Cooking For Geeks 312
jsuda writes "You've got to have a lot of confidence and nerve to write and try to sell a nearly 400 page book on cooking to the take-out pizza and cola set. No cookbook is likely to turn many geeks into chefs or take them away from their computer screens. However, even though Cooking for Geeks contains a large number of recipes, it is not a conventional cookbook but a scientific explanation of the how and why of cooking which will certainly appeal to that group, as well as to cooking professionals and intellectually curious others." Read on for the rest of jsuda's review.
The author is a geek himself and brings "geek-like" approaches to the subject matter - deep intellectual curiosity, affinity for details, appreciation of problem solving and hacking, scientific method, and a love of technology. What is even better is his filtering of cooking concepts by a computer coder's framework, analogizing recipes to executable code, viewing of ingredients as inputs and as variables, running processes over and over in a logical manner to test and improve outcomes. This is not a mere literary shoe-horning of cooking concepts into a coder's framework but an ingenuous approach to the topics that should loudly resonate with geeks.| Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food | |
| author | Jeff Potter |
| pages | 432 |
| publisher | O'Reilly Media |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | jsuda |
| ISBN | 0596805888 |
| summary | an excellent and intriguing resource for anyone who wants to experiment with cooking |
The subject matter includes selecting and using kitchen and cooking hardware; prepping inventory; calibrating equipment (especially your oven, using sugar); understanding tastes and smells; the fundamental difference between cooking and baking (and the personality types which gravitate to one form or the other); the importance of gluten and the three major types of leavening (biological, chemical, and mechanical); the types of cooking; using time and temperatures; how to use air as a tool; the chemistry of food combinations; and very thorough and detailed discussions of food handling and safety. The book is organized into seven chapters and includes an appendix dealing with cooking for people with allergies. The recipes are indexed in the front of the book.
The major conventional flavor types of salt, sugar, acids, and alcohol have been supplemented by modern industrial elements - E- Numbered (a Dewey decimal system-like index) additives, colloids, gels, foams, and other yummy things! All are itemized, charted, and explained in the chapter entitled "Playing with Chemistry." A whole chapter (and an interview with mathematician, Douglas Baldwin) is devoted to the latest and greatest food preparation technique - sous vide - cooking food in a temperature-controlled water bath.
Threaded through the sections are short sidebar interviews of mostly computer and techie types who are serious cooks or involved in the food industry. Some of these contributors are Adam Savage (of Myth Busters fame) on scientific technique, Tim O'Reilly (CEO of the book's publisher) on scones and jam, Nathan Myhrvold, on Moderist cuisine, and others. Other interviews deal with taste sensitivities, food mysteries, industrial hardware, pastry chef insights, and many more. There is an insightful section just on knives and how to use and care for them.
Anyone who is interested in cooking will learn from this book. I now pay attention to things I've never heard of before: browning methods like caramelization and the Maillard processes, savory as a major taste, transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue), for example. There is stuff I didn't really want to know - "if you've eaten fish you've eaten worms."
Although one of the strengths of the book is the systematic organization, there are useful tips spread throughout. For example, keeping a pizza stone permanently in your oven will help even out heat distribution; storing vegetables correctly requires knowing whether they admit ethylene gas or not (a chart is included); you can test your smell sensitivity profile by using a professional scratch and sniff test kit obtainable from the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever specialized information not contained in the book is referenced to external sources, especially on the Internet.
If all of this is not stimulus enough for the geek crowd, how about learning how you can spectacularly kill yourself cooking with dry ice, liquid nitrogen, blowtorches, and especially an electrocuted hotdog. Cool! This is mad scientist stuff. Engineering-minded types can learn how to make their own ice cream machine from Legos. You'll also learn how NOT to kill your guests with bacteria and other toxins.
The production is nicely done with easily readable text, plentiful drawings and charts, color captions, and many other quality production features. Weights are based in both grams and US volume-based measurements.
You can purchase Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Cooking for computer scientists (Score:5, Funny)
List geek cooking instructions here (Score:4, Funny)
Preparing Scrambled Eggs:
INSERT INTO bowl SELECT * FROM spoon_and_raw_eggs ORDER BY RAND()
Making pulled barbecue from a slow cooked slab of beef:
fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork();
I'm outta material :(
unnecessary waste of time (Score:3, Funny)
cooking is. Everything raw, that's the way.
