Gazpacho

Building an emulsion 40 recipes

• It visibly thickens as the fat goes in, heavier and more opaque than either part was alone, which is the emulsion announcing itself.
• At no point is there a pool of free fat sitting ahead of the work: fat went in no faster than it disappeared into the body.
• Glossy and homogeneous, with no slick floating on top and no visible droplets standing apart in it.
• It clings: coating what it is put on and holding a line, rather than running off and splitting into a puddle at the plate’s edge.
• It survives standing: minutes later there is no ring of weeping liquid underneath and no film of fat breaking out on the surface.

Where it goes wrong The fat went in faster than the shear could break it up, or the temperature drifted out of the range the method needs: it breaks into grease over a thin liquid, and whisking the broken thing harder does nothing. The rescue is a fresh base, with the broken sauce worked into it slowly, as if it were the fat.

Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes

• Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
• No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
• The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
• Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
• The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.

Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.