Cheat sheet 09 · Nixtamal
Nixtamalisation is not only for maize. An alkaline solution built from wood ash changes a vegetable before it ever meets heat — the texture first, then the flavour. The ratio, the timings, the resting, and the one rule that keeps it safe, on one page.
Opens as a PDF. Print it and put it on the wall by your stove.
Before you start. The strained liquid is caustic. Wear gloves, keep it off your skin and out of your eyes, and never taste it. Clean hardwood ash only — never briquettes, treated or painted wood. Work in a stainless or enamel pot; alkali reacts with aluminium.
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One method. The chapters are the rest of them.
Cuisine Étoilée — a working guide to the standards, technique and mindset of the world's best kitchens. Seven chapters, 172 pages, written plainly, because the problem was never that these things are difficult. It is that nobody would explain them.
- Vegetables, cold side — curing, pickling, pressing, what raw actually gives you
- Vegetables, hot side — embers, fat, and cooking something until it is worth eating
- Mindset, organization, sauce, meat cooking, advanced plating
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Sam Dill — over 10,000 hours in some of the world's best restaurants.
Cuisine Étoilée · cuisineetoilee.com