Slashdot Mirror

Cooking is subject to trends, if you haven't noticed. Clunky 70s housewife equipment is out of fashion, to say the least.

Umm, while you may call it "clunky," pressure cookers are decidedly in fashion as an appropriate tool used for the right purposes. The cool, hip tech-savvy cooks use them along side their sous-vide machines and blowtorches for a number of important kitchen tasks.

Need examples? Nathan Myrhvold's Modernist Cuisine (2011), one of the recent "bibles" of molecular gastronomy, lauds the pressure cooker, in a list of "invaluable modernist tools" called it "a must-have; essential for stocks, tendering tough grains and seeds," and also noted its usefulness for sterilizing in various kitchen tasks. (For some specific home applications, see, for example, here.) Harold Blumenthal at The Fat Duck restaurant found that stocks made with pressure cookers were both faster and better-tasting once they understood the effects of diffusion laws on stock making. And here's a whole blog on Slate about their comeback.

I could go on. Pressure cookers may have been "out" a decade ago, but now they're back "in" again... best time to update your kitchen fashion files.

For an adult human, 400-600 is about the limit of what we can detect.

No.

For most average human adults, the limit is about 300 dpi.

Speaking as a graphic designer with over two decades of experience, there is a reason that graphic designers have always targeted a print resolution of 300 dpi for colour images.

How 400-600 entered the conversation is beyond me.

Diagonals. Everything non-rectangular really. And that's just for monochrome.

Don't assume stuff that is valid for print to be valid for pixel displays. (also, there actually is print beyond 300 DPI...)
Print DPI (or LPI) are very different from display PPI: Print uses adaptive-sized, adaptive-positioned, overlapping, and even adaptive- shaped blobs of ink.

Displays use constant-size, fixed-position, non-overlapping squares (or rectangles) with discrete color-distribution
(no way to reorder subpixels: if a pixel is horizontal RGB, you can't make its right edge red. And making just its top
half yellow is even trickier. Print can do both.).

You need quite a bit more PPI than a good print's DPI to approach the same visual quality.

already exists!

http://modernistcuisine.com/recipes/starch-infused-fries-2/

Many of the comments here are from people who has not seen or read the books. Gourmet cooking at home is my hobby so I actually own both, the Modernist Cuisine and The Modernist Cuisine at Home. I've read them thoroughly and I've done many recipes from them, and I must say, I yet have to see another set of books as useful and complete as these. You learn the principle of things, the math, physics and chemistry associated with the processes, from smoking and grilling to sous vide and pressure cooking. It's amazing the wealth of knowledge in these books. Also, the photography alone makes it a work of art.

If you are in doubt, simply make one recipe: the Caramelized Carrot Soup. It will blow your mind (and your guests). This recipe works because by increasing the pH under pressure you achieve the Maillard reaction before the carrots can burn. You cannot achieve this result any other way, and that's the kind of knowledge behind these books. Also, check the Hyperdecanting trick with wine. You'll impress your friends at any party.

Nathan said in an interview that he wrote this because that's the kind of book that he'd wish he has had access to when he started cooking. There is nothing else out there like this. It's true it's not for everybody. It's for either chefs or very serious amateurs. I for one, welcome an app. As wonderful as the books are, they are complicated when you need to find something quickly. Unfortunately, I don't do iOS, so I'll have to wait for the Android version in the future or steal my wife's iPad when I need it.

There is actually a separate edition of the book called Modernist Cuisine at Home which is specifically tailored to home chefs who want to try out the techniques, for substantially less money than the full version. Actually, the ebook which is the topic of the article is based on the "at Home" edition, which means the price differential between the ebook and dead tree version is only about thirty bucks, not several hundred.

About a year ago I bought The Modernist Cuisine and recently, their new "At Home" book also. Remarkable compendium about food, tons of scientific data and exquisite photography. Just the photography alone makes it worth spending the big bucks the books cost.

What makes me bring this up here is that the book was written by Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft and probably one of the smartest geeks alive today, and yet, he chose specifically to do this work in paper because there was no way to provide a compelling experience to the reader that would reflect the nature of the work in any electronic format available today. I cannot imagine this book having the same effect in a Kindle, iPad or even a laptop screen.

I think the right model at this point is an intermediate one, much like Richard Dawkins' The Magic of Reality, which is published as a book (although they do have eBook and audio versions) but with a companion app that expands on the book. The App alone is not attempting to be a replacement for the book, but rather an extension of it. I'm fairly convinced that this is the model with the strongest business case for the current state of the technology.

