Pasta alla Norma

Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes

• Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
• Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
• Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
• That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
• The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.

Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.

Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes

• The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
• It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
• Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
• A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
• Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.

Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.