Recipes and techniques from a lifelong passion for cooking.
Master the building blocks behind great dishes.
A cold, uncooked emulsion of peppery arugula, nuts, cheese, acid and olive oil โ a finishing sauce, never a cooking one
Arugula pesto is a peppery, slightly bitter cousin of pesto Genovese: a cold emulsion of leaves, nuts, garlic, cheese, salt, acid and olive oil. Made well it's silky and integrated; made poorly it's a watery brown sludge. The keys are dry leaves, brief processing, and adding it off the heat.
Salting aubergine slices to collapse the cell walls, then shallow-frying for a golden crust and a silken, custardy interior
Aubergine is functionally a sponge โ untreated slices can absorb their own weight in oil. Salting partially collapses the cell structure so frying oil sears the surface without saturating the flesh, giving you a crisp edge and a creamy interior instead of greasy sog.
Tempering egg yolks over indirect heat to build a custardy, emulsified sauce without scrambling
The bain-marie method brings egg yolks into a controlled coagulation window using indirect, steam-driven heat โ never direct flame. It's the same technique behind hollandaise and sabayon, codified for carbonara by a Michelin-starred Roman chef. One extra bowl in exchange for a dramatically lower failure rate.