I don't know if it is geeky, but here are some turkey cooking tips from a geek.

1. I'll reiterate the advice not to cook the stuffing inside the cooking. Whatever cooking method you use, just make a turkey stock, use that to make the stuffing, and cook it on the side. This is the way to go. 2. Sous vide is a really good way to cook a turkey... it's basically infra-poaching, and the results are excellent. If you want to be geeky, you'll want a PID controller and an immersion circulator... these are getting easier to obtain (non-contaminated from labs), and home appliances such as the Sous Vide Supreme are now readily available & affordable. Personally, I use a FoodSaver vacuum sealer and a Sous Vide Magic controller in combination with a large old-school asian rice cooker (simple on/off switch), and it works great. You can also just get down ghetto-style, using zip-lock bags and a digital thermometer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3O1xRJ4XU Here's a basic procedure: Skin the turkey; reserve. Butcher the turkey, reserving giblets, legs, wings, boneless breast. Chop carcass with a meat cleaver, roast, make turkey stock in pressure cooker. Stretch turkey skin & press flat; salt & dehydrate. On Thanksgiving day, vacuum-seal legs & breasts separately. Make dressing of choice using turkey stock; bag separately from turkey. Cook legs at 150degF for 3hours, then reduce heat to 140degF, leave legs in, add breasts and stuffing, cook for another 2 hours. Meanwhile, deep fry the turkey wings. Crisp up the skin in the oven & serve right out of the oven, sliced into chips, alongside the meat. 3. He may be the devil, but Nathan Myrhvold is not to be denied his due here. Seriously, how is that nobody's posted any Modernist Cuisine Thanksgiving links here?? http://modernistcuisine.com/2012/11/thanksgiving-the-modernist-cuisine-at-home-way/ 4. Oven cooking: Whoever said to brine the turkey before cooking it sous vide... don't do this. Brining turkey works really well for oven cooking, but it's unnecessary (and can be counterproductive) for sous vide cooking. America's Test Kitchen has published a whole list of tips for roasting a turkey. One year my brothers & I started drinking heavily at 10AM, and wound up doing pretty much all of them. We brined the turkey, then loosened the skin & rubbed garlic herb butter all over between skin & flesh, as well as outside the skin. Then we prepared ice packs & applied them to the turkey breast for a good 45 minutes before it hit the oven, so that the temp differential would give the legs a head start on the cooking. We started the turkey out supine at lower temp (I think it was 325degF), with a tinfoil heat shield over the breast. Then 1/3 of the way through the cooking time, we flipped the turkey into prone position and increased the temp to 375degF. Then 2/3 of the way through the cooking time, we flipped the turkey onto its back again to brown the skin of the breast. Then we let it rest a good while before carving... and yeah, stuffing was cooked on the side. This was a good turkey. It was a lot of fuck-with factor, but we were drunk and in a mood to fool around; it was fun. 5. Carving turkey: Remove the wishbone in situ, through in incision at the front of the breast by the neck. Then make a midsagittal incision along the sternum, and take each side of the breast off the carcass entire. Slice the breast along the bird's length, from head to tail, against the grain. When you take the legs off, make sure to dig for the pocket of dark meat called the "oyster" just behind the leg joint, back of the kidneys - best meat on the whole bird. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

The rule of thumb is for the top of your screen to be at eye height sitting erect. Any higher causes your lids to lift (so I once read) and can lead to dry eyes.

I personally had back problems associated with using the mouse with my right hand on the other side of the numeric keypad. Changed to my left hand, which is less used for other things. This moved the mouse closer to my body line and reduces stress on the upper shoulders. If I really need precision, it's easy enough to reach across with my right hand for a few minutes. My left hand became automatic for normal cursor work a long, long time ago. My right hand still feels a bit more precise.

I just did a comparison drag selecting words with right and left hands. The right hand feels more interactive, but it was uncertain of the mouse velocity in the select motion and actually took longer. My left hand much more accurately sweeps the word length. Consciously, I don't sense this, but objectively there it is.

The colour temperature of your monitors can affect stamina and mood. This varies a lot from one person to another. Recently scientists are saying that a high colour temperature boost productivity. And office temperature matters, too.

Scientifically Proven Tips For a More Productive Office

I once had a set up where I was experiencing eye strain. When I illuminated the desk in front of the displays with a warm yellow desk lamp, the eye strain went away. Uniformity of illumination also matters. Glare from behind the monitors is a killer.

