Long-stemmed broccoli should be tossed with olive oil and flaky salt and roasted in a hot oven until the florets turn the color of hazelnut shells and shatter on the tongue.

Throughout my time working in restaurants, I developed an illogical dread of some basic kitchen tasks. None of them - picking and chopping parsley, peeling and mincing garlic, browning pans of ground meat - were particularly difficult. But at the scale required in a professional kitchen, they felt Sisyphean.

Fried vegetables, often overbattered and undercooked, tend to disappoint me with their tough or soggy crusts.

Samin Nosrat Quotes