Aam ka Achar

Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes

• It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
• It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
• It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
• It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
• Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.

Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.

Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes

• A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
• It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
• It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
• It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
• The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.

Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.