The upcoming version of my 80/20 Cooking course teaches a lot of dishes, but all through the lens of fundamental techniques.

As an example: this pasta all'amatriciana that I learned how to make last year in Italy. It's a very simple dish at its core, and in learning how to make it you'll not just add a new pasta dish to your repertoire but also: 

- learn about proper ratios for pasta water, how to ensure even cooking, and why you don't need to add oil to the water 
- learn how to properly salt pasta water to season the noodles from the inside out 
- learn how to cook dried pasta to the perfect al dente point 
- learn how to take a few simple ingredients and build a super flavorful sauce 
- learn how to use pasta water to thicken and build a better sauce 
- learn how to incorporate the cooked pasta into the sauce to finalize the dish

Now you've not only mastered pasta all'amatriciana, but you've also built up a set of skills that you can use in thousands of other pasta dishes.

This is literally the "what you have" paste recipe.

Crafted with "what you have" in the fridge. Bacon? yup, in it goes.

week old mushrooms? To the pan!