When my sister was learning how to cook, she was dependent on the recipe. I remember an instance when she cooked meat with sauce that included leeks as one of the ingredients. The dish was delicious and was completely consumed in that dinner. But what I noticed was the leftover leeks. And then everyone admitted that they don’t eat leeks. That’s the same with spring onions, no one in the family eats spring onions so why include that in the recipe? Especially with chicken dishes when potato is a common ingredient, check if people in The House will eat the potatoes because in our home, it is only me who eats potatoes so I include just 1 piece in the dish for my consumption.
I agree with you that use of ingredient which most members of the family do not eat should not be used just because it's mentioned in the recipe. My wife is good at modification of the whole recipe if she feels that a particular item was not necessary or any of us do not like it. She has even experimented with non-vegetarian dishes replacing meat with vegetarian items.
@Ray1 I basically do the same. I only use what I know will be liked and used in future. There is no point in buying stuffs that just go useless and waste cash. Instead, why not buy stuff that are healthier and used more frequently.
@Decentlady Yesterday I prepared a dish of broccoli which is otherwise cooked in an entire different way here but I used very few items like a small quantity of onion, potato and broccoli. Cut them into medium sized pieces and fried them lightly. I used a small quantity of turmeric, salt and red pepper powder added a little water and kept it for few minutes. It made a great vegetable that my wife thought could get me a master-chef award
