Takoraisu

Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes

• A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
• It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
• It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
• It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
• The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.

Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

• A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
• Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
• The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
• Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
• Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.