FIRST OF ALL, I am assuming that everyone has a small kitchen scale, and if you don’t have a scale, buy one! I will leave items that you buy at the store in ounces and pounds as is. Don’t worry—I will not send you to the store asking for 3 cups of cream cheese, just like I won’t ask you to use 3 cups of canned crushed tomatoes when you buy those in ounces.
Now, here are some basic guidelines for using the recipes in this book.
All flour is all-purpose unless otherwise specified.
All eggs are large unless otherwise specified.
All sugar is regular white granulated unless otherwise specified.
All salt is kosher or coarse unless otherwise specified.
Pepper is always freshly ground black pepper unless otherwise specified.
All red wine should be dry and something that you’d be happy drinking, not bad wine, or anything labeled “cooking wine.”
Chicken stock is always preferably homemade, but if you use store-bought it should be organic and low-sodium.
Mayonnaise is also always preferably homemade, though nothing will happen to you if you use store-bought.
All dairy products are full fat unless otherwise specified.
Cooking heat on the stove is always medium unless otherwise specified.
Olive oil is always extra-virgin unless otherwise specified.
Butter is always unsalted unless otherwise specified.
Pasta is dried unless otherwise specified.
Common sense always applies in the kitchen and will help you a lot more than just following recipes precisely, so try to train your powers of observation and use your common sense as you cook. Here are a few basic tips on that front:
When chefs—including me!—say to cook something “until caramelized, about 15 minutes,” they’re thinking about their stove, their fire, their pots and pans. At your house, you need to cook it until it looks caramelized. That’s why you’re much better off understanding what “caramelized” means rather than walking away for fifteen minutes and coming back to a disaster. What do I mean when I say caramelized? Vegetables release water, and you’ll see that, too, in the form of a very light steam. Caramelized is the next step after that. All the moisture has disappeared, the vegetables will start to brown lightly on the edges, and the bottom of the pan has little brown bits here and there. In order to caramelize, vegetables have to touch the bottom of the pan and the oil or butter if you’re using any. Heat has to be there, and because anything you cook has to have contact with the bottom of your cooking vessel, when you use a wider sauté pan, caramelizing takes less time than when you use a taller pot with a smaller diameter bottom. I don’t know how long it’s going to take in your pan because I don’t know what pan you have!
Seasoning is not a science with rules set in stone. If you like food not too salty then use less. If, like me, you like food really well seasoned then add about 25 percent more salt than these recipes call for. Do you like a lot of pepper? Great! Add more. Do you hate paprika? Take it away. It’s that simple.
I often say pasta should be cooked in salted boiling water. What I mean by that is about a gallon of water and a handful of salt. If you have a hand that is big like a sumo wrestler’s head, then maybe you only need half a handful of salt. But if you have the hand of a three-year-old, then you probably need two handfuls of salt. See what I mean? (And for the record, a handful of salt is usually 2 to 3 tablespoons).