cooking techniques
Italians know how to turn the everyday into something special, but
maximizing taste and nutrition, even from fresh ingredients requires
appropriate skills. Lack of culinary skill is a major setback to
good eating, but Italian technique is fortunately quite simple to
grasp and takes just a little time, practice, and patience to
master.
All cooking comes from two parents: desiccation or dry heat – baking
(al Forno) – and hydration or cooking wet – boiling (Bollire).
But at the heart of both is the most important concept underlying
Italian or any style of cooking for that matter: insaporire.
Insaporire, from the Latin meaning tasty, is more of an
ultimate goal than a specific technique, a direction to coax flavor
out of whatever you are preparing. Insaporire can be revealed
in a proper dressing (lemon/oil/caper/anise) or a soffrito
(frying bacon, garlic, minced herbs or vegetables in oil) to infuse
a flavor base in a dish. Or, in singeing for char, or glazing fruit
for caramelization, or recognizing a fruit’s peak ripeness, or
plunging vegetables into cold water to arrest the cooking process
and retain their texture. It’s using everything you know and have
access to to make a dish taste as good as it gets.
The techniques
discussed in The Diet Code are in the
service of insaporire, and it’s one of the best parts of
The Diet Code plan – you’ll enjoy eating balanced, nutritious
meals that taste great and yield great results for your waistline.
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In this Section
Stocking The Pantry Cooking Techniques Sample Menu Sample Recipe

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