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 Engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
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And some really cool stuff:
http://cookingissues.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]
(The French Culinary Institute's Tech'N Stuff Blog)
The best scientific cooking articles I've ever read!
Also, another cool one is:
http://blog.khymos.org/ [khymos.org]
with its fine hydrocolloid recipe collection:
http://blog.khymos.org/recipe-collection/ [khymos.org]
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Well, sorry the real site is:
http://www.cookingissues.com/ [cookingissues.com]
The wordpress site is no longer updated.
Cook's Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen (Score:5, Interesting)
Any geek who aspires to cook good food would do well to read the magazine, Cook's Illustrated and watch the PBS series America's Test Kitchen, that puts out the magazine. This is a nonprofit foundation, the magazine has no ads, like Consumer Reports. They perform scientific experiments on recipes. In a typical article, they will find a classic recipe, analyze the many variations, and explain what commonly goes wrong. They will then attempt to correct the flaws, turning to their food scientists for explanations of things like the Maillard reaction and why adding veal makes a meatloaf jucier (it's the gelatin in veal forming a matrix that keeps water from escaping.) They also perform unbiased reviews of equipment that will let you know, for instance, which cheap nonstick skillet outperforms all the expensive ones.
I've found the scientific approach helpful in my own cooking, not just when recreating the recipes given. Once you know how the Maillard reaction works, for instance, you know why searing meat first and then finishing is not as good as starting at a low temperature and finishing at a high one. Once you understand why Brassicas respond well to a high, dry heat you will never boil brussel sprouts or cauliflower again.
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I wish I hadn't commented, but MOD PARENT UP.
Cook's Illustrated is not cheap, but is amazing. Parent is dead on with everything.
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/ [cooksillustrated.com]
Re:Cook's Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen (Score:4, Insightful)
The moment I saw TFA, my response was, "yeah, but is it better than Cook's Illustrated?"
I got a subscription from my girlfriend's mom a couple years ago after I told her how cool it was while staying at their house. My step-mom also bought me their book for Christmas.
Last Thanksgiving, my girlfriend and I were going to my family's for dinner. We decided to bake pies and used recipes from CI. The two of us, who have never baked a pie from scratch before, turned out the most delicious pies at the dinner, beating out several career homemakers in the process (who are certainly some of the best cooks I know). The secret? Vodka in the crust. It's a very small amount and burns off in the oven, but it's wet so it holds the crust together, but dries it out during baking so that it's nice and flaky and nomnomnom.
Their method for pork schnitzels is also fantastic.
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False advertising. What kind of engineer prefers US customary units over metric?
An American one?
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
One that shops at American stores. I'm an engineer. I do almost everything in metric, at work everything is in metric.
But butter is still sold in 1/2 cup sticks. Milk is still sold in gallons, cans of stuff are usually in floz.
Same with building stuff for my house: 2x4s are 6 or 8' long.
It's just easier to leave it in the units that it comes in.
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, I can easily measure in my hand a tsp or TBSP of something, I can pour about a cup of liquid easily, but I have no notion in my head what I'd try to measure if I did something in grams, or other metric units.
Don't even get me started in trying to tackle the concept of heat and cooking times in C vs F.
That being said...I think the most valuable new recipe book would be one that actually emphasized and re-enforced what actual PORTION size is supposed to be?!?!
I'm in the middle of working out, losing weight (down 30lbs...working on about 25lbs more)...and aside from moving away from processed foods and carbs, learning portion control has been a true eye opener!!
For instance, a portion of beef, let's say a steak is only 4oz. Do you have any real idea how small that is?
I didn't until I weighed it...and then, I had to weigh it about 3 more times as that I could not believe a bit of meat that small was what is supposed to be a normal portion of your meal. About the size of a deck of cards.
Well, I've been weighing foods to get that picture in my head what a portion is supposed to be. I've been trying to eat meals about 4-5 times a day..and that keeps from getting overly hungry, but man, it takes a little work to get used to eating such a small amount.
In the past, for lunch, I'd have a HUGE tupperware thing filled with spaghetti and soaked in red gravy and meat sauce. I'd have to guess I was easily eating 3-4 lbs of that for a single lunch portion.
