Let the Ingredients Pick You

The spring chicken sausage started with two fennel bulbs and no plan. The case for cooking by intuition, not recipes.

The other day, two cute fennel bulbs followed me home. Often, this is how cooking begins for me. I will be at the store, or a farmers' market, and something will just present itself. Even if, in that moment, I don't know why I'm drawn to it, I trust the answer will come, and the cooking will follow. I call it letting the ingredients come to you.

That is why I find that recipes, however helpful, are a bit restrictive. For me, a recipe is used at most as a point of reference, part of an intuitive process.

Now, back to the fennel. When these two bulbs told me to buy them, I had no idea yet what for. But they inspired something in me. I began to think about spring, about beautiful shades of green. Soon, a couple of leeks and some green chard were in my basket too.

And then, an idea: a spring sausage in all these shades of green. Then I thought, why not lighten it up and make it a chicken sausage? We hardly ever offer chicken sausage, though we've had some requests for it.

I named it "the spring chicken." It made itself, really.

Only then did I finally understand why the fennel insisted I pick it up. This is how I experience cooking and creating. Let the ingredients pick you. Intuition will follow. Then you will know.

Homestead Meats is Evanston’s locally sourced butcher shop, handcrafting unique fresh meats, deli meats, sausages, and other charcuterie. All fresh meats and eggs are sourced from family-owned Midwestern farms that raise their livestock in open pastures, without hormones or GMO feed.