9 things I learnt cooking at home during all those lockdowns

The same as lots of people, I got very into cooking during the lockdowns, here’s what I learned in listicle form.

1. The fancy expensive pasta is worth the money

2. Taking nice pictures of food is 20% good food, 80% garnishes and lighting

3. Something magical happens to nuts when you toast them

4. It’s worth buying a tortilla press, because then making corn tortillas goes from a special-occasion-kinda-thing to an everyday thing

5. You can get pretty far with sauces by just mixing random things with mayonaisse

A very incomplete list of those random things: chipotles, pretty much any kind of herbs, lemon juice, vinegar, onions, honey, sour cream, yoghurt, garlic, any kind of hot sauce, spices, cheese, soy sauce, mustard, ketchup, fresh chillies, spring onions.

6. Home made pickled onions go with absolutely everything

Thanks to Elon Chlebowski for this one.

7. If you’re making a French omelette, having a pan the right size makes all the difference

Thanks to Alex on YouTube for this tip.

8. When a recipe calls for what seems like an unreasonable amount of butter or sugar, they really do mean it

“They can’t really mean that much, can they? Can they!?!!?!!”.

9. The “skillet-broiler” method makes for pretty good home pizza

A great technique from this Serious Eats article by Kenji-Lopez Alt (90% of my cooking ideas are probably stolen from Kenji, with the other 10% being stolen from Adam Ragusea).