Red Red

Keeping the cooking liquid 60 recipes

• It was actually kept: the liquid went into a container rather than down the drain, and the volume saved is enough to be worth using.
• It is clean: strained of solids and grit, and not clouded with the debris of whatever broke up in it.
• It tastes of what it cooked and tastes concentrated rather than washed out, and it is not so salty or so bitter that the only honest use is the bin.
• It was cooled quickly and stored cold, not left standing warm on the stove to be dealt with later.
• Used, it does the job the dish gives it (carrying flavour into a sauce, loosening the dish, or setting when chilled) rather than merely adding water back.

Where it goes wrong The pot was left to cool slowly on the stove and only strained the next day, so it soured overnight: what should have been the best ingredient in the dish goes in the bin, and the recipe gets water instead.

Soaking dried goods back to life 69 recipes

• Fully submerged with room to swell: the level is well above everything at the start and still above it at the end.
• Given the full time, and judged by what is in the bowl rather than by the hours on the clock.
• Tested at the CENTRE of the largest piece, cut or pressed. Anything with a hard dry core will still have one after cooking, because the outside softens first and stops the water getting further in.
• The soaking water was dealt with on purpose: kept because it holds flavour, or thrown away because it holds what should not be eaten, but never simply left undecided.
• Drained before it is used, so the dish does not silently gain all the water that came with it.

Where it goes wrong Too little water, or too little time. The pieces swell until they are packed tight against each other and the ones in the middle never fully take up water; they will not soften later in the dish either, so the finished plate has hard pieces scattered through it.