Index:
Introduction p01
1 Attire p02
2 Mise en Place p03
3 Organizing Your Kitchen p04
I. Storing Your Ingredients p05
II. Storing Your Cookware p06
III. Water p07
IV. Heating Fuel p08
V. Preparation Area p09
VI. Cooking Area p10
VII. Service Area p11
VIII. Waste Area p12
IX. Scullery p13
4. Cutting, Weighing, Grinding p14
5. Mixing, Beating, Whipping, Mashing p15
6. Coating, Filling, Stuffing, Basting, Marinating p16
7. Stewing, Reducing, Boiling, Poaching, Steaming p17
8. Baking, Broiling, Roasting p18
9. Frying p19
Afterward p20

Introduction

Greetings chefs, architects, cooks, and kitchen masters and mistresses. You may be asking yourself why you were recommended this book. Perhaps your cuisine is already top notch, your soups supreme, your stews stupendous, and your sweets delightful. Or perhaps you've never held a pot or pan in your life, and think a book of cookery is not a thing that interests you. Perhaps you've even been given the impression that this tome is a mere collection of recipes handed down from mother to daughter, father to son, master to apprentice, that I've managed to wheedle and cajole into a collection.

This book is none of those things. I'm not dedicating ink to page to describe a single recipe, a dozen recipes, or even an encyclopaedia of food. I'm not writing to tell you what to cook, I intend to teach you how to properly organize a kitchen, how to dress when you intend to cook, and how to actually go about preparing, cooking, and serving food. You personally may not need know everything included in this tome. But know that it all draws from the same well, and feeds the same cauldron.

Attire

Why, you may ask, am I beginning a book on cookery by talking about clothing? Because the clothes mark a chef for what they are. A proper chef wears the proper attire to protect him-, her-, or theirself from the literal heat of the kitchen and to protect the patrons' food from cross-contamination. Or from contamination by the chef's person, the grime of the road, or any number of other sources.

The Delportian tradition demands a chef wear a double-breasted coatee of white linen or canvas, long sleeved, with the cuff of the sleeves able to be pinned or buttoned back far enough to allow the wearer to submerge the arms up to the flexors in soapy water without wetting the sleeve. If the collar is exposed for thermal regulation, a cravat or neckerchief should be employed to protect the exposed areas from embers or spatter. It is not generally required to employ a similar cloth for the face, and safety goggles such as might be employed by smiths or scientists will fog too frequently to offer much protection.

In addition, a chef should wear canvas or linen breeches or skirts and a pair of sturdy boots with leather soles to protect the feet. Sealed wood soles are possible, providing they are treated against fire and heat, but leather soles are better. As the levitation enchantment buoys the user with a current of pressurized air, it is highly unsuitable for the kitchen as it drastically increase the risk of fires igniting from embers that would have otherwise spent themselves. The breeches should be either black or white for preference. White gives a cleaner appearance, black hides stains better.

A chef may carry a half-apron, apron, or belt with the tools needed for their station and their intended meal, spice mills, cheese grater, mandolin, honing rod, clean knives and spoons, or any number of useful utensils and tools may be carried in one of these. They should be canvas or leather, and canvas aprons and belts should have a leather lining in pockets that hold knives. A chef should never carry tinderboxes in this apron, as they present a fire hazard.

Finally, unless the chef is completely bald, a hat should be worn at all times while in the kitchen. The Delportian classic chef's hat is called a toque, or toque blanc, but any hat that keeps hair and fur away from the face, and does not trap steam, is fit for purpose. Cooks with particularly long hair should additionally expect their coiffures bound up in a bun. Hair grease and beard oil, much like levitation enchantments, are not recommended for the kitchen for similar reasons as the enchantment: fire and burn risks.

All of these elements come together to form the core of this manual's lessons. Professionalism, efficiency, and presentation in equal measures. The attire is canvas because canvas resists ignition, is easily cleaned, and insulates the wearer somewhat from heat. The attire is white so that others in the kitchen, above and below in rank, can see when a mistake has been made so that it can be corrected. A chef's workstation will rarely look like anything less than a disaster in progress from the time the fires are lit until it is scrubbed clean at the end of the meal, but the clothes will remain clean unless the chef has been careless.

Mise en Place

There is a Delportian phrase, Mise en Place, that encapsulates the techniques from which this book is assembled. It translates directly to "Putting in Place", but more loosely it means that you have taken the time before you begin to make sure that everything is in its place before you need it. Your kitchen will be well organized, your clothes well maintained, your knives sharpened and honed, your utensils, bowls, preparation and cooking surfaces, and cookware clean, and even the floors mopped and scrubbed before the first pepper is cut, the first fowl plucked, or the first potato peeled.

Once you have yourself and your work stations prepared, you gather the ingredients you will need and fill any pots, kettles, or cauldrons that need filling. Once they are gathered, you chop, dice, mince, grind, tenderize, and otherwise prepare each ingredient separately. Once the ingredients are ready, you begin combining those that need combining. Once that is done, you arrange fuel for your ovens and ranges, then light them. Only then do you begin truly cooking. As each piece of your meal comes ready, you plate it on dishes already cleaned and in position to receive the food. Once it is plated, you serve it and begin cleaning the utensils, tools, pots, and pans you've used. When the patron has finished eating and returned your dishes, you clean those too.

In a professional kitchen or a large household such as a manor or palace, each of these tasks may be assigned out to staff meant to perform a specific job. A hierarchy must be formed, and the larger the staff, the more rigid the hierarchy and the more specialized the roles. This can be as simple as knowing who is cooking and who is cleaning for a specific meal, or as complicated as any military chain of command you care to name, but it must be respected by everyone in the kitchen for efficient service. As such if roles are to be assigned to individuals, this should be done before any work is done.

Organizing Your Kitchen

The next few pages will be given over to diagrams and descriptions of how to best arrange, build, and organize one's kitchen, storage, and scullery areas. This chapter will be broken across multiple sections for easy digestion, and will be of particular interest to interior designers and architects, who will find the information useful in understanding the purpose of food preparation spaces.

(A page is given over to a large diagram of several spaces with labels attached to everything. It begins with a storage cellar. In the upper left corner is hung a string of garlic bulbs next to another of dried peppers. Several loops of sausages hang from hooks next to these, as do a large salted tuna and several cured hams. On shelves behind these are sacks labeled as salt, sugar, flour, oats, barley, corn, and rice. Next are jars of pickles, preserves, cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. The bottom third of each shelf is occupied by boxes with pictures of potatoes, yams, beets, and onions on them. A second sketch of the same space shows a slightly different angle, revealing another shelf housing crates of eggs, loaves of bread, wheels and wedges of cheese, and baskets of nuts, prunes, raisins, and other fruits slow to expire.)

