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HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

As you can probably tell, this isn’t your typical cookbook.

I recommend that you start by reading it through from beginning to end. Pay attention to the techniques, the science, and stories, but don’t worry too much about committing it all to memory. Come back again later to revisit the concepts that are relevant to you. Readers who are new to the kitchen will quickly catch on to the basics—each element is organised by its flavour and its science, guiding you through both the whys and the hows of good cooking. More experienced cooks will find aha! gems buried throughout and even see cooking tricks you already know with fresh eyes.

Throughout each chapter, I’ve suggested a handful of kitchen experiments—essentially, recipes that will illustrate some of the major concepts and give you a chance to put theory into practice.

And at the back of the book, I’ve compiled a canon of recipes to illustrate just how far a grasp of Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat will take you. Over time, you’ll grow comfortable enough to cook without recipes on a daily basis. But when learning to cook intuitively, recipes can be necessary and comforting, like training wheels.

To underscore the patterns that guide all good cooking, I’ve organised the recipe section by type of dish, rather than by the particular course in the meal. With the help of the brilliant and hilarious illustrator, Wendy MacNaughton, I’ve created a variety of visual guides to help convey concepts where words aren’t enough. The choice to embellish this book with illustrations rather than photographs was deliberate. Let it liberate you from feeling that there’s only one perfect version of every dish. Let it encourage you to improvise, and judge what good food looks like on your own terms.

If jumping straight into the recipes after reading through the book seems overwhelming, take a look at the Cooking Lessons, which will steer you to recipes that will help you hone particular skills and master specific techniques. If you feel unsure of how to put together dishes to create a menu, use the list of Suggested Menus as a guide.

Finally, remember to have fun! Don’t forget to enjoy the pleasures, both small and large, implicit to cooking and eating with people you love!