Anyway...talk about an eye opener. I think if we could re-enforce what a true portion of food at a meal was, we'd go a LONG way to overcoming obesity.
Fortunately, I found that by increasing the % of protein and fat in my diet and doing practically away with junk carbs (I try to only get them from veggies and fruit and some whole grain products)...my appetite did naturally fade away to a more normal level. That and eating throughout the day helps you to not get voraciously hungry, and want to over eat portions.
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who has recently went on a (self-inflicted) diet and exercise program, I want to chime in that this is pretty much right on the money. Pretty much the most important thing is getting your meal count up and your portion size down. Your body only has about five hundred calories of L2 cache, and topping that means your metabolism is having to go to main memory, which is something you want to avoid.
Re:Cooking for Engineers (Score:4, Insightful)
With no assertion intended that portion control does not work, and the further disclaimer that you *MAY* die a horrible death of heart disease trying to do this, from first hand experience I have to say that the statistics don't lie: Doing Atkins/Southbeach- where you basically get to eat all the meat and cheese you want, most of the vegetables you want, and very very few processed carbohydrates:
(1) You can eat all you want, portion size bedamned. Your body WILL tell you are full.
(2) For 98% of the population, you WILL drop weight, and you won't be hungry. Most- I'd say 90%- will also have more energy than you ever did in your adult life while doing it.
There is still a long way to go in diet science, but the low carb diet makes a lot more practical sense than its predecessors where you want to kill yourself out of hunger pains or need the mind control of a tenth-degree blackbelt to stop from eating a big-ass steak*
* $diety bless America and our portion sizes.
The staples (Score:2)
Does this cook book have the geek staples? Does it have recipes for Mountain Dew and Twinkies?
A geek's four basic food groups:
* Mountain Dew
* Twinkies
* Pizza
* Beer
Re:The staples (Score:4, Insightful)
That's more the loser's staples. Some of us like to apply the typical geek problem solving techniques and eye for quality in the kitchen as well as the computer room.
Re:The staples (Score:4, Interesting)
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For when one of those roasts gets a little freezer burn or you shoot an old deer, sauerbraten is the way to go.
PROTIP: if the recipe includes ginger snaps, find a better recipe. Germans do not use ginger snaps in it.
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Between you and my bosses discussing the pros and cons of salmon and steak in my cubicle earlier, I'm HUNGRY!
And I agree - a scant few talents makes you more appealing to the opposite sex then being able to throw down like Morimoto in the kitchen.
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Where is the "+1 Delicious" mod option?
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Geeks of both genders, this is COMPLETELY TRUE.
If you prepare a GOOD home-cooked meal for a friend you are romantically interested in, you win a lot of points. It's worth more than taking someone out for dinner (as long as you still do that once in a while) and WAY more than ordering delivery. It shows that you have some useful IRL skills that geeks are commonly assumed not to have. The more from-scratch it is, the more points you can theoretically obtain if your Other has also invested time in learning to
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> More misogynistic attitudes like this is exactly what we need to drive more women out of the industry.
Feminism run amok is why the ability to cook is a very advantageous male mating skill.
Generations of females have been indoctrinated into avoiding the domestic arts out of some sort of misguided notion of feminism.
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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.
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Arugula wrapped cheetos with a salsa dipping sauce.
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Exactly.
I recall only one male student (out of around 30) in my class/major at the Uni who could not cook. At least 3-4 could cook better (and healthier) than let's say Nigella or Worall Thomson. That is without counting myself (I definitely can cook a X-mas duck or carp better than either one of these "kill by cholesterol overdose" TV characters).
Granted, I graduated with Chemistry before turning to the dark side and doing software, sysadmin and networks so my class probably does not constitute a represent
Re:The staples (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just gay. Not Geek.
Yes, cooking really is joyful.
To echo Hatta's sentiment, some of us like to extend our attention to detail beyond the geek cave. The engine that is your brain is only as good as the fuel you give it so knowing how to cook properly is an important skill.