(A third sketch shows a separate room labeled as a cold storage room. Central to this space is a massive block of ice, with a cross section of the wall and floor indicating thick insulation and good drainage. Around this block are hung pheasants, ducks, geese, and other fowl, a side each of beef and venison, and a whole boar. On shelves around the outer wall are bottles of liquid, presumably juices, nectars, and milk, as well as baskets of apples, oranges, pears, pineapples, and other fruits that would not stay fresh long outside the chilled space.)

(The next sketch is of an herb and vegetable garden, with fennel, mint, bay, oregano, and other herbs growing between runners and vines holding tomatoes, lentils, string beans, peas, gourds, and even a head of lettuce or cabbage. The illustration is not clear which, as the caption reads only "assort. vegetable" below that section entire. A large numeral I is situated between these four sketches.)

Storing your ingredients is of the utmost importance. Your store rooms should be well stocked with non-perishables at all times, organized by storage needs. You should keep on hand half again what you think you will use before the grocer you obtain your dried goods can return, or a minimum of one week's supply. These goods are not like to spoil if kept overlong, so caution dictates over-preparation is better than being caught unawares by a low supply. Ingredients that need dry storage, such as smoked or cured meats, jerky, dried spices, root vegetables, starches, flours, grains, and similar should be kept together, on the reverse side of the main hearth the kitchen uses for roasting or for stews. The sketches provided are, perhaps, over-stocked for a personal dwelling, but only in terms of quantity, not variety.

Dried and cured meats make for passable snacks, but are excellent for starting stocks and stews in a pinch. Some herbs and spices can be stored dry, particularly black pepper, cinnamon sticks, garlic, and cloves, others will need to be grown fresh or purchased from herbalists. For goods that will perish, but slowly, like hard cheeses and eggs, it is best to keep on hand no more than you are willing to absorb in loss should you mistime your usage. Of special note are eggs, which will spoil in around a month if not stored appropriately, but are often best within two weeks of laying. Remember that the softer the cheese, the shorter its life. Consider keeping particularly soft cheeses in cold storage, especially if the cheese needs to be stored in water.

Fresh-butchered meat should be stored in a cold room immediately on receipt, as should poultry, fish, and dairy products, and any soft-fleshed or juicy fruit not already dried, and any vegetables prone to wilting that aren't still on the vine. In a pinch, one can also store ice in the cold room. The walls of the room should be thick, with layers of brick and wet clay between it and the nearest rooms. Preferably the room should also be underground, but no matter where it is it will need proper drainage, which should involve very narrow grooves in the floor leading to a drain directly beneath the ice with a fine-mesh or solid cover allowing only water through, so as to not provide a way in for rats or other vermin. If you cannot keep an icehouse yourself, it's best not to keep a stock of these sorts of ingredients, and instead purchase them from grocers the day they are to be used, or the day before in the case of meat in need of marinade. Please note that the cold room is not and should not be a simple wine cellar. Even chilled wines are stored at temperatures unsuited to the storage of milk and meat. This is true of any fermented, mulled, or distilled beverage as the alcohol generally forestalls or prevents spoilage, especially if the container is sealed properly.

Lastly, a well-tended and stocked kitchen will also have an herb garden nearby, or a vegetable patch dedicated to the growth of frequently used produce, unless the chef or owner is prepared to acquire them fresh from grocers.

Of course none of this advice need apply to any Fate-Touched chefs, who have access to their intraplanar rifts in which goods are preserved by planar energies, keeping them mostly fresh more or less indefinitely. I have not personally performed a peer reviewed experiment to disprove the popular opinion that the 'mostly' is required, but I have never noticed a difference in taste between rift-stored and mundanely fresh ingredients.

(A sketch marked as II depicts a cupboard stacked to bursting with crockery and servingware. A cabinet to one side houses glasses, arranged together from delicate champagne flutes at the top to hardy steins and tankards on the bottom. There's even a few decanters, pitchers, jugs, and jars, and even a pair of carafes, all empty. Next to this cabinet is a set of large shelves with pots, kettles, and cauldrons of varying sizes, some certainly not large enough to provide more than a serving of soup, others large enough that they must rest on the floor and likely require more than one person to shift. Here and there a colander can be spotted amongst the pots. Another cabinet on the other side houses plates, bowls, and serving trays, while an open drawer beneath the lowest of these shelves shows the handles of silverware. Hanging from the ceiling are several pans, ladels, spatulas, and even a small saucepan or two. A close examination of an inscription over the doors at either end of the picture reveal damage to the door frame that makes it clear this sketch was taken by standing in the centre of the room and rotating as the artist worked.)

Storing your cookware is a matter of similar gravity to storing ingredients, with an emphasis on frequency of use and weight rather than spoilage. Most of your pots and pans should be brass or copper, as these materials resist corrosion and conduct heat better than most other materials. Thankfully for your blacksmith's patience, most households need to replace a copper vessel only once or twice ever if care is taken with it. However there are ingredients that simply should not be cooked in copper dishes; anything acidic like citrus fruits or tomatoes. You'll need to use an iron or steel pan or pot for these ingredients, or if you are planning to take the pan to an oven or other high-heat environment. Please note that this is high heat even for a kitchen, your typical stove top is perfectly fine for copper cookware.

You can generally store cookware and serviceware in the same space, as both have a similar use-cycle. Taken out before meal preparation begins, used, washed, and returned to storage once dried. If you keep fine porcelains or silver meant to be displayed, these can of course be stored in curio cabinets in the dining hall itself, but this tome is aimed at the back-of-house environment and the sorts of service typical of daily life rather than assuming guests-of-standing. Not pictured but often present within the kitchen itself due to their frequency of use are essentials like spice mills, mortars, pestles, grilling forks, spits, and similar vessels and utensils. Many kitchens keep such necessities near the food preparation area, in designated racks and shelves. Remember that the larger the kitchen and service expected, the more duplicates of everything needed. A farmwife might get away with a single large pan, a single saucepan, and a single kettle, but to prepare meals for an inn she would need at least three of each and a snappy sculler.

(The sketches marked as III depict a series of water storage and retrieval methods. The first is a large barrel beneath a spout attached to a large funnel that extends past the top of the sketch. A set of labels describe these as a rainwater filter. At the base of the barrel is a spigot, which allows the contents to drain into a bucket hung from a peg on the stand the barrel rests on. The second is an artesian well, whose water fountains into a basin inside the kitchen it apparently serves. The third is a more traditional pump-well with an accompanying bucket. This appears to be in a market square. Finally there is a well with a small shingled roof covering it and a deep bucket on a rope balanced over its center.)

