Prep

This is where you prepare all your basic ingredients, measured in the amounts you will need. They will be chopped, blanched, pre-seared, softened—in every way brought as far along as you can bring them without compromising (too much) the quality of the finished product. For example: risotto. If you’re making risotto for your guests and only begin cooking when they’re sitting at the table, drinking your liquor, then I admire you as a person of principle. But as a host you are a disaster. While you’re in the kitchen, stirring away over low heat like some smug, self-satisfied prima donna, your guests are getting impatient and ugly drunk and are spilling your best single malt on your couch. They’re rifling your medicine cabinet. And they’re talking about you behind your back. Restaurants generally half cook their risotto and spread it out, still pellet hard, to cool on sheet pans. When they get an order, they finish it, taking it the rest of the way in half the time. Does this impact the quality of the finished product? Well…yes. A bit. But one must constantly make value judgments like this. Which is better? Perfect risotto (which your by-now hammered guests will probably be blissfully unaware of) or happy, well-fed guests? You decide. Presumably, you know your friends.