Re:The staples (Score:4, Insightful)
Cooking shares a lot of the qualities that make programming a fun hobby for many people. You can generally get fairly quick feedback on whether or not what you're doing is working and so you can iterate and learn quickly. While there can be benefits to having nicer and pricier hardware, it's definitely possible to get good results with older and/or cheaper equipment. There is tons of "open source" material out there to learn from and use, probably thousands of websites with recipes, some are even decently well organized. And while it's hard to find cooking ingredients that are free, you can make lots of good food while only spending a small amount on materials.
And while a clever code hack might impress a handful of geeks, a good meal will impress almost everyone.
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And don't worry - just like code, you have nothing to actually show off a day later.
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:The staples (Score:4, Insightful)
Good cookware is certainly nice to have, but it's by no means required, and you certainly don't need to go out and spend a thousand bucks on knives and pans when you're just starting out. A sharp knife is essential, but even a cheaper knife can be plenty sharp for you to get started.
Begin with the cheaper stuff until you learn what tools you really prefer and need, then you can make better choices as to what to spend serious money on, plus you'll have had an opportunity to become better educated on which products actually are higher quality. Plus you'll hopefully have learned about how to properly care for your tools before you buy the good stuff.
Lower price stuff isn't always garbage. You can make some totally awesome stuff with cast iron, and that stuff is cheap as hell.
Your point stands, really good quality stuff often costs more money, and it can definitely be worth it. But it's not 100% necessary to make delicious food. Also, I think it can be educational to have tried similar cooking techniques on varying quality equipment, seeing how the different tools affect the food can tell you a lot about what is actually happening on the heat.
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Re:The staples (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just gay. Not Geek.
Quite the contrary. The easiest way into a woman's pants is often through her stomach.
Being able to cook an impressive meal is, well, impressive to most women. That combined with a healthy wage indicates and ability to take care of her. If you are not entirely unattractive (which could be interpreted as poor gene stock) and can manage basic hygiene then getting her clothes off should not be difficult at all (she may even initiate). As long as you don't thoroughly disappoint her in the bedroom she'll want to marry you.
Anecdotally I've found that after cooking for female friends they show a greater interest in me regardless of relationship status. Women like men who can cook.
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I don't really understand why all engineers/programmers don't love to cook. It is truly a systematic discipline that you can steadily improve if you have a little patience and decent tastebuds. Not to mention "normal" people tend to appreciate a good meal far more than some nifty code snippet
And by the way, just as you can apply engineering techniques to cooking, you can apply them in the bedroom as well. Pay attention to your inputs and the sort of ou
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Yep....remember to always be careful if frying chicken nekkid...
Grease *pops*
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Well said. I am a geek and a fabulous cook at the same time. I enjoy being in the kitchen as much as I enjoy at being in front of one of my Linux boxes !!
Why not do both?
I have an old laptop on my kitchen counter. It makes a handy recipe database and being able to try new recipes from online without having to print them is a treat. It's not a bad idea to cover the keyboard with plastic wrap though.
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- Mountain Dew
+ Coke
- Twinkies
+ Entenmann's choclate covered dounuts
And no mention of Cheetos?
And once upon a time, cigs would have been on that list. As a food group, dammit!
So wait, that's where that came from? (Score:2)
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* Whipped
* Congealed
* Chocotastic
As per Dr. Nick Riviera.
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Cooking for computer scientists (Score:5, Funny)
Complexity (Score:5, Funny)
If you want to cook food in log time you should use an open fire.
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I'm not sure I need this book.
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The microwave can be a tool for good food. Barbara Kafka's Microwave Gourmet is a great book on foods where the microwave is actually a good cooking method. Pate, for example....
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Kafka's Microwave Gourmet
That seems about right.
Boolean Stoves (Score:5, Insightful)
When my wife and I first got married, she was an awful cook. I mean, it was really bad, like she was trying to kill me and collect the life insurance. So one night, I analyzed her cooking technique. I discovered that for her, the stove was a boolean device. That is, it was either on (10) or off (0). All those numbers in between 0 and 10 were there for decoration. Luckily my wife was really smart, getting As in organic chemistry for example. So i started speaking a different language.