Of-course for a vegetarian it's a much easier proposition.
Complexity (Score:5, Funny)
If you want to cook food in log time you should use an open fire.
Saltines lasagna (Score:3, Funny)
Lasagna: Saltines, Velveeta, ketchup.
Re:Bah... (Score:1, Funny)
"How do you get any browning?"
spray paint
Obligatory quote... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The staples (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, I even came up with some original recipes: Ramen noodles in Mountain Dew, deep fried Twinkies in Beer batter, Mac and cheese pizza, Donuts with Tacos etc etc
I just wish I had more ingredients to work with.
Re:List geek cooking instructions here (Score:4, Funny)
fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork(); fork();
Change the 'f' to a 'b' and you get Swedish Chef.
You mean: s/f/b/g for Swedish Chef.
Cooking as "Manly' (Score:4, Funny)
When I was growing up, cooking was "womens' work" -- no self-respecting "man" would cook, certainly not when there was a woman around. Barbequing was not considered "cooking". Professional chefs (generally men) were appreciated for their output, but rarely seen performing their craft and therefore not subject to effeminate ridicule over it.
I cook. I like to cook... mostly because I like to eat and I'll be damned if the lack of a woman to cook for me means I'm condemned to starve or be at the mercy of what fast food I can afford to buy, But, still the questionable "manliness" (or not?) of cooking haunts me to this day, particularly if I produce something "dainty", like a desert. I therefore consider what kind of cooking might be worthy of the "manly" label, and have come up with the following:
1. Crude cooking. You know, barbecuing: meat, raw heat and flame, and an estimate of when it's done.
2. Extreme cooking. Searing a steak on a surface (cast iron pan at red heat), to the point where a drop of rendered fat will flare up. That super spicy chile, or curry.
3. Difficult cooking. A paper-thin omelet rolled around yummy ingredients is damn difficult to pull off. This ain't your moma's "set the eggs, shove on plate, fill, and flip one half over" omelet. Bonus points for flipping the omelet to evenly cook the other side. Practice with flapjacks.
4. Sauces. Hollandaise, Bearnaise, etc. Anything with eggs or butter that mustn't curdle. This is a subset of (4), above. The trouble is, to get it right, you have to coddle the food, and that looks, well, wimpy. It just has to taste soooo good, that people will forgive the wimpy coddling.
5. Expensive. If it has saffron, truffles, or even vanilla, where a screwup will cost much money. It's the financial risk that makes it manly,
6. Alcohol. And flame. I'm not talking about cooking with wine. That's soooo metrosexual. I'm talking cooking with booze and setting things on fire.
7. Deserts. This is tricky. The idea is to come off as the one person who can provide what everyone wants at the end of a meal by giving the impression he pulled off the impossible to make it. Think creme brulee, not "Dunkin Hines". Caramelize the sugar with a damn blow-torch, not a wimpy culinary one that the "girls" use.
8. Physical Effort. So, you wanna make a meringue. Better beat the sh*t out of those egg whites by hand and work up a sweat.
9. Improvisation. Related to (7). Oh no! You are out of butter! No problem, shove a cup of heavy cream in the mixer, whip till it breaks, and strain off the buttermilk. This only works if you can pull off that you averted a major crises with quick thinking.
10. Multitasking. Making more dishes at once to all be ready at the same time than seems possible. Last second special requests while the food is being prepared fall into this category as well.
That actually covers a lot of culinary territory, but do note that baking and simple pasta dishes just don't cut it.
Re:The staples (Score:3, Funny)
And don't worry - just like code, you have nothing to actually show off a day later.
Re:Cooking for computer scientists (Score:3, Funny)
Kafka's Microwave Gourmet
That seems about right.
Re:The staples (Score:4, Funny)
Cooking shares a lot of the qualities that make programming a fun hobby for many people.
tis true. once i made a batch of chili that ultimately led to a core dump.
Re:Cooking as "Manly' (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and on the "quiche" thing: Quiche is not food!.
Re:The staples (Score:3, Funny)
Yep....remember to always be careful if frying chicken nekkid...
Grease *pops*
Re:The staples (Score:3, Funny)
* Whipped
* Congealed
* Chocotastic
As per Dr. Nick Riviera.
Re:List geek cooking instructions here (Score:1, Funny)
What the heck is a Swedish Cheb?
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:1, Funny)
mmm tasty.