Musakhan

Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes

• The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
• Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
• Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
• It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
• The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.

Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.

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.