We are approaching two elements central to any kitchen. Water and fire. Obviously the simplest method for procuring water in a kitchen is to have a mage or naturist conjure it. You can expect such water to be clean and pure, or at least relatively so, but not everyone will have the luxury of magically summoned hydration. For everyone else, there are four primary types of well from which water may be drawn.

The first is technically not a well at all, but is capturing and filtering rainwater to be fit for consumption, potability. This involves a large funnel and pipe, preferably made from fused gemstones or brass or copper, which lead into a barrel. This barrel is filled with several minerals in layers, through which the water settles and filters, until it is expelled through an S-shaped pipe that exits the barrel to keep the sediment within. This sediment will need to be periodically rotated so as to maintain cleanliness, and the water will still benefit from being boiled before being used to cook.

The second type of well uses a trick of geography to feed water from an aquifer into an aboveground well. A fair few dwellings in foothills can take advantage of this sort of technology, which can even deliver clean water directly into the kitchen using it. Probably wouldn't hurt to boil it anyway.

Next is a lever-actuated pump well. These are not uncommon in villages, where even children are taught how to pump the handle to create negative pressure in the well pipes, which draws up water more efficiently than a bucket. Boiling is not a bad idea.

Lastly there is what can politely be called a hand drawn well. You mostly find these in areas where an artisan cannot be hired to create the pumping mechanism. A bucket is lowered into the well, allowed to fill, then drawn out manually. Often by pulley systems. Definitely boil this water, I've heard too many stories of frogs and rats found in wells.

And of course one may simply place a waterskin, cask, or bucket into a running stream and collect water that way. I am not certain I myself would trust river water, I've found one too many leeches in river mud to be comfortable with it, never mind the fish, amphibians, and other wildlife, live or dead, drawn to public rivers. Absolutely boil it before use, and even then...

Regardless, once you have collected the water, unless it was conjured directly into your pot, kettle, or cauldron for use, you'll need to store it. I find oak or cedar barrels with firm iron bands to be the best storage method for bulk use, barring a rift, of course. Make sure it has been caulked properly or lined to prevent leakage, and keep it sealed tight to avoid unwanted fauna in your previously potable water. If you can spare the time and afford the artisan, a fused gemstone keg is a suitable vessel as well, particularly if you are going to serve a resulting beverage at a high society function, as the keg itself can act as a display piece in addition to its utility.

(Marked as IV, the page has three illustrations. First is an ordered stack of quartered wood as would suit a hearth or camp fire. Second is an iron hopper opened to reveal lumps of what must be either coal or charcoal. And third is a broad hearth with kindling wood set to one side, a tinderbox on the mantle, and a set of wrought iron firekeeping tools on the side opposite the kindling. A large bar of blackened metal runs across the hearth, resting on a pair of iron rods driven into the stone on either side of the fire cradle.)

And now we reach fire. Any good chef can tell you, as well as any learned mage, that a good blaze requires as much air as it does fire. When storing fuel for the kitchen, therefore, try to minimize exposed surfaces and keep each bit of fuel as close-fit to its neighbors as possible. Firewood stored outside must also be arranged in such a way that water sluices off quickly so that the wood does not rot or absorb extra moisture before it is added to an active fire. DO. NOT. Add. Wet. Wood. To. A. Fire. Fire and water are natural enemies. Exposed water attempts to become steam to escape, which can scald the unwary and spoil a delicate bit of meat or egg. But the true danger is if the water has seeped into the log and become trapped. When the water attempts to escape, it cracks the wood, which can send splinters, which are -on fire- flying out of the hearth and toward any unwary attendant or cook that happens to be nearby. Or worse, it can send such an ember into a coal hopper, or up the flue and onto a thatched roof, or for a camp fire into unprotected brush. That said, coal and charcoal are more reliable as steady, long-lasting fuel sources, which are the sort best for cooking to begin with. Neither is likely to pop or spark as fiercely as wood, and unless you live in a forest they tend to be less costly to boot. The main drawback being that you need to have much more sophisticated air-flow systems, as coal produces acrid smoke that would spoil most meals exposed to it, and charcoal smothers easily. If kept within the kitchen itself, care must be taken that brick or iron lies between the container and any possible source of open flame, and the container itself should ideally be made from brick. If iron is used, generally as the door, caution is advised to never allow the iron to spark.

(Sketches V and VI occupy a facing pair of pages, and seem to be two sides to the same space. Illustration V is a food preparation area, with two basins for washing vegetables and collecting peels, a large counter top composed of smooth stone, a wooden cutting board, several stacked, empty bowls, and a few bowls filled with prepared ingredients. A knife block sits at one corner of the cutting area, some of its blades partially exposed so that each can be labeled. Here a chef's knife, there a filleting knife, a bread knife with a serrated edge, and even a cheese knife with deep fullers. A wooden mallet rests on the board next to a chicken breast which has a flattened look to it. There are even salt and spice wells laid out next to the poultry. Every utensil and feature is labeled in meticulously neat writing to save space.)

These are the stations that most think of when someone asks them to envision a kitchen. It is essential, however, that one does not conflate the food preparation areas with those meant for cooking, or for scullery. In the main, your preparation area is a large, flat surface with the tools of cookery to hand. To one side you will want at least one basin of water for the washing and rinsing of your produce, and a container for the detritus, cores, peels, seeds, and similar that cannot be used in cooking. If you wish to be friendly with a gardener, these things can often be made into compost provided you know how to start and keep a heap, and are a usually welcome gift. There should be a flow to the preparation. Move from wash basin to the counter's edge as you continue to prepare each ingredient, so that when you reach the end of the counter you have ingredients ready to be added to pot, pan, or oven. Often overlooked, if you're making bread remember to set aside a space for you to place the covered dough to allow it to rise unmolested. I find that keeping it on the far side of the counter from my cooking surfaces is the most logical spot, but that's because I'm often working on other foods while the dough sets, and cannot afford to place it in the space I've labeled as the scraps bin. Remember too that it is vital to keep a supply of clean bowls, cups, cruets, carafes, and similar containers for measured units of ingredients, sauces, and spices. Preparation is key! There's no culinary disaster worse than needing a sauce while cooking something delicate and finding that you haven't prepared enough. Particularly where dairy is concerned.

