“Ruhlman’s How to Saute: Foolproof Techniques and Recipes for the Home Cook. ” By Michael Ruhlman (Little Brown, $20)
You may think sauteing is the simplest, most forgiving of cooking methods. Author Michael Ruhlman believes otherwise.
The prolific, Cleveland-based author-chef adds the final volume to his trilogy (including “How to Braise” and “How to Roast”) with this primer on the type of cookery that co-opts the French word sauté, meaning “to jump.”
“Indeed, the saute is so common that we often overlook its countless nuances,” Ruhlman writes. “But paying attention to the details makes everything we cook taste better.”
Choosing the right pan, the perfect fat and the correct temperature. Knowing how to salt. When to bread, pan fry, add a sauce. The importance of tempering and resting. These are some of the topics the master covers in his economically written introduction.
What follows then are the recipes — for classics like veal scaloppini and chicken schnitzel; basics like mushrooms, spinach and asparagus; even a dessert (sauteed apple streusel).
Back to the mushrooms: Once you grasp them, Ruhlman tells you how to use them to build a sauce. Or a soup.
These are not necessarily the sort of dishes you assemble to impress company. (But how lucky and how happy your guests would be if you did.)
They are the kind you employ when you want to cook with rigor and understanding, to learn the whys and wherefores of a technique that is more crucial and versatile than we know.
And tell me: Who doesn’t like chicken-fried steak? And who can’t use a little help making the onion gravy to slather over it? Ruhlman even adds one perfect side: sauteed black-eyed peas and okra.
I’ll jump for that.
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