Learning the fundamentals of cooking

This has been a big cooking weekend for me. After reading Samin Nosrat's "Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat," I'm attempting to apply her lessons about cooking. 

So far, I've applied the following tips: 

• Make your own stock from scratch. I attempted Beef bone broth. With some help from the awesome people at Mert's Meats, I was able to get some nice oxtail, spare ribs, and knuckles. 
• Learn how to make sofritto - the base of my sugo, aka meat sauce.  
• Buy whole spices for fresher, more aromatic taste. I used whole cloves, juniper berries, whole nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon in my sugo. I found the spices at a local health foods store, Foods for Living.
• Upgrade or carefully choose your olive oil. After doing some research, I've decided to keep buying Aldi's brand olive oil for all basic cooking, and to add dashes of extra-special Fustini's oils for finishing touches. 

After doing so much work with the stock and meat sauce, I felt it only right to make some fresh bread to go with it. The New York Times no-knead bread was super simple and it tastes amazing. If I hadn't made it myself, I would swear there was butter in the recipe because it was so rich and flavorful. Check out their selling point for the recipe:  

"Here is one of the most popular recipes The Times has ever published, courtesy of Jim Lahey, owner of Sullivan Street Bakery."