A cook embraces pepper crust method (8)
I believe the answer is:
approach
'method' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'a cook embraces pepper crust' is the wordplay.
'cook' becomes 'poach' (poaching is a kind of cooking).
'embraces' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'crust' means to remove the middle letters (the outside or crust of the word is used).
'pepper' with its middle removed is 'pr'.
'poach' enclosing 'pr' is 'pproach'.
'a'+'pproach'='APPROACH'
(Other definitions for approach that I've seen before include "driveway" , "What happens before landing" , "follows drive" , "Draw near or nearer to" , "initial proposal" .)