COOKING AT HOME

The chef of Momofuku cooks at home . . . and that means breaking the rules that chefs, magazines, and everyone else tell you about, so you can get a great dinner done fast. Being a chef can make you the worst kind of home cook. Either you¡¦re too fussy when dinner just needs to be on the table or, as Momofuku chef Dave Chang will tell you about his early years in the industry, you just . . . never cook at home. But now, with a family to feed, Dave faces the same challenges as any home cook: how to make something as delicious as possible, in the least amount of time possible, with as little mess as possible. It¡¦s no time for meticulous searing or searching for the perfect medium rare. This is his guide to the culinary dark arts of substituting, adapting, shortcutting, and sandbagging, like par-cooking chicken in the microwave before showing you seven ways to blast it with flavor in a four-minute stir-fry or a ten-minute stew, because he is as tired as you are of doing things the hard way.