(Across from the previous drawings, sketch VI is an elaborate stove and oven set. A brick oven on the far left has a wooden door propped against its side, while an ash rake protrudes from the open iron firebox that presumably keeps the oven hot. A large bread board like an oar rests on the wall to the oven's left. To its right is a series of stoves of black iron, each with a flue leading outside. The centremost range has glass-fronted doors with hinges to either side and an iron hook to latch it closed. Beyond these is another angle on the broad hearth from illustration IV, this time showing that a longer rod can be inserted through the side of the brickwork. This rod has a large handle to allow it to be cranked by an assistant with a strong arm. After the work if not before. A massive cauldron can be seen hung Through the open door between the hearth and the stoves, the edge of a deep stand basin can be made out.)

The importance of proper ventilation in cooking cannot be overstated. Again, not only should your ovens and ranges be able to safely contain their fuel, the smoke needs to be directed away from kitchen and food alike unless it is part of the flavour profile. Being able to open and close the flues also allows the chef to control the rate at which their fuel burns, and subsequently the heat it puts forth. It is for this reason that any household, from the meanest peasant to the highest lord, should have their kitchens on an external wall, and should be friendly with the local blacksmiths and tinkers. Similarly to the food preparation area, your cooking ranges should follow a sort of flow. Long-cooking, simple dishes should be placed further back, while complex or fast-cooking ones should be closer to the chef. Remember that, failing proper storage methods, it is always possible to keep what is known as a brown stew roiling in the hearth if it is not otherwise engaged, into which leftovers and edible scraps can be added for later consumption or distribution to those unable to do their own cooking, or indeed unable to afford their own food. It is therefore also advisable that extremely large kitchens have a commensurately large hearth. Should one possess the funds necessary, it is acceptable to add a leather apron to the rear and sides of one's oven to protect the wall and nearby furniture from heat damage, and to better control the flow of heat toward the cooking surface, but unless the range will never be used for baking or broiling- an arrangement which would be a terrible waste of space- one should leave the front of the stove uncovered. For convenience's sake, one will want to keep the food preparation area between the oven, hearth, and ranges so that prepared ingredients will be readily available to each cooking station.

As with the preparation area, it is important to have cooking implements to hand. While the pots and pans may be safely stored elsewhere, one should keep spare spatulas, stirring spoons, lids, and the like somewhere within easy reach, as well as dispensers for seasonings best used to taste such as salt and pepper mills, and cooking oils and butter. It is, again, and experience one only wishes to endure once to need more cooking oil and find that it is across the kitchen or in storage while one has a pan on the stove.

(Sketch VII occupies roughly a third of its page and primarily features a large counter drawn with no background, absolutely laden with finished dishes ranging from simple stews and roasts to desserts that could serve as a patissier's mastery piece. Each is balanced on a serving tray with neighbors belonging to the same meal grouping, soups with soups, meat with meat, dessert with dessert, with a few having been moved to a rolling cart and half covered with a cloche that has been cross-sectioned to allow visibility on the dish within.)

This tome is mostly concerned with the art of cookery, but a moment needs to be taken for presentation, a part frequently overlooked by some and over-emphasised by other novice chefs. For now, it is important to know that your kitchen should, if possible, have a staging area where finished dishes are plated if being served individually, or where their serving vessels can be garnished and covered to await the moment they are presented. In a home kitchen, this could well be the dining room or the preparation area- or indeed, both could be the same spot for single family dwellings- but for more formal meals, or in noble homes, one will want a table or ideally a room dedicated to serving this role, as well as acting as a buffer zone between the front and back of house staff. Such a presentation area should be, like the preparation station, broad and flat. One need not ornament the area with silver candelabras and table lace, since it will ideally not be seen by formal company.

A quick word here on the usefulness of the humble cloche. If you can afford one, get one. Not only do these help serve as a presentation element to a dinner service, they also keep food warm and moist longer than leaving them exposed, and block out flying insects, falling dust and pollen, or general unclean elements that might spoil your dishes. Silver is, of course, always preferred, but ceramics or well-laquered wood can serve as well. In a pinch, one might be able to invert a particularly large bowl that's been thoroughly cleaned, but a proper cloche is classy and useful enough to justify the cost. For desserts, other options are crystal, fused gemstone, or glass if you can find a properly skilled artisan. Cakes in particular benefit from covered glass display stands, as the cloche keeps the cake moist and the elevated position allows one to place a plate under the edge as the cake is cut for easy transfer.

(Another pair of sketches occupies this page. Labelled VIII, there is a cauldron hanging over a hearth with a rubbish bin next to it, a canvas lining bag just visible over its rim. Below this is a fairly detailed sketch of a vegetable garden with an area set to one side containing what appears to be a midden heap situated next to a pig sty.)

The last two areas of concern to cookery are those concerned with what happens after the meals are completed. There is a fairly simple rule of thumb I tend to follow: If it is still edible, and savoury, throw it into a stew pot, along with leftover wine or other dry spirits or drinks. Other liquids should be drained into a wastewater container, preferably to wherever chamber pots or sewage are emptied. Anything else organic goes to a rubbish bin, and the inorganic things, wax, paper or burlap containers and the like, should be disposed of with other household detritus if they cannot be reused. The reason for separating inorganic detritus from organic is so that once you have filled your rubbish bin, you can surrender it to an individual who keeps compost or midden heaps, who will often be grateful for the donation. Such rubbish can also be given to a pig farmer, as hogs are notoriously good at disposing of such leavings. Likewise for leftover stews that have gotten a bit too ripe for consumption.

(Drawing IX, a scullery has been illustrated with meticulously clean tables to one side of a trio of deep basins. A shelf overhead bears a collection of soaps and a paper sack labeled as ash. Hanging between this shelf and the first of the basins is a selection of scrub brushes, dish cloths, and a second shelf bearing sponges, while to the left of the basin is a barrel of what appears to be sand.

Within the scullery is the most boring but most critical portion of maintaining a good kitchen: Clean dishes. The sketch outlines the basics of a particularly well-stocked scullery. The staff will want clean ash to break off baked on food, or for particularly stubborn bits, sand. Once the dishes have nothing stuck on, submerge them in warm water and soap to scrub the remainders and finish cleaning. In the second basin, one will rinse off the soaped dishes, and in the third, clean water will be boiled to further sanitize the dishes, after which they will be dried and stacked on the table for a porter to run to the cupboards and cabinets. If one does not have a method of cleaning water through magic, it is best to cycle through the basins, pouring the boiled water from station three to station two, the soapy water from station two to station one, and the dirty water from station one into the wastewater container mentioned previously. Then add fresh water to station three.

