Cook like you
forking mean it.

• Cacio e pepeEmulsified with pasta water off the heat. No cream, no panic.
• Chicken thighs, skin downCold pan, 12 minutes, hands off. Rendered, not fried.
• Dal tarkaWhole cumin and dried chilli bloomed in ghee, poured over at the last second.

For: anyone whose weeknight cooking has become four sad meals on rotation.

• Whole bream, off the day boatsBought on the Barbican that morning, then scaled, gutted and filleted by you. Yes, you. It takes four goes.
• Flatbreads on the hobStraight onto cast iron at full whack. Thirty seconds a side.
• Charred hispi, anchovy butterQuartered, blackened hard, finished in the oven at 220°C fan.

For: people who are scared of high heat and shouldn’t be.

• Sourdough20% starter, 72-hour cold prove. Your chef brings a live one and leaves it with you.
• Cultured butterChurned in a jam jar by whoever is least useful in the kitchen.
• Focaccia80% hydration, dimpled hard, more olive oil than feels sensible.

For: the lockdown starter still dying in the back of your fridge.

• Whole spice, toasted and groundYou will never buy a jar of curry powder again, and you’ll be insufferable about it.
• Bhuna baseForty minutes of onions going nowhere, then everywhere. Patience is the recipe.
• Naan on cast ironYoghurt dough, blistered dry, brushed with garlic butter.

For: takeaway loyalists ready to find out what they’ve been paying for.

• Grip, claw, rockNinety minutes on three cuts. Brunoise, julienne, chiffonade. Nothing else.
• Sharpening1000/6000 whetstone. Your chef leaves your knives sharper than the day you bought them.
• Everything you just choppedBecomes a soffritto, then ragu. Nothing is wasted, obviously.

For: anyone still sawing at an onion with a bread knife.

• Crispy tofu, properlyPressed under a cast-iron pan for half an hour, tossed in cornflour, into oil at 180°C. The difference between tofu people apologise for and tofu people ask about.
• Potato gnocchi, no eggFloury potatoes baked, not boiled, riced while they’re hot, the least flour you can get away with. Sage crisped in olive oil at 160°C, because brown butter is off the table.
• Aquafaba meringueThe water from the chickpea tin, whipped eight minutes at full speed, dried out at 100°C fan for two hours. Nobody at the table will believe you.

For: vegans who are bored, and the people who cook for them.

• Tortilla de patatasPotatoes and onion cooked gently in olive oil for forty minutes and never allowed to colour. The flip is the whole dish, and you will do it twice.
• Gambas al ajilloOil to 180°C, garlic gold and not a shade past it, prawns in and out in ninety seconds. It arrives at the table still spitting.
• Pan con tomateBread charred on the hob, grated tomato, good oil, salt. Four things, and every one of them has to be right, which is the point.
• Padrón peppersBlistered hard in a smoking dry pan, then nothing but flaky salt. Roughly one in ten will catch you out, and that is the game.

For: people who would rather graze and talk than sit down to three courses.

• Pad krapow, in ninety secondsPan as hot as your hob will go, pork chopped by hand rather than minced, holy basil thrown in off the heat. The whole thing is over before the extractor notices, and the fried egg is not optional.
• Som tam, pounded not choppedGarlic and chilli into the mortar first, then the papaya, bruised just enough to drink the dressing. You will balance fish sauce, lime and palm sugar until it stops tasting like three separate things.
• Green curry from the mortarFifteen minutes pounding lemongrass, galangal and makrut lime, then coconut cream cracked over heat until the oil splits out. That split is the step everyone skips and the reason theirs tastes thin.

For: people who order the same green curry every time and have never once made it.

• Egg dough, by feelFlour and eggs, worked until it stops being sticky and starts being elastic. No machine. You will not own one at eleven on a Tuesday, and you do not need one.
• One filled shape, sixty timesFolded one at a time between you. The first ten are bad. That is the lesson — the tenth is already better than anything sold in a packet.
• Sauce that clings, not slidesA ladle of the cooking water, off the heat, agitated hard. Starch and fat and nothing else. The whole trick takes forty seconds.

For: anyone who assumed fresh pasta needs a gadget and a free afternoon.

Bought: St Ewe eggs, for yolks dark enough that the dough needs no help looking like pasta.

• Tortillas, pressed to orderMasa, a press and a dry pan. They puff or they don’t, and by the sixth you will know which of your own mistakes did it.
• Salsa from whole dried chilliesGuajillo and ancho woken up in a dry pan, soaked, then blitzed. Nothing in this tastes like the jar in your cupboard.
• Thighs braised in the salsaForty minutes, lid on, no stirring. The sauce seasons the meat and the meat thickens the sauce.

For: people whose idea of Mexican currently arrives in a kit with a sachet in it.

Bought: fresh chillies from South Devon Chilli Farm. The dried guajillo and ancho come from Mexico, because there is no Devon substitute and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

• The cut with too much of itself leftShin, cheek or shoulder. A fraction of the price of the thing sitting next to it, and better for the wait. You leave able to ask for it by name.
• Everything stuck to the panBrowned hard, then deglazed and scraped up. Most of the flavour is welded to the bottom, and most people pour it down the sink.
• Knowing when it is doneNot by the clock, by whether a spoon goes through it. We take it out too early on purpose so you can feel the difference when it gets there.

For: anyone who has looked at the price of a fillet and quietly gone home with mince.

Bought: native-breed shin, cheek and shoulder from Phillip Warren, Launceston, who hang their own and will sell you the unglamorous end.