Caraotas Negras

Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes

• Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
• Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
• Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
• The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
• Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.

Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

• It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
• The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
• The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
• The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
• Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.