A seat pan with tilt is a nice adjustment. I don't see the need for stupidly expensive chairs. I've had a couple. You really have to try different chairs and find one that works. If you're big like me (6'4" 240) you'll need to supplement the cushion on most medium grade chairs. I'm not sitting in a cheap chair, but without the extra cushion I soon feel the nuts and bolts. Pay special attention to the lip at the front of the chair where it cuts into the back of the leg.

Pay attention to pain and try to do something about it. It's very easy to negatively condition yourself to associate work with pain. Then you have a psychological barrier to fight with, too.

I got myself a full-sized Thumper almost ten years ago. Never had a problem with it. It's nothing close to a professional massage, but it provides welcome relief on those long, hard days. My chiropractor has the newer Maxi Pro and it's certainly a step up. I think it's a complete joke that it recommends no additional pressure beyond it's seven pound size. Yeah, that works fine for my quads. When it hits the tightness in my low back, it just sits there and bounces without some manual force. The tightness in my low back is epic sometimes. For a while I was doing a back exercise program at a clinic with special back equipment. On some machines I started with just a few plates like the wimp I am. On the back extension machine, it was the whole stack from day one. How many of these should I do with my cords of steel? I was running out of wind before feeling the burn. Everyone has their own thing. One of the best investments I've made.

The best upgrade to a Thumper is a patient and willing GF (with sharp elbows). These are best acquired with skill in the kitchen (with the contents of the refrigerator! cooking food served on plates!!) Invest in a good set of knives, heavy bottom pans, and a traditional iron wok. Fill you spice cupboard. Experiment. It's 90% water and heat. Trade your Aeron chair for Modernist Cuisine. I haven't gone quite that far myself, but my cooking skills are pretty good already.

Determine your caffeine tolerance level. More than one eight ounce cup every four hours is rarely optimal. If you get a headache when you miss your morning coffee, you're

If you'll read the about page, you'll note that Heston Blumenthal provided praise for the book.

1) He writes an (admittedly large) expensive $625 cookbook.
2) He gets free advertising on slahsdot.
3) Profit ($$$)

No need to question any steps here...

Well, those who wouldn't ever ponder buying this book won't be swayed by the 'advertising' on Slashdot. And, I doubt it's likely to be a significant number of people.

Those who might buy it are actively drooling over it. And, if you read his account of supply shortages it sounds like a large number of people are already trying to get hold of it. And this was mid February, so long before Slashdot posted anything about it.

The market for this kind of book is pretty much high-end cooks and food geeks. And, it covers more than just the people on Slashdot, though there's likely a few here who are pondering it.

I rather expect that regardless of how many pages he's filled, Myhrvold has more to learn from Adria than Adria has to learn from Myrhvold.

So? Learning from the pioneers and exhaustively documenting everything is part of science -- and, make no mistake, this is about the science of cooking.

Hell, look at the index which he's made available in PDF. It's 60 pages, and as someone who cook a fair bit, I'm reading through it and see all sorts of interesting teasers and how-to's that extend beyond just molecular gastronomy. It seems to cover the entirety of cooking -- hell, it's got an index entry for Mathematica. :-P

I don't think any of the reviews of this book are just "quid pro quo back scratching, friendly overture, or pure puffery" -- looking at the information on this book, I really do think it's exactly what those quotes say. This is like Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, but for food. Yes, that sounds like hyperbole, but I've never seen any books which have all of the stuff he's got in there, and I've got some cookbooks that are used in culinary schools.

Except, every person you cite here (and pretty much everyone else of importance in this kind of cooking) are saying nice things about this collection.

This guy didn't just walk in off the street and say "me too", he's got some credibility on this one. He's really done actual research and documented things, and it sounds like this goes deep into the science. And, yes, it sounds like his recipes have been put in front of some world class palettes and passed muster.

Ignore the fact that he's former Microsoft ... reading about this, I get the impression he's done everything right and deserves respect on this one.

Seriously, I really hope he actually wrote and did not copy-paste texts from Bing (i.e. Google). Cook book authors tend to reuse others' recipes.

I see you've already visited the web page by your comment below, but for anybody thinking you could just grab these kinds of recipes from a web search -- this stuff is more like a lab experiment than your standard recipe.

This is the research-science branch of preparing food. When you read just who is praising this book you quickly realize these are the guys who are doing this in high-end restaurants.

I'd love to flip through this set, but, alas, I fear the pricetag is a little more than I'm willing to spend for something I likely will never be able to employ most of the techniques.

Kudos to the authors for putting this together.

Forget my knee-jerk skepticism. http://modernistcuisine.com/ is the best!!! Nathan rulez!

I'll wait for Nathan Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine" - http://modernistcuisine.com/