Thread No. 002← All threads
Emulsification
Fat, water, and starch coerced into a single sauce.
Half the dishes in this volume rest on emulsification: fat suspended in water by the work of starch, dairy, or an egg. The argument is rarely whether to do it — it is what to suspend in what, and how violently to coax it together.
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In Carbonara →3 voices
“The most important thing is the temperature of the eggs: it must not be higher than 65 degrees Celsius, otherwise the texture changes and you scramble them. I don't heat the sauce over the fire or in a pan but mix the cheese and eggs in a bowl over a water bath.”
King of the carbonara Luciano Monosilio reveals the secrets behind his dish — South China Morning Post (2015)“It occurred to me while I was working on this that I had everything I needed to set up a makeshift double boiler: a pot of boiling water and a large mixing bowl that I can nest on top. … Since carbonara is essentially a savory custard sauce, it's a trick that works just as well here.”
Spaghetti With Carbonara Sauce Recipe — Serious Eats (2015)“I love the buttery, eggy creaminess of the sauce, saltily-spiked with hot-cubed bacon: it's comforting, but not in a sofa-bound kind of way. It feels like proper dinner, only it takes hardly any time to cook.”
Spaghetti Carbonara (from How to Eat) — nigella.com (1998)
In Risotto →1 voice
“Massimo Bottura treats the mantecatura — the off-heat beating of cold butter and aged Parmigiano into the rice — as the structural moment of the dish, not a finishing flourish. Risotto, in his framing, is an emulsification problem dressed up as a rice problem.”
Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef — Phaidon (2014)
In Bolognese →2 voices
“Cook the meat in milk before adding wine and tomatoes to protect it from the acidic bite of the latter.”
Bolognese Meat Sauce — Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking / Epicurious (1992)“Stanley Tucci's Taste: a splash of cream at the finish is a New York-Italian move, not a Bolognese one — but on a home plate it does no harm and the policing of orthodoxy has limits.”
Taste: My Life Through Food — Gallery Books (2021)
In Hummus →2 voices
“Michael Solomonov's Zahav technique — adapted by Melissa Clark for NYT Cooking — pre-blends a whole head of unpeeled garlic with lemon juice, strains it, and only then builds the tahini sauce. The lemon's acidity neutralises the harsh garlic compounds before they ever meet the chickpeas. The tahini sauce, not the chickpeas, is treated as the dish's centre of gravity.”
Zahav's Hummus 'Tehina' — NYT Cooking (2015)“Dried chickpeas deliver better flavor than canned.”
The Food Lab's Science of Great Hummus — Serious Eats (2016)
In Fried Rice →1 voice
“David Chang's wok pedagogy (Mind of a Chef, Momofuku writing): soy goes down the hot side of the wok, never directly onto the rice. It hits screaming metal first, caramelises in the half-second before contact, and only then meets the grain.”
The Mind of a Chef — Season 1 — PBS (2012)