The scullery can also, obviously, be repurposed for laundry if there is no cooking to be done and the dishes are all clean. In fact, this is one of the better uses for the space; collect dirty dishes throughout the day, wash them just before and just after the dinner service, and do laundry in the morning. However, this is not a household chores book, so that process will be left to the reader's imagination.

Cutting, Weighing, Grinding

The first and most important part of cutting food is a sharp knife. The second is a clean, clear space to work, and third is the type of knife to use for each food. When sharpening your knives it is best to use a three-step process. Keen, then hone, then strop. The first part is performed only at a grindstone, as it involves getting the blade to its initial point. When used, the sharp edge will naturally fold over and form what's called a burr. This is removed at a sharpening stone by alternating strokes until it can no longer be felt, then moving to a finer grit of sharpening stone. Finally, a honing rod and strops are used to lengthen the time between full honing and sharpening sessions by attempting to minimize the burr between each use. Your cutting stations will usually have a strop nearby to be used between foods. Please also remember to rinse and dry your knives after they have been used to cut acidic foods like citrus or tomatoes.

On which note, it is important to use the proper blade for each food type. For thick foods like cheeses, it's best to use a thin blade with deep fullers or a wire. For breads or food with a tough shell and soft flesh, a serrated blade is the best option, as the serrations allow many smaller cutting attempts. For butchery, a very thick blade is used to add weight to the swing. Alternately, a longer knife can be used to pry apart the joints more easily. Finally, filleting takes a very thin, flexible blade.

There are a few techniques for chopping ingredients, but the two I find most useful are cross-chopping and rock-chopping. Both feature similar motions, but have different uses.

Cross-chopping is for making rough cuts where the final size of the ingredient is mostly unimportant, but small. Mostly this is for herbs and the like. One begins by pinching the base of the blade with the index and forefinger of the knife hand, then placing the guide hand along the top of the blade's back. Grip the knife's handle with the remaining fingers, place the tip of the blade on your cutting surface, and rock the blade back, then lift it back to the tip, adjust the angle slightly, and repeat the motions. Once you reach the end of your ingredient, walk the blade back the other direction, then realign your ingredient and repeat the process until you've reached the approximate size you need.

Rock-chopping is similar, but is more generally useful, and comes in when the ingredients are too large or dense for a cross-chop, or when they need a uniform size to ensure they cook properly. One will again grip the blade using a pinch grip, but this time the guide hand will be placed on the ingredient itself. For rounded ingredients like carrots or tomatoes, it is often best to take a small slice off of the base so that the ingredient will remain stable, but once you are ready to chop, again place the blade's tip on your cutting surface with the knife's grip elevated at an angle, then align the ingredient to be cut perpendicular to the blade, with one's fingers running along the length and the thumb tucked behind it to push. As the ingredient is pushed under the blade, rock the knife down and very slightly forward, then reset its position and curl the fingers on the guide hand back as you push the ingredient forward. This will gradually result in your guide hand adopting a claw-like grip. It's important to keep one's knuckles resting against the blade in the final few cuts, and to never lift the blade's edge higher than those knuckles. If the first round of cutting produces pieces that are still too large, for instance if you will be mincing garlic, one can switch to a cross-chop to reduce the size, or use a slice to halve or reduce the chopped ingredient.

For slicing, you will hold the knife entirely by the grip and use long, even strokes across the ingredient being sliced. If you are using a serrated blade, allow the teeth to do the work of actually cutting, and place very little weight on the knife to avoid deforming the ingredient. If using a straight blade, a little pressure will be required, but most of your effort should still be focused on the sawing motion. Use the forward strokes to press deeper into your ingredient, and reverse strokes to even the cut out.

When slicing hard cheeses using a wire, if the wire does not already have a pair of handles it is highly advised that you create one. If not, find some sturdy leather, or better chain gloves to protect your fingers. There are three main techniques for this, similar to those used for clay with good reason. The first is, in fact most useful if you have a potter's wheel for a round cheese, which is to rotate the cheese wheel while gently pulling the wire along a course parallel to the bottom of the wheel. This will produce a long slice that can be used on barrel-made cheeses to make portions that are more easily sold, stored and distributed. The major drawback to this method is that it is difficult if not impossible on non-rounded blocks of cheese.

The next method is to do the same as above, but pushing down toward a hard surface rather than pulling along a spinning one. This will allow you to shape a block of cheese, or cut slices from a wedge. It is technically possible to also use this method to carve a wedge out of a wheel by standing the wheel on its side and pulling toward oneself, but given that this will result in a sharp wire being drawn to one's abdomen it is best used cautiously, and better to just use a cheese knife. Either way, a rocking or sawing motion may help to even out the cut, especially once the outer edges of the wire reach your cutting surface.

The final method is to simply wrap the wire around the cheese and pull the handles away from the point where the wire crosses itself. The cut will technically not be flat, but the difference will be minimal and likely undetectable without a round object. This is likely the most reliable method of cutting irregularly shaped pieces of cheese, such as if you are trying to extract a triangular slice from a wedge of lacy or aerated cheeses.

Once you pass a certain point in a chop, and if the ingredients are dry, the next step in getting something finer is to grind it. Kawhe, nuts, and spices especially often need to be ground. Much like with chopping, there are different methods used to start than to finish a grind. The coarsest possible grinds come from large mills. These are the meals you'll get from a miller, and frankly the most often encountered of these is chicken feed. Next down is flour, which is usually also milled, but the process for doing so goes from the coarse grind to a second, finer millstone.

Next are proper grinders. Most often used for turning kafe beans into kawhe, or peppercorns into pepper, or salt into table salt. These are done in table mills, which either have gear shafts that rotate and catch the ingredient between the teeth, or have a grinding head at the base of the mill which does something similar. A table mill may also be cranked if additional torque is needed to start the grinding process, such as for particularly hard nuts or kafe beans. At the base of the grinder will be a chute that leads to a collecting bowl. Hand mills, by contrast, are nearly universally a simple grinding head at the base of a hollow hopper that uses gravity to feed the mechanism, where a simple twist of the wrist provides the force to create the grind.

For an even finer grind, one must then turn to a mortar and pestle. These are used by pressing down on the pestle in such a way as to run the ingredient against the rough edge of the mortar. As the mortar's ridges get finer, so does the powder produced. By far the two most common ingredients for which a mortar is called are cinnamon and sugar, but it's not uncommon to see dried cloves or garlic ground this fine, and of course a fine salt can be used with certain fried foods to enhance their flavour without altering the texture.

