Don't Sweat the Aubergine

into manageable pieces, and grind it in a mortar with a little salt. Or you could crush it on a chopping board with the blade of a heavy knife. The salt helps turn it into a creamy pulp.
    A mortar is the traditional receptacle in which to turn – you move the pestle constantly in the same direction – aioli, or garlic mayonnaise ( see here ). I use it for ordinary mayonnaise, too; mine is large enough to contain the mayonnaise that one egg will produce, and because it’s heavy it does not wobble about as I turn the pestle. You may find that a whisk involves less hard work.
    A pestle can also, as the derivation of the word implies, make pesto ( see here ). Or you can use the pestle to grind spices – but remember that spices such as cumin will leave their flavour behind, to invade subsequent preparations. You might want to invest instead in the following item.
Herb mill, or coffee grinder
    These are electrical devices, of course. Don’t use them for chopping herbs, apart from rosemary or curly parsley: they will turn fragile leaves such as basil or tarragon or flat-leaf parsley into flavourless mush. But they are invaluable for dried chillies – have you ever tried to ‘crumble’, as the recipes instruct, a dried chilli? They will also grind whole spices such as cumin and coriander seeds. You may need two mills or grinders: one for spices and chillies, the other for such ingredients as parsley, breadcrumbs and pine kernels.
Balloon whisk
    Beating egg whites or cream by hand is quite hard work. But by the time you’ve got out your electric whisk, plugged it in, whisked your eggs or cream, dismantled the machine, washed it and put it back in the cupboard, you’ll certainly have spent more time on the job than if you’d done it manually. Also, hand-beating enables you to feel how your ingredients are progressing: whether your egg whites are approaching the ‘soft peak’ stage, for example. It’s too tempting, with an electric whisk, to leave the machine running for just an extra minute, to make sure that the foam is perfect. It will be perfect one moment, and in a state of collapse the next.
Salad whizzer
    A plastic bowl with a meshed plastic container inside; you put on the lid and turn the handle to spin the container, the contents of which throw off their water. Dry salad leaves will accept an oil-based dressing; wet ones will repel it.
    Purists tell you that this process can damage delicate leaves. Gordon Ramsay advises that you wrap them in a clean dishcloth, hold the ends, and give it a twirl. When I tried this technique, I sprayed bits of salad all over the kitchen. So I rely on my whizzer.



 
    AGAIN, THIS IS far from a comprehensive list. The following ingredients are so common that it’s worth being familiar with their traits that recipes usually lack room to explain
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Salt
    I hope you aren’t too maddened by my vagueness in the following pages about the quantities of salt you should use. We all have different tastes; and, if we’ve ever sprinkled salt on to a pile of chips, we can probably make a rough guess about how much salt we should add to the contents of a pot. I trust that you won’t pour a tablespoon of salt into a stew for six people. Be cautious at first; taste as you go along, and add more seasoning if necessary.
    Water evaporates, but salt doesn’t. As liquid boils away in an uncovered pan, the proportion of salt in it goes up. The teaspoon of salt that may have seemed a moderate addition to a stew will become excessive if you end up with a reduced, concentrated sauce.
    Salt, sprinkled on to something moist, will suck up the water. Many cooks like to sweat vegetables with a high water content such as aubergines, courgettes and cucumbers, sprinkling salt on them and leaving them to drain in a colander, for various reasons: to reduce their sponginess, so that they don’t absorb so much oil when frying (aubergines); to prevent their throwing off a lot of liquid in the pan, so that they fry rather than stew (courgettes); and to concentrate their flavour (cucumbers). Sometimes this operation is worthwhile; sometimes, in my view, not (see the Vegetables chapter, here ). A second reason for sweating aubergines – one still advanced from time to time – is that the salt draws out their bitter juices ( see here ).
    The water-absorbing quality of salt is responsible for the widely disseminated advice that salting meat before frying or grilling will cause it to lose its juices. But the