Improvising by bookseller

You know, one of the things I like best about cooking is the acquisition of basic principles, which then permits a certain amount of confident improvisation. For example, protein and pan sauce. Take a boneless piece of chicken, season it with salt and pepper, saute it in butter till it's done. Remove the chicken from the pan (cover it loosely with foil to keep warm), add a glug of white wine to the pan, and bring the wine to a boil while scraping up all the brown bits that the chicken has left on the bottom. Once all the bits are scraped up and the liquid in the pan has reduced to a glaze consistency, you have a sauce. Pour it over the chicken and eat.

That's perfectly good. But you could do the same thing with steak, with pork, with fish, with veal. You could use red wine or chicken stock or beef stock or fish stock or cider or coffee or orange juice or...any liquid (or combination of liquids) that you like. You could saute some shallots or garlic or onions (or ginger or scallions or lemongrass) in the pan before adding the liquid. As the liquid's reducing in the pan, you could stir in some mustard or some cream or some jelly or some capers or some chopped pickles or some peanut butter or some hoisin or some orange segments. That's your improv. But it's all based on the extremely simple technique of Cook a Piece of Protein and Use the Fond (the bits left in the pan) and a Liquid to Make a Pan Sauce. If you like, you can turn it into a hugely complicated dish -- various vegetable garnishes, minced herbs, toasted nuts, sit the whole thing on a crouton (fried bread) or a potato cake, etc. But even if you just use the very basic ingredients -- protein, salt and pepper, fat, liquid -- you'll have a really tasty dinner. And once you latch onto that basic technique, you can make substitutions easily, depending on what looks good and sounds good.