Once ingredients have been reduced to their proper size, one may need to weigh them. A kitchen scale needs to be extremely precise in its balance, as often the ingredients involved will be very fine and very light indeed. For liquids, it is important to either have a second bowl of the same material and size on hand that can be placed empty on the weight tray, or else weigh the container empty before adding the ingredient and weighing again. If you can adjust the balance of the scale, a process called taring, you may also do so if you know you will be using the same size and material of container frequently. It is therefore sometimes useful to maintain two sets of weights so that you have duplicates should your container use an unusual one.

With both grinding and weighing, patience is key. One may eventually get a feel for weight, but until then it's best to take things slowly so as to avoid overshooting one's needs. Add the ingredients to one side of the scales, wait for them to settle, then add weights until the scales balance. The closer to balanced one gets, the smaller the weights to be added or exchanged, and the longer one needs to wait afterwards for the scales to settle again.

In addition to a set of scales and weights, it is useful to have a collection of rounded spoons of varying sizes, as well as a graduated cup. These can be used to measure both liquid and dry ingredients, though of course one will need to wash and dry them between uses, so multiple sets are recommended, with the less commonly used measures requiring fewer spoons on hand. Again, it will eventually be possible for an experienced chef to 'eyeball' ingredients, especially dry ingredients, but until one has verified that their guesses are accurate nine times in ten, it's best to avoid doing so for anything but seasonings.

Also remember that it is better to underseason than overseason, as bland food can have seasonings applied late in production to make up for the deficit, while overly-spiced foods cannot have those spices reduced without re-seasoning the dish entirely.

Mixing, Beating, Whipping, Mashing

(Sketches of each motion with arrows to indicate directions are included next to each of the paragraphs in this section.)

Next we will discuss methods of incorporating and combining ingredients using spoons, whisks, or fingers, and mashing forks.

The first utensil most will learn to use for mixing ingredients is, of course, their fingers. Even very young children can be coaxed into grabbing dry ingredients and mixing them together. This method is, however, only rarely used outside of baking as it is inefficient. In baking, it is quite common to use one's hands or fingers to mix, knead, and fold dry ingredients or doughs, mostly due to the lack of mess and the speed at which one can accomplish this, or the fine control required to properly attain the mixture consistency needed of that art.

For most applications, however, one will generally mix with a whisk, fork, or spoon. When doing so, the motions used should be quick, shallow scoops across the centre of the mixture while slowly turning the bowl. I find it is often easiest to execute by pulling toward oneself by holding the bowl in one arm and mixing with the other. The more incorporated the ingredients are, the deeper the scooping motion should be, and if the ingredients are dry, one can also add a rocking motion in with the bowl arm to help the ingredients mix faster. As the mixture gets thicker, switch from quick scoops to slow folds, and reverse the direction of the motion so that you are folding in from the outer edge.

If a recipe calls for you to beat something, the motion is mostly the same, but much quicker and shallower. Try to keep toward one edge of the bowl and turn against the direction of the beat to add speed. Your objective is to achieve a mostly uniform mixture here, but it is not critical that everything is homogeneous. In fact, with scrambled eggs it is sometimes better that there are pockets of white vitrea to enhance the experience of the final product.

Next is whipping, which is similar, but forks and spoons are likely incapable of achieving a proper whip. The motions for this are much faster, and much shallower. When using a whisk, one can also twist the wrist while making the scooping motions in order to reduce the speed necessary, but if all one has is a fork they may also require a potion of galvanism or a celerity-enhancing food or concoction. Elementalists can also create a downdraft over the mixing area in order to introduce more air to the mixture, as that's the ultimate goal of a whip: creating tiny bubbles of air inside a semifluid mixture. Mouses and souffles are similar, but far more delicate, requiring a smaller whisk, more tines, faster whisking, or a combination of the three. Again, if the mixture is too thick for a shallow motion, start by folding it over itself a few times to create the initial bubbles and start thinning it out.

Finally, related only in that it's generally done in a mixing bowl, we have mashing. Either with a regular fork or a masher, press down on a soft, usually boiled ingredient, usually potatoes, peas, or carrots, until the utensil meets the bowl, then repeat the motion again and again. This is similar to using a mortar and pestle, but your ingredient is not dry and the objective is not a powder. If the final mixture is too thick, add either cream or water a little at a time, folding the fluid into the mixture in a similar way to your mixture techniques. If it is too thin, you may be able to recover it by stretching a cheese cloth over the mash and straining over a basin. You generally want a more homogeneous result with this, but it's consistency and texture you're aiming for, so you may be left with some unincorporated skin, husk, or shell. If this is not something of which you are desirous, you can run the mash through a fine sieve in the last few steps.

Coating, Filling, Stuffing, Basting, Marinating

(The sketches in this section are primarily of the utensils used; a stiff-bristled brush, a softer brush, a small spatula, a pastry bag, a basting needle and dropper, and a marinading dish.)

Depending on the recipe, the sauce involved, and the method of cooking used, there are various ways of getting flavour onto or into your foods either before or after the steps most think of as cooking and baking.

The most straightforward of these are coating and breading. There are generally two ways to accomplish this, depending on how thoroughly the finished product needs to be coated. For sauces or melted butter, one uses a brush to apply a thin layer of sauce to the outside of the ingredient, usually a meat. This ensures an even coating that will enhance, but generally will not drastically alter the flavour profile or texture. Alternatively, one may roll the ingredient to be coated in a sauce to coat it. This will usually result in a more flavourful outer layer that may protect the food from dehydrating as quickly during a bake. Finally, breading can be accomplished by first applying a mixture of eggs and a few soluble seasonings, and then either sprinkling the ingredient with or rolling it through a flour mixture or, for a particularly crunchy breading, ground up croutons.

For baked goods, one can apply a layer of icing after the cake has cooled sufficiently. Use a small spatula to scoop out the icing from one's mixing bowl, then spread it onto the cake in a smooth, spiraling motion either by rotating the cake under the spatula or rotating the spatula around the cake. For either method, hold the spatula at an angle with its smaller end pointed toward the pastry, and the icing beneath it. The shallower the angle, and the closer to the pastry one is, the smoother the final coating will be. For cup-cakes or to produce peaks, one should instead use a bag or cone made from wax paper, with the wax on the inside. Place the icing inside, then twist the top to seal it and cut off the tip with a pair of kitchen shears. As the icing is dispensed, gently twist the top of the bag by making squeezing it between your thumb and palm, and slide your grip along as you twist.