Cooking is all about heat transfer. Heat will conduct from the outside of food to the inside of food (microwaves aside) at the same rate, depending on the substance. If you turn the heat up, it won't simply cook faster. The outside will burn before enough heat has transferred to the inside. This was enough for her to have an epiphany, suddenly realizing what all those numbers between 0 and 10 were for.
Good Eats in book form (Score:4, Insightful)
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Amazingly enough, Alton has published many Good Eats books...
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Alton Brown attended NECI, the New England Culinary Institute, not the CIA.
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Actually, it's just six years old - a completely revised version was issued in 2004.
Very true, he taught me to cook salmon (Score:2)
good eats with alton brown!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
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 :(
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Every Unix shell script starts out with hashbrowns (even though it's apparently pronounced "shabang") - I guess someone was hungry when they decided that the magical byte sequence was going to be #!
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SQL and C? I'd use Chef [dangermouse.net] for this task...
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.
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.
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Eating everything raw is a pretty silly idea. I enjoy raw tuna and rare steak as much as anyone, but with no cooking at all many nutrients are not available. Not to even mention the lack of flavor such a diet would have.
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as I said, for a vegetarian it's a more doable idea. For 8 years I only ate raw vegetable/fruits/nuts, that's pretty much it. I ate nothing cooked at all. Now it's a bit different, I cook some of the vegetables.
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I would think being a vegetarian would make it harder. All tubers are basically right out, so is almost any other root vegetable. Most beans are inedible raw too. What exactly other than fruit, soft vegetables and nuts would you be eating?
Sounds like one would need to be very careful to get a decent diet that way.
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well no, many root vegetables are edible raw. I even tried potatoes, but I don't recommend.
Tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, carrots, beats, parsnip, turnip, onions, garlic, radish, celery, all leafy things like salads, cabbage, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, corn... I am not naming all, but there are plenty.
The human prestomach (Score:3, Informative)
That section is sometimes called a kitchen.
And this prestomach is why we don't need as huge teeth, jaws or gizzards (plus grit) to eat certain foods, compared to other animals who don't have a prestomach. It also allows us to eat (and live on) a wider variety of foods than we would otherwise - the prestomach can help reduce toxicity, increase palatibility and nutrient uptake.
Because this prestomach is not attached
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Not if you can outrun a cow.
Bah... (Score:2)
I do most of my cooking in the microwave, and I've actually gotten pretty good at it. About the only thing that goes in the conventional oven is frozen pizza, and about the only thing I cook on the stove is hamburgers, french fries, steak, and eggs. Other meats and vegetables go in the microwave. It takes me about ten minutes to cook a good balanced meal - last night I had lemon-pepper pork chops, hominy, lima beans, and a baked potato.
Even chicken can be cooked in the microwave without turning to rubber if
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How do you get any browning?
How would you make a confit?
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How do you get any browning?
I don't. That's why I cook steak on the stove or grill. Everything else, I don't need browning.
How would you make a confit?
I have a refrigerator and freezer, so the preservation aspects of a confit are unnecessary. However, often I do like to marinade meat. I just put it in a ziplock with its sauce and let it sit overnight. It works well.
Saltines lasagna (Score:3, Funny)
Lasagna: Saltines, Velveeta, ketchup.
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Saltines, Velveeta, ketchup.
A lot of college students eat this also. Coincidence, or something more sinister?
Can't I just microwave it? (Score:2)
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I find that kind of strange where I live, because it only contains recipes for pizza and Chinese food, and a lot of both at that. But no Thai, Indian, or Vietnamese. (Which sucks)
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"if you've eaten fish you've eaten worms." (Score:2)
if you've eaten Worcestershire sauce then you've eaten fermented anchovies.
if you take premare then your then someone's been taking the piss out of pregnant mares.
I'm not sure where they get all those nitrates from in preservatives, but I should imagine the synthesis is a lot easier than collecting buckets of piss from outside pubs nowadays.
Waiting for Modernist Cuisine (Score:2)
I'll wait for Nathan Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine" - http://modernistcuisine.com/ [modernistcuisine.com]
Actually... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the geeks I know are also foodies, and a large percentage of them love to cook.
