Browse Techniques

Point did not write recipes because he did not believe recipes were the point. His philosophy — recorded in aphorisms, not formulas — centred on principles: "Every morning the cuisinier must start again at zero, with nothing on the stove. That is what real cuisine is all about." "Success is the sum of a lot of small things done correctly." "As far as cuisine is concerned, one must read everything, see everything, hear everything, try everything, observe everything, in order to retain, in the end, just a little bit." He insisted his kitchen start from scratch every day. No stock carried over, no sauce made ahead, no prep from the previous service. Everything fresh, everything that morning, everything from the market he visited personally before dawn — followed by a breakfast of three whole chickens and a magnum of champagne.

The bara is a soft, pillowy fried bread made from wheat flour, turmeric, cumin, baking powder, and sometimes split pea flour. The dough is yeasted, rested for an hour, then portions are flattened and deep-fried until puffed and golden. The channa (curried chickpeas) is cooked with curry powder, cumin (geera), fenugreek (methi), garlic, and hot pepper. Assembly: one bara on the bottom, a generous scoop of channa, tamarind sauce, cucumber or coconut chutney, pepper sauce, second bara on top. Eaten immediately, standing up, from the vendor's hand.

Cou-cou — a thick, polenta-like preparation of cornmeal and okra, served with steamed or fried flying fish in a Creole sauce — is the national dish of Barbados. The cou-cou technique parallels Italian polenta and West African fufu (it shares ancestry with both), while the flying fish reflects Barbados' unique marine geography — flying fish are abundant in Barbadian waters and have become the island's culinary symbol.

Callaloo — a thick, stewed green soup/side dish — is made across the Caribbean, but the green used and the technique vary by island. In Trinidad, callaloo is made from dasheen (taro) leaves simmered with okra, coconut milk, pumpkin, and crab. In Jamaica, callaloo refers to amaranth greens. In Barbados, it is made with young taro leaves or spinach. The dish traces directly to West African leaf stews (see WA series) — the enslaved Africans brought the cooking technique and adapted it to whatever greens were available in the Caribbean.

Mojo criollo — a marinade and sauce built from sour orange juice (naranja agria), garlic, cumin, and olive oil — is the foundation of Cuban cooking. It marinates pork (lechón asado), dresses yuca (boiled cassava), and functions as the all-purpose acid-fat-aromatic condiment of the Cuban kitchen. The sour orange (Citrus aurantium, also called Seville or bitter orange) was brought to Cuba by the Spanish — it is the same fruit used in English marmalade, but in Cuba it serves a completely different function: as a cooking acid rather than a preserve.

Jerk — the fiery, aromatic spice rub and slow-smoke technique — originated with the Maroons, communities of escaped enslaved Africans who lived in the Blue Mountains and Cockpit Country of Jamaica from the 17th century onward. The technique served dual purposes: the spice mixture (Scotch bonnet pepper, allspice/pimento berries, thyme, garlic, ginger, scallion) preserved the meat in the tropical heat, and the pimento wood smoke added both flavour and antimicrobial compounds. Jerk was survival food that became national cuisine.

Françoise Fillioux (born 1865) operated le Bistrot Fillioux in Lyon with an all-female kitchen. She is famous for one declaration that contains more culinary philosophy than entire cookbooks: "I know how to cook five dishes, and I will never make any others." She cooked those five dishes — volaille demi-deuil, truffle and cream soup, poached chicken, artichoke hearts stuffed with foie gras, and lobster with shallots — for her entire career. She trained Eugénie Brazier. She never wrote a single word about cooking.

Mofongo — mashed fried green plantains with garlic, olive oil, and chicharrones (pork crackling) — is Puerto Rico's most iconic dish, with roots in both Taíno (indigenous) and West African cooking. The technique of frying starchy vegetables and mashing them into a mortar is directly descended from the West African fufu tradition (see WA series entries), adapted to the plantains that the Spanish brought to the Caribbean. The name "mofongo" may derive from the Angolan Kikongo word "mfwenge-mfwenge" (a large amount of something).

