The whole recipe is one instruction repeated: keep the heat lower than you think, and stir
whenever you walk past the stove. Onions that brown in twenty minutes taste of frying;
onions that take two hours taste of onion.
I use a heavy pot with a lid slightly ajar, a spoon of butter and nothing else until the very end.
Salt goes in halfway, once the water has come out of them. Stock at the end, never at the start.
The bread on top matters less than people say. Yesterday's loaf, dried in the oven, works better
than anything bought for the purpose.
A pot of beans, three dinners
Half a kilo of dried beans soaked overnight, cooked with a carrot, a bay leaf and a piece of
onion skin for colour. No salt until they are soft, which takes about ninety minutes here.
Monday they are beans with olive oil and vinegar. Tuesday they go into soup with the cooking liquid.
Wednesday they are fried flat in a pan until the edges catch, which is the dinner everyone actually waits for.
Why I stopped measuring salt
Recipes give salt in grams because they have to. In a home kitchen the variable is not the recipe,
it is the pot: a wide pan reduces fast and concentrates everything, a tall one does not.
Now I salt three times and taste three times. It has done more for my cooking than any new pan.