Gōyā Chanpurū

Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes

• Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
• The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
• Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
• A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
• Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.

Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.

Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes

• Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
• Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
• The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
• Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
• Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.

Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.