A similar construction can be used to fill a puffed pastry if the filling will not survive being baked with the pastry. Icing in particular is likely to run out of any pastry it's baked into, and custard would be cooked if baked, which will alter the consistency irrevocably. For this, a small hole needs to either have been left in the pastry or be cut out from it to access the hollow space to be filled. Then simply insert the tip of your piping bag and twist as above. Runny fillings can instead be inserted via a kitchen funnel. Glass or fused gemstone for preference as these are easier to clean and less likely to contaminate the food.

Basting uses some of the same techniques via tools specialised for the task. A basting needle is used to inject your sauce or juices directly into meat to prevent it drying out as much as to add flavour, and the dropper is to fill larger cavities where a bird's viscera would have been. One will also, of course, use a ladle to reapply some of the juices that drip from meats as they roast, simply drizzling it over the meat. Stuffing can also be employed in the bird's cavity. Simply soften your favourite herbal bread, cut it into small cubes, and pack it in through the opening through which said viscera were extracted.

Finally, a more extensive and time consuming option is to marinade your entree before cooking it. This is accomplished by submerging the meat in your marinade, usually oil or alcohol based, to allow the sauce to infuse and break down some of the fat in the meat. You will then cover the dish and place it in a cool, dark place to prevent spoilage. This will serve to tenderise as well as flavour the meat, allowing it to survive a longer roast or broil without drying out.

Stewing, Reducing, Boiling, Poaching, Steaming

We now move on to cooking with water. The lowest maintenance, and indeed overall simplest, form of this is to make a stew. The basic formula for a stew is to start with a liquid base, water or stock for preference, add in some vegetables and a protein, and let it sit over a fire until your soul tells you it's ready. However the marvelous thing about a stew is that you can continue to add new ingredients and just let them cook for a while to change the stew by slow degrees. Do this for long enough, and you produce something called different things by different cultures, but I grew up referring to it as a village stew, or a rolling stew. It's almost universally brownish in colour, and has a thickness somewhere between a sauce and a soup depending on the constituent ingredients, the earliest of which no one is prepared to admit to knowing. I mentioned maintaining one of these for household use in large or very populated households, and a couple of villages I know maintain one for village use after a harvest when even the homemakers don't have time to cook. All that's truly required is a starting liquid, a large cauldron, a fire, and a long-handled ladle. One does need to monitor it for spoilage, but even if it does spoil the stew can be thickened into hog slop by increasing the heat to boil off a bit of the moisture.

A process which is called 'reducing'. It's often used to turn a runny sauce or soup into a thicker one, or a roux. All one needs to do for this is to maintain a boiling temperature and continually stir the contents to ensure the liquid is removed more or less evenly.

Boiling and poaching are distinct from stewing or creating soup in that the water is being used as a cooking medium, not as part of the finished product. If the food is completely submerged in boiling water, that's boiling. Make sure to use a ladle or long spoon to keep the food from sticking to the bottom of the pot, but otherwise don't disturb it until it's time to remove it from the water. A related technique uses a double boiler, where the boiling water is acting as a heat source for a second pot that contains ingredients, usually milk, that need a very precise, controlled, and gradual heating process. Everything being calm and clear and an unusable scalded mess are often only seconds apart with untended milk. However certain confections also require a double boiler.

If there is only a bit of boiling water in, for instance, a pan, then you are poaching the food. Again, take care not to let it stick to your pan, and try to occasionally cover the top of the food with more water to cook evenly and prevent it from drying. Poaching is used in cases where the food is too delicate to be fried in lard, butter, or oil without falling apart, or boiled in deeper water without losing its texture or flavour.

Lastly is steaming, which is when one suspends their food in a basket over boiling water in a closed pot, allowing the steam to cook it. It is recommended to use a flat lid so that additional weight or a strap can be added to prevent the steam from escaping, otherwise the chef will need to start with more water to compensate. Steaming is, again, used when you need an even cooking temperature, but cannot boil the food without changing its texture, particularly useful for broccoli, asparagus, and cabbages, but also useful for shrimp and crabs if you'll be coating them in lemon and butter.

Baking, Broiling, Grilling, Roasting, Smoking

Let us now work with the oven. Like with stews, most of these cooking methods are 'set and forget', where nearly all of the preparation is done in one burst, and all of the cooking is done over a long period of time. These types of recipes are handy, as you can cook other things while waiting without risking the food burning. The differences between these are largely about the proximity to and arrangement of your source of heat and the level of activity required.

Alone among these types of cooking methods, roasting sometimes requires direct supervision. This is because the main draw of roasting is that it requires less heat and therefore a less sophisticated oven, but the tradeoff is that in order for it to work you need to lengthen the cooking time, constantly rotate the food to be cooked, or both. Thus, the turning spit. This is a large iron bar with a handle on one end. The chef skewers the food on the spit, or ties it to the spit, then suspends it over the fire and turns the handle to ensure an even cook. In some large kitchens, one might employ a servant whose only task is turning the roasting spit, or one might have a wheel in which a dog or cat is allowed to walk or run in place to do the work. This process results in a drier finished product, but one can use different woods to subtly change the flavour profile of the food as well.

Similar is smoking, where the food, almost universally a meat, is suspended in a sealed chamber with a smouldering fire. It is important to note that this fire should not be producing any visible flames, as the goal here is to allow the smoke to dehydrate and cook the food. This takes time, but is not as labour intensive as roasting, requiring only that the pit master rake the embers and coals and occasionally add fresh wood shavings. If the food has been laid out or suspended correctly, and it is not left overlong, it is somewhat dry, but retains its fats, leaving it slightly chewy. Like roasting, the type of wood used for this alters the flavour of the finished product, but with smoked food the differences are more pronounced. Also, if left long enough, and treated with salts, the smoked meat can become cured meat, turning pork into ham or other meats into jerky.

A quick moment here to talk about preparing dough for bread, and pasta. Both involve similar processes, and I'm covering this here rather than the boiling chapter because the process is generally used for making bread more frequently than noodles. Your individual recipe will go over the ingredient differences, but bread doughs are usually mixed, then kneaded and folded over themselves several times before being allowed to rest, rise, and develop. Cookie and pastry doughs, by contrast, are not allowed to rise and are instead either rolled flat and cut into desired shapes or rolled into balls which flatten in the oven. Pasta dough is stretched in the same direction, then rolled to stretch it further, then twisted, then rolled and stretched again and again until the internal structure has developed along a single long axis. At this point it is cut and rolled as called for by the recipe.

Baking is the most straightforward. Place uncooked food into an oven and close it, wait some time, occasionally adding more fuel to the fire, and extract cooked food from the oven. The complicated part of this is generally either before, needing to follow a complex recipe for pastries or casseroles, or after, needing to decorate cakes and pastries. Your food will again come out drier than it went in, but since baking is enclosed and the heat is higher than roasting, not as dry as the previous methods. It will also take less time.

