Rec.i.pe (ˈresəˌpē) to receive something, a type of exchange
stories and ingredients for the next meal
August 10, 2025
What do you make with the cucumbers you grow?
A fellow who works with Michael asked. I’d sent him off with a bowl full of cucumbers and grapes, both of which we have an abundance of.
Greek salad, green soup, stir fry.
I happen to like cucumbers both raw and cooked. I considered jotting down the recipe for green soup, or some version of it. It’s one that I make often in the summer when cucumbers and zucchini are bountiful. My friend Claire shared it with me when I had more cucumbers than I knew what to do with. Regardless of one’s gardening enthusiasm, let me tell you now that one, maybe two cucumber plants is plenty for a small family.
The recipe has since evolved. And now that I know the bones of it, I modify it based on what I have on hand. For some this wouldn’t work. They like the clarity, structure, and predictability of an explicit set of instructions. I, on the other hand, am keen on understanding the processes, timing, and technique and then feel pretty confident to approach the variables with a sense of creativity and play (there will always be variables).
So the more I thought about all of this, I determined that a page with a list of ingredients and directions just wouldn’t cut it. Nor would it truly capture approaching the process. Okay, how I would likely approach the process. Inevitably, I knew my attempt would fall flat unless it was expressed as narrative, or better still, in person.
At first glance, the piece of paper might resemble a story rather than a list—long form, several paragraphs with arrows, maybe a sketch or two. Which ingredients will need some kind of qualifier or anecdote? Something in order to give its purpose more detail, more context. For example, it doesn’t really matter the amount of cucumber you use. You can use one or you can use three. But you definitely want to peel and de-seed them before you chop them up. The zucchini you don’t have to prep in the same way. Just chop so that the sizes are similar. They are friends in this way and will cook more evenly.
I began making this soup with a 50:50 cucumber to zucchini ratio. Yet over time and depending upon the circumstances, the ratio adjusts based on what’s available. Because again, it really doesn’t matter. If you want the end result to taste exactly the same, perhaps. Yet even when I’m meticulous about following recipes verbatim, in the end it always tastes a little different. Different cucumber, different mood, different day, butter instead of olive oil, less water, or more blending. Every green soup I’ve made to date has been slightly different. And I like that. Of the green ingredients, it’s just what happens to be in the garden or in my fridge. It’s a relevant and welcomed consequence if and when you approach a recipe as an exchange or conversation rather than a math problem.
Don’t have kale, leave it out. Beet greens instead of chard. Perfect. Just have parsley? Great, throw that in. You have cilantro, add that too. But just a little. You want that floral effervescent punch that only coriander can deliver. But remember it’s potent and you gotta like that. Once it’s all blended together it will be fabulous and the most vibrant green imaginable. I like using the vegetable Better Than Bouillon. It adds a complex depth and flavor to the broth. But then again, I’ve made the soup without it as well and it’s just as tasty.
Now, the cucumber and zucchini go into a pot with olive oil. Sauté first. Gently. Then add the water/stock so that all the veggies are covered. Add the greens and parsley. Simmer till soft. Add in the cilantro at the end. The parsley can handle being simmered, as it’s a bit tougher in nature than cilantro.
As far as the water goes, how do I convey the right amount? Just enough to cover the vegetables. I’ve made it too runny at times and too thick at others. Without being together, in person, this kind of color and commentary are lost. I guess you’ll figure it out. The one time I made it too runny I shredded a couple potatoes in at the last minute so they’d cook quickly prior to adding it all to the blender. It worked great and added another layer of flavor.
Note before you start: If you don’t have a good blender, vitamix, nutrabullet (or the equivalent) this soup isn’t going to work. Its signature is that glorious green purée. Once you’ve sauteed and simmered, all those lovely vegetables, blend the hell out of them. After which you can return to the pot reheat, season to taste, add a little black pepper, more water if you want to play with the final consistency—garnish with a little pad of butter, spoonful of skyr, or drizzle of olive oil and serve it with a well toasted slab of fresh sourdough.
It’s magnificent.
Here’s the thing, if you haven't already inferred this while reading my process, cooking, to a large extent, is about adaptation, nuance, and reactions made in the moment. In short, it’s contextual. Even if I put all the ingredients in a tight, well indexed list, running down the left side of the page, followed by a succinct paragraph detailing some semblance of an order, it’s just not thorough. It’s an attempt, not the whole story.
I think having "the crispy, edited list” is only a small slice of food alchemy. Yes, in that form, it’s recording the details, but when I read through a recipe, it’s inevitable that I’ll have a slew of questions. And left, unable to talk it out, I experiment like a mad scientist. Cooking, like any tactile skill (I think of throwing clay, metal smithing, weaving, gardening, even making a house) is a living system. Without dialogue, the give and take, the questioning and application, or the visual sharing, it remains an intangible mystery.
Susan Leonardi articulates this concept of embedded recipes in her essay, Recipes for Reading: Summer Pasta, Lobster à la Riseholme, and Key Lime Pie. It’s a long essay and one I recommend if you’re into reading stories tethered to how, what, and with whom we eat. It's witty, funny, and has a steady rhythmic beat that kept me gripped. “Even the root of recipe-the Latin recipere-implies an exchange, a giver and a receiver. Like a story, a recipe needs a recommendation, a context, a point, a reason to be. A recipe is, then, an embedded discourse, and like other embedded discourses, it can have a variety of relationships with its frame.”
Recipes are stories. To think that they can be owned is exposes our vanity. Like a song, they are experienced through all the senses, and come alive.
When you take them out of context, out of the kitchen, out of an engaged exchange between two or more people moving and hovering around the stove, washing vegetables, switching tools, observing how the color changes, the smell opens, or the exact time when, yes, now you can turn off the blender, that’s the consistency we’re after, and try to codify it without context, is it still a recipe?
In the end, I bagged writing down the green soup recipe. Let’s just have him over. Compelled, a rallying cry to get together in one another’s homes, to cook together, eat together, and tell stories together. This is where recipes are born and how they end up traveling from house to house to house.
There are roots and branches to words.
I can’t help but wonder if ‘recipe’ is in some way connected to the Arabic, Ar-Ra’uf. The traditional translation of this quality includes compassionate, full of kindness. The principal root, ra’uf, show radiation of recovery, regeneration, redemption, medicine, and health.
“When we realize that we all breathe the same air, we’re reminded that we do not simply exist for ourselves, nor do we have to do everything ourselves.”*
To give and to receive…and then to give again.
Yours, Erin
Why do you read The Center Piece?, What do you get out of these essays? or What themes move and inspire you the most? leave a note in the comments below.
*Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Sufi Book of Life: 99 Pathways to the Heart for the Modern Dervish, (London: Penguin Group, 2005) 228.