them. This week I’ll start laying out the first 6 pages, the prologue. Funny thing, the chapter stories are all 16 pages long. So much for my 6-12 estimate! With a 3 page epilogue that brings us up to 89 pages of comics alone! Plus title pages, techniques and all the other stuff we’re talking over 100 pages to draw.

Guess I’d better get busy!

In the interest of sharing, here’s my usual process:

1. Scripting. I used to do this with my weekly comics but it’s absolutely imperative with long-form. For instance, I didn’t determine one of the necessary kitchen features of the prologue until halfway through the prologue–major bummer if I’d had to go back and redraw pages because of that little detail.
2. Layout. Some of my scripts are very specific about how many panels per page and others are more free-flowing, writing down the beats that need to be hit and the dialog and I make the panel decisions when I actually get to the page.
3. Lettering. I hand letter. One reason is this keeps me from drawing stuff in a panel that’s just going to get covered up by words (working smarter, not harder!). The other reason is that I think hand lettering looks more organic with the page than even a font created from my handwriting would. It helps that I have good handwriting (being obsessive about my homework in high school paid off, folks!)–it’s not for everyone.
4. Pencils. I do tight pencils. That means a lot of detail. It’s what I’m most comfortable with–I’m never as happy with my inks if I leave the pencils too loose and I’ve been known to prefer my pencils to my inks.
5. Inking. This goes in two parts. Again, I start with the letters. Mostly because it requires different pressure on my hands than drawing figures. Same pen, different grip. It also goes faster. Figures are last and can take quite a while, switching to a smaller pen for the backgrounds. All told I probably draw everything 3 times. Then I spot any solid blacks there may be. I’m thinking of going to brush again for some of the lines, we’ll see when I get there.
6. Scanning. Hello, computer. Depending on the size of my originals, I might have to scan them in parts and stitch them together in…
7. Photoshop. See what I did there? I do very little work in Photoshop for my comics. Mainly I adjust the levels to drop out any pencil marks that made it through the scanning step (erasing is one of the worst jobs–if I had an intern that’s one of the things I’d make them do), adjust any glaring errors and resize it for print or web depending on the application.

When working long-form I like to work through each step through the whole work. In this case, 90 pages is a lot to do each in turn, so I’ll work through inking the lettering on each story chunk but hold off inking the figures until everything else is done so that there’s not a drastic style-difference between pages 1 and 90. Covers come last and, by then I should have my illustration list made up for the individual techniques and recipe spots.

And if you want a photo-peek of one of the techniques for the book–making gnocchi from scratch–check out the recent post over at Nibbles ‘n Bites!

Can I get a big ol’ high five?!

Yes, folks, that’s right–this week I wrapped up the main recipe testing for What to Feed Your Raiding Party!!! Basically, I have 1 or 2 recipes I want to play with a bit more, to make that much better, and 4 drinks to design (1 punch and 3 individual drinks).

Not only that, I also finished the script for Fellowship of the Grill (oh, yes, I went there) while sitting in the waiting room for my gastro appointment today and started on the script for the last comic story (not counting the epilogue). Soon–so very soon!–I’ll actually start working on pages of art for the book. Eeee!

Here’s the pictures from the last bit of testing:

Baked Apples (served a la Mode)

Stuffed with brown sugar, butter and dried cranberries and baked until delicious.

Coconut Corn Chowder

Studded with vegetables and completely vegan, this “chowder” uses both a light roux as well as the thickness of coconut milk for it’s creamy texture.

Cheddar-Chive Buttermilk Biscuits

These buttery, tangy biscuits are so simple to prepare and so very tasty. They go great with soups and stews and somewhat resemble a certain biscuit by a certain seafood chain.

Seafood Lasagna

I borrowed the idea of individual lasagnas with woven noodles from an episode of Giada at Home but the scallop, shrimp and crab filling is all my own. It would also work perfectly fine in a single casserole for larger groups.

Brownies

What’s better than a no-fail, dense and fudgy brownie recipe? One that will work with all sort of variations–swap out the chocolate chips for butterscotch ones, swirl in some sweetened cream cheese, add nuts or just top with an rich and tasty frosting.

Rosemary Cheddar Bread

For those who want to try their hand as a yeast bread I’m including a fairly simple (yet always tasty!) Italian bread studded with shredded cheddar and fresh rosemary. Makes your whole kitchen smell like a bakery!

Want more? Today over on Nibbles ‘n Bites I talked about our experiment with Pineapple Can Game Hens–like Beer Can Chicken only so not. Also, it’s not too late to start your own batch of Limoncello and play along with me over at Sips & Shots.

Do you know what I discovered this week?!

I’m only 12 recipes away from the upper goal of 75 recipes! Actually, I have 71 recipes tested in total but some chapters are heavy a few extras (like G rilling & Roasting) while others lack more than half (Baked Goods & Drinks). This weekend I managed to wrap up the Appetizers & Snacks chapter with 2 very tasty dips, knocked out an updated side dish for that over-abundant Grilling chapter and tested both a dessert and a drink.

Tomorrow I’ll be making a vegan corn chowder (one thing I noticed when going over the classifications of my recipes was that I could use a few more veggie-friendly items as written instead of just expecting folks to make substitutions) and Wednesday will be a seafood lasagna with rosemary cheese bread. After that I’ll only need 1 more dessert and 4 more drinks and the recipe portion of things will be finished! Except for a couple I want to refine a bit.

But, wow! That’s going to feel like a major accomplishment. 75+ recipes…

And here’s the pictures from this weekend!

Black Olive, Feta and Date Tapenade

Spicy Seafood Dip

Baked Apples a la Mode