Following this trajectory, we have broiling. Broils are difficult for one reason only, the heat needs to be intense, and the heating element needs to be above the food. This can be accomplished in one of a few ways. For dishes that can be set and forgotten about, like certain cobblers, one can arrange the ingredients as appropriate in a flat-lidded pot, sink the pot into a fire pit, then build a small fire atop it. One will need to use an iron vessel for this, as copper would deform and ceramics are likely to crack from the heat. A more reliable way is to have a compartment for broiling built into the oven, usually a tray or drawer below the fire box. The intense heat from the close proximity to open flames means that the food will cook very quickly, and the uniform direction of that heat means that the top of your food will form a crust quickly. Thus, this is best used for cobblers or to finish a dish that's been cooked in some other way, as it may not thoroughly cook certain kinds of food, notably poultry or fish, which should not be eaten undercooked.

Finally, there is grilling. This is one of the simplest forms of cookery there is. Suspend food at a medium distance over an open fire, usually resting on a metal or wicker grid, which sometimes has a lid to keep the heat in. Rotate the food at least one or three times, and move food from the outer edges in to ensure an even cook. This is a close cousin to roasting, but it requires less direct supervision because of the increased heat, since the food cooks faster. This produces a crust, much like broiling, but because the food is rotated and the temperatures are lower, this is much less pronounced than with a broil. Somewhere between roasting and grilling there also exists toasting, where one skewers food on a spit or fork and holds it close to a fire for a moment to crisp and darken it. This is more of an amusement than outright cookery though, as it is difficult to perform at scale. See Frying chapter for how to mass-produce toasted bread.

Frying

One might ask why other cooking methods have their chapters condensed, but not frying. The answer is simply that frying is probably the most technically demanding of the cooking methods. There are four main categories of frying techniques. Side note: Since oil is heavily involved in all forms of frying, it is important to know NEVER TO MIX HOT OIL WITH WATER. YOU WILL BURN YOURSELF, YOUR KITCHEN STAFF, YOUR FAMILY, AND POSSIBLY YOUR HOUSE. NEVER. MIX. HOT OIL. WITH. WATER. The temperatures inside oil at which things are fried will cause ice to sublimate and liquid water will turn to steam immediately. If this happens under the surface of the oil, which doesn't maintain surface tension at all and is less dense than water at those temperatures, the oil will be flung out of the pan or pot by the expanding water. You have been warned.

Deep frying is most similar to boiling, with one critical distinction: There is no water involved. Instead one is cooking with heated oil, which boils at a much, much higher temperature, and therefore remains liquid at higher temperatures than water. This means that anything submerged in oil is subjected to the same processes that boiled food is, much, much more quickly. Quickly enough that the outer surfaces form a crust that protects the interior. This gives the food a nice crunch while allowing the interior to be moist and even juicy if done properly. This is why there are so many frying techniques. Thus, grasping the food to be fried with a pair of metal tongs and submerging it for a few minutes will produce cooked food. It is prudent to let the food sit for a time to cool and finish cooking afterwards, preferably on a towel or in a mesh rack over a basin to allow excess oil to drain.

Next are so-called hot pot or stir-fry techniques. These use less oil, but are still not particularly labour intensive. One adds foods according to their cooking times, and stirs the ingredients around while maintaining high heat on an oven or fire pit. The temperatures reached are, again, very high in these recipes, allowing the outside of the food to sear and locking in the flavours and juices of the ingredients. With stir-fry recipes, it is important to move the food nearly constantly so that it does not get stuck to the pan, but this has an added benefit of allowing the ingredients to cook near one another frequently enough to exchange flavour profiles while still maintaining their own. If you have the proper cooking vessel for it, one can also cook large meals in this fashion, though this becomes more technically demanding as one will need to manoeuvre the pan in such a way as to flip the ingredients off of the cooking surface for brief periods of time to ensure the ingredients cook properly and don't stick to the pan. Without spilling those ingredients, or more importantly the oil, all over the kitchen. It's best to practice this outdoors, and thankfully it is possible to do so as the vessels for this are often round-bottomed and can be suspended over a cooking fire by means of a metal ring on a tripod. Hot pots will typically use slightly more oil to cook fewer ingredients, but your individual recipe will instruct you in the proper ratios.

Finally there is pan frying. Traditional Delportian techniques involve using a spatula, fork, tongs, or some other utensil in one hand to position the ingredients being cooked, usually in a very light layer of oil or butter, and to turn them when needed, while the hand on the pan will make a circular motion to ensure that heat is reaching every part of the pan evenly. This is likely what most people think of when they hear the word 'cooking', and nearly every culture has reached some variation on this technique. Like other forms of frying, the high heat of the cooking medium sears the ingredients and allows them to stay moist, and the short cook times allows for the creation of more complex, multi-step dishes. One variant on this is pan searing, in which a pan of oil is heated to frankly dangerously high temperatures, and then a piece of food is introduced briefly to it on each side. If the pan is hot enough, the sear created by doing this will continue to cook the rest of the meat to a safe level by the time it reaches the table. Do not do this with poultry or other fowl.

The final frying technique requires the most specialized equipment: a cooktop griddle. The most widely available of these is simple enough to produce, it's a large sheet of iron or steel on short legs designed to rest over most or all of the burners on a given range. The better option is to have a separate stove dedicated to a griddle, as the heat will be better distributed. These are used by applying cooking oil to the surface while the fire is stoked, then placing ingredients directly on the cooking surface. It's fairly simple to produce multiple meals at once on such a cooking surface, but each must be able to be left to rest without intervention beyond occasionally turning or flipping, so it is vital that the heat be even across the range. Incidentally, this is excellent for making toast if one has a need for it, like stuffing. Melt a pat of butter on the range, place a slice of bread over the melted pat, and flip it after a moment or two, depending on how crispy one needs the bread to be. This works best with white breads, especially if they've been baked from very fine flour.

Afterward

This guide is by no means complete. There are dozens of cooking techniques and even entire cooking styles that were barely touched on or not mentioned at all. I'm by no means a cookery encyclopaedia. I'm simply a chef, and have found the techniques, methods, and styles outlined in this book to be the most useful starting point for a new chef. There are safety tips, sanitation advice, and definitions here to help someone gain a foothold in the culinary world without needing a well-stocked latrine. A good cook can come from anywhere. Be nearly anyone. Hopefully this book will encourage someone with no other mentor to take up a knife and spatula and try out a few recipes they find in the public catalogue. I would be content with that much.