By the time Pablo Picasso was in his nineties he was able to dash off pen and ink drawings and produce large canvases without the careful thought of a young artist starting out. So it is with traditional culinary artists- cooks who have been spinning off strudels, fruit leathers, pot pies, biscuits, and even fish stews their whole life through. By the time a cook reaches fifty, sixty or seventy he or she is no longer bound by exact measurements and feels comfortable about adding merely a handful of this or a dash of that. Similarly, instinct tells the cook that the feel of the dough is just right. Consequently, rather than reading written ...