The plantain is the most versatile starch in the Caribbean — and the technique of using it changes entirely depending on ripeness. Green plantains (hard, starchy, neutral) are fried twice for tostones (crispy discs), boiled for mangu, or fried and mashed for mofongo. Ripe plantains (yellow-black, sweet, soft) are sliced and fried for maduros (sweet fried plantains). The spectrum from green to black represents a complete transformation of flavour (neutral → sweet), texture (firm → soft), and culinary application (savoury → sweet). Mastering the plantain means reading its ripeness and knowing which dish each stage demands.

Roti in Trinidad is not the simple unleavened flatbread of India — it has evolved into multiple distinct forms, each a Caribbean creation: dhalpuri (stuffed with ground split peas), paratha/buss-up-shut ("busted up shirt" — beaten on the tawa until it tears into shreds), and sada (plain). The roti wrap — a dhalpuri or paratha wrapped around curry (chicken, goat, shrimp, chickpea, potato) — is Trinidad's most complete meal: bread, protein, vegetable, and sauce in one portable package.

Sancocho is the great Caribbean stew — made across the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela, with each country claiming its own version. Dominican sancocho prieto ("dark sancocho") can contain up to seven different meats (beef, chicken, pork, goat, longaniza sausage, pork feet, pork belly) alongside root vegetables: yuca (cassava), yautía (taro/malanga), ñame (yam), plantain, and corn. It is cooked for hours until the broth thickens from the starches released by the root vegetables — no thickener is added, yet the broth becomes rich and velvety through starch alone.

In Chinese professional wok cooking — particularly Cantonese — the most critical skill is "listening to the fire" (听火, tīng huǒ). The chef reads the state of the wok, the oil, and the food by sound alone: the sizzle when garlic hits oil tells its temperature; the change in pitch when protein is added tells whether the wok recovered heat fast enough; the crackling that diminishes tells when the moisture has evaporated and the Maillard reaction is beginning. A master wok cook can work with their eyes closed and know exactly what is happening in the pan. This skill is transmitted exclusively by apprenticeship — there is no textbook that teaches it.

The greatest wok technique on Earth is not practiced in restaurants — it is practiced at street stalls in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and across Thailand, where vendors with no formal training and no written recipes produce pad Thai, pad krapao, and khao pad at a speed and consistency that trained chefs cannot match. The technique is entirely sensory: the vendor reads wok temperature by the colour of the smoke rising from the oil, by the sound of the ingredients hitting the surface, and by the smell of the Maillard reaction developing. No thermometer. No timer. No recipe card.

Every Caribbean island has its own pepper sauce, and the Scotch bonnet (Capsicum chinense) is the unifying thread. But the base, the acid, the aromatics, and the heat level vary by island: Trinidadian pepper sauce uses mustard and turmeric. Jamaican uses vinegar and allspice. Bajan uses fresh turmeric and mustard. Haitian pikliz is a pickled vegetable condiment with Scotch bonnet. The pepper sauce is not a condiment — it is a cultural signature. You can identify which island a cook is from by their pepper sauce.

Across every culinary tradition documented in this database, a pattern recurs: the most important technique knowledge is transmitted orally, by demonstration, and by apprenticeship — never by written recipe. Anna Galasso carried her ragù "in her head" from Avellino to America. Giovanna Catalano learned couscous by secretly watching her mother. Aboriginal songlines encode food knowledge in song. Thai street vendors learn wok temperature by sound. Mère Fillioux taught Mère Brazier by example, not by text. Fernand Point's "recipes" were notes, not instructions. The conclusion is inescapable: cookbooks document cooking, but they do not transmit it. The knowledge that matters — the feeling of when a sauce has reduced enough, the sound of a correctly heated wok, the smell of bread that is 30 seconds from done — lives in the body, not on the page.