What makes a great recipe? I’ve often wondered this.  Is it one that turns out wonderfully every time? One that anybody can make? Or one that is simply astonishing under the right reading? I’m inclined to think that most really good recipes can’t go wrong except through obvious failures of technique (or substitutions).  But maybe this is really because I’ve cooked within my own culture, having grown up around cooks: so none of the recipes I usually pick up really need to “communicate the incommunicable.”