The method

"The technique is what's important here, and when you realise that a stew is a stew is a stew, and a roast is a roast whether it be beef, lamb, pork or chicken, cooking begins to make sense." Julia Child

I used that quote in yesterday's post on Julia Child, and I pondered on it overnight to the extent that I thought I would enlarge on it a little today. For I'm still on my lucky dip starter. Her book - the one I had picked out serendipitously The Way to Cook is organised somewhat differently to the standard cookbooks of the day. Mostly, back then, you got, soups, sauces, entrées followed by the various meats, fish, vegetables and desserts. What Julia Child says she has done is to "put things together by method".

She's not quite truthful though because when you look at the table of contents you see:

Soups, Breads, Eggs, Fish and Shellfish, Poultry, Meat, Vegetables, Salads, Pastry Doughs, Desserts, Cakes and Cookies. Which to my mind is pretty standard really. What she does do though, is to give a number of variations to a dish that she describes, but not even that sometimes. So a bit of a cheat.

Nevertheless it would be an interesting way to organise a cookbook - by method I mean. For there are not that many - methods that is.

What do I mean by method? Well I differ a little from the diagram above, but that is a good start perhaps. My basic, prime methods would be: fry, grill, roast, bake (not quite the same as roast), boil, (which includes poaching and stewing - it's just a matter of how much liquid really), and steam. Have I forgotten anything? Well braising perhaps, but really that's a form of stewing, which is a form of boiling. To sauté is to fry surely and to toast is to grill - as is to barbecue - it just depends which direction the heat comes from. Then there are a few extra methods - raw, smoked, brined. Oh and pastry is in a world of its own and I won't even think about that - though you could probably include it in bake.

Technique is something different - the technique of stir frying and/or flambéing for example.

And pastry is all technique it seems to me. How you cook it is method. Indeed how you actually cook anything is method. How you prepare it is technique, with a few extra 'finishing' techniques, such as flambéing as well.

Let's take one method as an example - roasting. How this has changed. In my childhood the only things you roasted were the Sunday joint and the potatoes that went with them. And I suppose the Yorkshire pudding too, though maybe that's baking rather than roasting? It's a very subtle difference really. But today you can roast just about anything. Fish obviously, but also just about any kind of vegetable. Where would we be without the wonderfully versatile Mediterranean roast vegetables. Fruit and nuts too. And then there's also the Weber, which is a hybrid of smoking and roasting - and all the more delicious for it too. So how would I define roasting? Well I think it means cooking in an oven with some kind of fat. Once you start adding a lot of liquid it becomes baking I think. And uncovered - though it is covered by the oven of course. I suppose with some roasts you might cover to begin with but I'm pretty sure if you want to call it a roast it needs to be uncovered to crisp and brown at the end.

So yes she is right. If you divide cooking into those few methods, master each one, then you can do just about anything and apply what you learn from one recipe to something else. You just need to know what goes with what, and how long it takes. The diagram below is helpful but a bit prescriptive - I mean - 'proper' cooking technique. There is no 'proper' cooking technique. I'm sure all those Michelin starred chefs would agree with that. They push the envelope all the time. Not sure I would barbecue a tough cut either. I know people do but unless you've marinaded it for hours it will still be tough.