Len Deighton’s French Cooking for Men: 50 Classic Cookstrips for Today’s Action Men. Len Deighton

most British cooks have their fat about an eighth of an inch deep for everything they fry. This is too shallow for cooking eggs and yet so deep that it swamps the bacon. Like most compromises it’s the worst of both worlds.

      Now that you know all the ways to cook you should be able to apply them to any chunk of food that stands in front of you.

      A potato will lend itself to roasting or baking. Sliced up it can be sautéed, fried, put into a stew, boiled, poached, steamed, pressure-cooked, and, although it’s unusual, pot-roasted or double-boiler cooked too. As long as you bear in mind the limitations of protein foods you can do anything any way. The only limit I would put upon you is that of using good-quality meat for the first four heating methods – dry radiant heat, oven heat, sauté, and frying.