The Fufi Academy of Proper Cooking

A recipe tells you what to do once. A technique tells you what to do forever. These are the things that keep coming back — in my kitchen, in your kitchen, in every Italian kitchen that has ever worked properly.

Learn one of these and you have not learned one dish, you have learned a family of them. This is why I refuse to explain clarified butter in the middle of a recipe while the pan is getting hot. It deserves its own room. So: here is the room.

One thing before you go in. Where a number matters — a temperature, a ratio, a threshold — the stove will interrupt me. This is an arrangement we have. He is the only one in this kitchen who measures anything, he has never once been wrong, and he has never once been worried. I have made my peace with it.

Cooking the pasta How much water, how much salt, and why the pot everybody told you to buy is too big. The part nobody thinks is a technique. The water from the pasta Not waste. An ingredient. Why less water makes a better sauce, and what the starch is actually doing in there. Mantecatura The sacred moment: fire off, then combine. The difference between a glossy sauce and a bowl of little cheese stones. Clarified butter Butter with the water and the milk solids taken out — so it can be hot without becoming bitter. The fat that makes a cotoletta possible.

The Academy grows with the show. Every time an episode needs a technique explained properly, it gets a room in here.

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