HOW to find if a cook is good? Simply look in the refrigerator. If the necessary cooking fats are there, all well and good. If not, forget it and him or her. Warn your friends, shake the dust from your feet, declare a general anathema.
Over 80 per cent of the best main dishes depend on the use of fats or oils. Obviously, deep-fried dishes, from beignets of brains to simple French fries, require fat. Shallow-fried dishes—fried liver or fried eggs—require fat. But roast dishes such as leg of pork need fat too. Even meats rich in their own fat such as duck, want some added fat to start off the roasting. Grilled fish, especially the drier fish, require lots of added oil. Even dry-grilled dishes, fish or meat cooked straight on a plancha or a Le Creuset-type grill with only salt, need to be anointed with some oil or fat just before serving. So do barbecued dishes. In fact, take back that 80 per cent. It’s nearly 100 per cent, because even poached dishes need a final greasy accompaniment. Poached turbot needs its hollandaise, boiled bacon its parsley sauce with lots of butter.
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