Recipe writing and editing is an art. Getting someone from eggs and flour to dough to cookies takes more thought and effort than you might think.
Not long ago, I came across a recipe by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. It called for "a glug" of this and "a splashful" of that. I love Oliver's joie de vivre on the telly, as he might say, but I think readers need more guidance in print.
Still, I was intrigued to read an article in the New York Times about posting recipes on the social networking site Twitter.com, where posts are limited to just 140 characters. A woman in Northern Ireland has the formula down pat. Here's her "tweet" for a biscotti recipe:
Biscotti: mix 1/3c sug/3T oil/egg/t anise flavr; +c flour/t bkgpwdr. Roll log to fit bkgpan; pat down. 30m@375/190C. Slice~14; brwn+6m/side.
Isn't that something? I think it's a real feat, and the idea isn't wasted on us here at relish, where we strive to edit recipes into the fewest possible words without sacrificing clarity. We want to run as many recipes as we can in limited space.
In that spirit, we're printing more recipes in paragraph form rather than the standard recipe format. Let me know how you like it.
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