The temperatures required for caramelization and browning almost always far exceed the boiling point of water. So the presence of water on the surface of a food, or on the bottom of a pan, is a signal that browning can't yet occur.
I love bitter broccoli rabe tossed with Calabrian chiles and hidden under a mountain of snowy shaved Parmesan.
Long-stemmed broccoli should be tossed with olive oil and flaky salt and roasted in a hot oven until the florets turn the color of hazelnut shells and shatter on the tongue.
Friends have warned me that I can be a bully in the kitchen. With every fledgling relationship, I'm anxiously aware that the simple act of cooking alongside my new paramour can unleash havoc.
A burger is a black dress; a kebab is a Met Gala gown.
I love roast chicken, juicy summer tomatoes, and carrot cake slathered with tangy cream-cheese frosting.
I've always believed that pastry chefs are born, not made. They're patient, methodical, tidy, and organized. It's why I stick to the savory side of the kitchen - I'm far too messy and impulsive to do all the measuring, timing, and rule-following that pastry demands.
I know pastry chefs who are overwhelmed by the idea of tasting, rather than measuring, their way to a balanced vinaigrette.
There are so many food shows, really beautiful ones, that exist to elevate professional cooking and professional chefs. But there aren't that many that really celebrate home cooking or are for home cooks especially.
Throughout my time working in restaurants, I developed an illogical dread of some basic kitchen tasks. None of them - picking and chopping parsley, peeling and mincing garlic, browning pans of ground meat - were particularly difficult. But at the scale required in a professional kitchen, they felt Sisyphean.
My students regularly spend 20 hours or more in the kitchen with me. I try to teach them that even the most well-written recipe for, say, gazpacho can never take into account the ways in which a tomato that's lapped each morning and evening by coastal fog will taste completely different from one grown in a hot, inland valley.
I've never tasted a store-bought tortilla that compares in texture or flavor with one made by hand, so I'm happy to invest some time. It's worth it just to see a friend take her first bite and understand, finally, that a flour tortilla is meant to be an essential component, not just a lackluster wrapper.
I would say, probably 7 or 8 years into my cooking career, it stopped being about just food for me. Food's really fun, but I've always been about people, and I realized that food is just a really convenient tool for me to connect people and bring them together.
Persian cuisine is, above all, about balance - of tastes and flavors, textures and temperatures. In every meal, even on every plate, you'll find both sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, cooked and raw, hot and cold.
The apricot's fleetingly short harvest - only a few weeks long - explains the urge to save the season in a jar. But cooked fruit, no matter how expertly preserved, can never measure up to the flawlessness of its fresh counterpart.
Growing up, I was aware of the kids-don't-like-vegetables trope, but it didn't make much sense to me. I never had any choice; all the traditional Iranian dishes my mom cooked teemed with herbs and vegetables.
Unlike leftover pasta, leftover risotto is viewed by Italians as a gift. Cooks shape it into balls or stuff it with a pinch of stewed meat or cheese. Then they bread and deep-fry the fritters until golden brown, yielding arancini, the indulgent 'little oranges' I can never resist.
I'll eat anything, even foods I've always shunned, when a friend cooks it.
For me, I am very much a champion of home cooking and home cooks.
People love giving cooks spoons, I've noticed. Or, at least, they love giving them to me.
