Brand - Cook like a man: master your kitchen with 68 simple and delicious recipes

Copyright 2017 by Fritz Brand

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Cover photo by Michael Le Grange

Food styling of cover photo by Caro Alberts

Recipe photographs by Fritz Brand, Claire Gunn

Food styling by Fritz Brand, Claire Gunn, Caro Alberts

Fritz Brand: www.fritzbrand.co.za

Claire Gunn: www.clairegunn.com

Caro Alberts: www.acalberts.co.za

Michael Le Grange: www.michaellegrange.com

Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-737-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-738-7

Printed in China

Table of Contents

FOR MY MOTHER

I dedicate this book to my mother, Jessie, who sadly passed away during the writing of this book.

She lived a life full of love, laughter, and compassion, and her memory will live on forever.

Introduction

This book goes out to the ones who dont know their saut from their sous vide or their panna cotta from their pomme pure . The ones who like to tell themselves they cant cook. You see, Id like to respectfully call bullshit on that.

I believe that if you can see, smell, taste, listen, and touch, there is no reason why you cant cook a perfectly acceptable meal. Get over your fear of failure, and get your ass in the kitchen. Every failure is nothing but an opportunity to learn from the mistakes you will naturally make along the way when learning any new skill. Try your best not to make the same mistakes over and over again, thoughotherwise you are just being an idiot!

By nature, a recipe cannot include all the possible information one might need to cook a particular dish perfectly, in any given environment. There are, quite simply, too many variables involved in the process. Most recipes assume a certain base understanding or skill level of the cook.

This makes things difficult for beginner cooks who tend to cook recipes word for word, with little understanding of whats actually happening in the pan. Then, when a dish doesnt turn out as expected (as they tend to do), beginners have a hard time figuring out what went wrong.

I believe that once you learn the basic skills, techniques, knowledge, and lingo that gets thrown around in kitchens, you will find that the science and art of cooking is actually straightforward and very rewarding. In short, if cooking feels like a chore or a pain to you, youre doing it wrong.

To address some of the difficulties a beginner cook might face when starting out, I have included a lengthy introductory chapter called Cooking 101 that will take you through the basics of cooking and give you a better understanding of how it all fits together. Hopefully, we can have some fun and avoid a few burnt offerings in the process.

Cooking 101

Cook Like a Man is not about making the fanciest version of anything. Its about getting people into kitchens to cook their own food, instead of relying on corporations that sell you ready-made meals with enough preservatives in them to make Keith Richards live another 250 years.

Cooking can be a rather frustrating affairif you have no clue what you are doing. Learning the correct skills, techniques, and tools for the job will make your life a whole lot easier.

Just like trying to build a delicate dollhouse with a twelve-pound hammer, dicing an onion with a steak knife will cause you a considerable amount of frustration and could result in far too much money going into the swear jar. When I watch my friends cook and see them dicing an onion with a steak knife for five excruciating minutes, I have to really constrain myself from shouting, What the @#*^@$ are you doing?! If a job that is supposed to take at most one minute with a chefs knife turns into a five-minute ordeal of beady foreheads and furrowed brows, I can understand why people think cooking is hard work. All that inefficiency adds up, and you end up spending far too much time on a basic meal.

Truth be told, though, as with any other new hobby or sport you pick up, once you learn the basic skills, techniques, lingo, and tools for the job, cooking becomes a really rewarding experiencesomething youll carry with you for the rest of your life.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

So, you are all excited and ready to get cooking. I get it. But before you jump right in, there are a couple of things you need to know in order to make your journey to culinary excellence a whole lot easier.

The French term mise en place roughly translates to put in place , and it refers to the setup that happens before the cooking.

You will notice that the professional chefs at work or on TV always have loads of small containers and sauce bottles within arms reach around them. One minute it looks like all theyve cooked is a steak in a pan, and the next moment that steak is on the plate with seasonal vegetables and mushrooms, drizzled with a beautiful pan sauce and garnished with freshly picked herbs that have appeared out of nowhere.

Thats the magic of mise en place . If you take the time to prepare (wash, clean, trim, chop, slice, dice) all your ingredients before you start cooking and organize them in easily accessible containers, cooking becomes a breeze. Having to stop midway through poaching eggs because you forgot to make the hollandaise sauce and chop the chives is a surefire way to screw up some eggs.

BASIC KITCHEN GEAR

Just like any craftsman needs his tools, it is essential that you have the correct gear for various jobs in the kitchen. Dont worry if you cant afford to buy all of it at once; youll build up a collection over time, and in most cases, youll be able to make do with another not-quite-perfect-but-will-get-the-job-done piece of gear. Below are some of the basics that any kitchen needs, and my recipes will call for some of these items. Any additional, fancier gear required for a recipe will be listed under the Extra Gear section.

Knives

Knives are your most valuable tool in the kitchen, period. Learning to choose the right one for the job and how to keep them all in good shape is essential to safe and effective cooking.

Get yourself a decent chefs knife, paring knife, and a good bread knife to start out with. A good knife doesnt have to cost you the world. If you love knives (like I do), by all means get a couple of custom knives made up for you and pay top dollar for it (like I did); but in reality, a much cheaper version with a decent blade and solid plastic handle will do the job just fine. Check out the ones available at a restaurant supply storeif its good enough for a line cook to use, its good enough for you.

Most important, keep your knives super sharp. People tend to fear a sharp knife, but a dull knife is way more dangerous. A dull knife will require you to exert more force than should be required, and it also tends to slip off foods instead of cutting into them on contact. Those two things combined can easily lead to instantly shortened fingers, instead of neatly sliced tomatoes.