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Agreed. I myself have loved cooking for a long time and in the past few years (with owning a home which has a decent sized kitchen and enough spending money to buy some real tools) I have really upped the variety of recipies and the different techniques I use. I have really started to learn the concepts *BEHIND* the meals, instead of 'Add eggs to milk and flour' which is basically what a cookbook does. In fact, my plan this winter is to design and assemble a smoker due to my BBQ not having enough capacity w
Not all geeks are created equal (Score:2)
When I grew up my mother had a grueling 12 hours work day. So I had to cook myself if I wanted to have something hot on my plate (yes I am so old my early teen years predate the microwave oven). This drown or swim approach to cooking tought me well and ensured I was always able to whip something up for myself.
Although I am still spending more time on the computer cranking out code than in the kitchen I consider myself something of a foodie now. Bake my own bread, make killer potato pancakes and have prett
Obligatory quote... (Score:2, Funny)
If you like this sort of cookbook (Score:4, Interesting)
Alton Brown (Score:2)
How to prepare your input (Score:2)
Nice, a scientificly book on food. On the other hand anyone that is interested in quickly preparing a meal does not have to look further to the (by now very old, but venerable) "How to prepare your input" by no-one else than Andrew S. Tanenbaum (aka Andy for students/friends).
www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/how_to_prep.ps
Important note: Last time I saw him he still looked healthy to me :)
Art or Science? (Score:2)
Science: The Joy of Cooking. [amazon.ca]
All you need.
How to boil water (Score:2)
My personal favorite of all the introductory cookbooks I have ever seen is, "How to boil water",
( http://www.amazon.com/Boil-Water-Food-Network-Kitchens/dp/0696226863 [amazon.com] ). It has labeled pictures of things you might find in a kitchen, so when a recipe says to use a "frying pan", you can go look at the picture and get the right thing out of the cabinet. The first recipe is "coffee". The next chapter is "things you can eat without having to cook them first".
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Sounds like we need to find the people who bought that book and put their parents on trial for neglect.
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You might laugh, but I had a pal in college who found a couple of freshmen in the dorm kitchen holding a box of spaghetti and looking very confused at the instructions "boil 4 cups of water".
And for those geeks who've forked off new processes, remember that some basic cooking skills are extremely valuable for the little tykes. Someone who knows how to cook can eat for something like $3 a day, whereas if they can't they'll spend closer to $15 a day. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a pretty dramatic differ
Analysing the cooking process, you say? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've worked in IT. I've worked in kitchens.
And I don't get why people need to make them into the same pursuit.
Here are some things I've learned: you check steaks for doneness, not by shoving thermometers into them ... but by touching them and feeling for firmness.
You can tell how hot a pan is by watching how oil moves across its surface.
You can tell how hot a pan is by listening to the patch of food as it sears / sautees / sweats.
At a certain point, you're just collecting more data while losing out on the v
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The only to learn what a medium NY strip feels like it so touch them and use a thermometer to check or ruin a lot of steaks. The rest of those are pretty much the same.
e-reader edition (Score:2)
Is there an e-edition? I'm not able to find it on Amazon.
And "Cooking for Geeks" should have an e-edition if any cookbook should.
Yep. (Score:2)
Is there an e-edition? I'm not able to find it on Amazon.
And "Cooking for Geeks" should have an e-edition if any cookbook should.
Not only is there an e-edition, but in true geek fashion, it is DRM-free. You can order it here [oreilly.com]
Cooking for Geeks? (Score:2)
How about just following the recipe?
Real programmers ..... (Score:2)
Eat Twinkies, Coke and palate-scorching Szechwan food.
So are THOSE recipes in there? I think not!
Note: Honestly, I think we have moved on to Thai and Indian but that may just be regional.
http://www.suslik.org/Humour/Computer/Langs/real_prog2.html [suslik.org]
Ebook available directly from O'Reilly (Score:2)
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.
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Oh, and on the "quiche" thing: Quiche is not food!.
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A couple other books in this vein: Cookwise by Shirley Corriher. Goes into the food science a lot. Also, Improvisational Cook by Sally Schneider. Sally gives a lot of base ideas and talks through how you can change them. It's good getting you in the mindset to riff on a theme.
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Please tell us more about how much smarter you are than the rest of the world.