Smoking isn't the half of it. Where before I ate duck, I now eat duck cured for 2 days with cloves, cooked sous-vide in its own rendered fat for 7 hours at 73C, and then stored for 3 weeks. Learning how sausage works, how curing works, and how preserving works is every bit as big of a deal as learning how to make a pan sauce from a fond. Can't recommend that book enough. I'm trying to source a half pig from a local farm; when I do, I'm going to work my way through the book start to finish, blogging it like the Alinea Cookbook blogger did.

Sous-vide, something else you don't want to get me started on; amazed that nobody here has picked that topic up. It's fucking amazing. I can't see how there isn't 11 billion dollars to be made with it somehow.