An interview with Recipe Key's Foodie blogger, Becca Hansen

So, quick disclosure, a few of my friends, Ben Saur and Elise Melvin, built this really fantastic Web site back in 2007 called Recipe Key. Bascially, social network meets your mother's cookbook meets your pantry. I love the site (and, of course, my amigos behind it), so I wanted to spotlight it over the Massachusetts-only Long Weekend.

But where's the fun in me writing that? I asked Becca Hansen, Recipe Key's residential blogger who is self-described as "obsessed with food," to answer a few questions about Recipe Key, online recipe sharing and some of her favorite dishes:

1. Let's talk business first: What is Recipe Key and why did you get involved?

Recipe Key is an extremely innovative recipe search site dreamed up and implemented by my close friend and roommate, Ben Saur. The way it's different from other recipe sites is that you have this searchable pantry where you add ingredients you have lying around your kitchen, specify what kind of meal you're looking for and/or how you'd like to cook it, and can customize the search to any of your allergies/dietary needs-- et voila! The site finds recipes based on any number of infinite specifications, tailored specifically to your needs and tastes, and shows how you can turn that random can of beans, zucchini, and ground beef into a filling, nutritious meal!

In my personal opinion, this is a site really for the new cooking generation. People in their early-20s to mid-30s, who love food, but are sometimes constrained by busy schedules and active social lives. It appeals to our creativity, our indecisiveness, and our want for having as many options as possible. I got involved not only because Ben asked me, and literally can't say no to anything involving food, but also because I totally fell in love with the project from the get-go. Secretly, when he first told me about it, the little voice in the back of my head was screaming, "Pick me! Pick me!"

2. Recipe Key (to me anyway) adds an interesting element of crowdsourcing to cooking. Have you tried to cook anything that has been a little of a couple different recipes submitted to the site?

I can't say I've actually physically pulled together a few different recipes and traded them off one another, but I have been known to search my RK pantry, find a recipe, and recreate it with my own adaptations. I got a killer recipe for salmon on the site, but changed around some of the herbs which ended up creating a new flavor to the dish. See, that's the beauty of recipes anywhere and everywhere: it's all about improvisation. You take someone's recipe and you add your own personality to it. Recipe Key, I think, encourages this because it's so tailored to your own specific needs and tastes. It gives you your options, and then lets you run wild with them.

3. Have recipes always been this social? What ever happened to the "lock-and-key" family secrets?

Recipe-sharing is a tradition passed down from generation to generation. I fully believe that if you want to know anything about a culture and it's story, track the way it develops and incorporates food. Sharing recipes is a HUGE part of this. However, what's really significant about the new on-line recipe sharing, is that it's created an even greater emphasis on how unnecessary and against-the-spirit-of-cooking it is to have a "secret family recipe." Recipes are social, they are adaptive, they are something to be shared. However, people have always had that "secret sauce" or "secret ingredient" they wouldn't divulge. Before widespread use of the Internet, this was acceptable. Because, hell, if someone didn't want to give you their family secret, you really had no other option. Now, because the medium of online recipe-sharing has created a vast network and culture of cooking collaboration, to guard something like a "secret recipe" is extremely taboo. It is against the very nature of the on-line cooking culture, which seeks to constantly expand and diversify.

4. What's the community of recipe-sharing like these days?

Like I already said, it's huge. It's all-inclusive. It's creative. The community of recipe-sharing is on-line and this has made the "foodie scene" just explode. There are so many quality food blogs out there that the discourse of food is rampant. I really have to emphasize, though, that this is ON-LINE. Across the country, food sections in newspapers are folding or getting pushed into dim, dingy corners behind the Classified section. However, on the Internet, you find highly stylized and designs devoted to all things food. The community has gone from just a few people with a passion for the kitchen to a worldwide network of foodies. And I guarantee you, go on any cooking forum, type in "Anyone have a good gingerbread recipe?" and you'll have dozens of strangers ready and willing to provide you with any number of ways on how to create the perfect gingerbread.

5. Is there something you have never thought you'd prepare that you've found on Recipe Key - and done it?

Oh, there are a lot of things I'm INTENDING to prepare, but just haven't yet. One is this recipe for broiled octopus. I know, I know. But it truly sounds delicious! Oh, and when I was stuck with far too many radishes than I knew what to do with (not an uncommon problem, actually), I found this recipe for a radish salad with lime yogurt. Would never have occurred to me. Yet, there it was, and it worked! I must admit, my pantry needs a good update - I just went grocery shopping for the first time in weeks! Who knows what it will pull up for me, next. Hah, you can bet I'll blog about it, though!

Be sure to stay up with Key Notes with Becca for more great ideas and recipes. And, of course, check out Recipe Key, too. Often.