Ga Kho Gung (Ginger Chicken)

Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes

• Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
• Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
• Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
• Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
• The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.

Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.

Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes

• Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
• The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
• The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
• Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
• They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.

Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.