Geek Food: A Cookbook for the Technologically Inclined

thaen writes: "Might want to check out the latest offering from arstechnica.com. Somebody has compiled a 51-page book of recipes written by geeks, for geeks, and originally posted in the arstechnica 'Lounge' forum. Mmmm...the omelette..." I seriously hope that the macaroni and cheese recipe really needs "tabasco sauce", rather than "tobacco sauce", because I can't even imagine... no. Not going to think about it.

Comments

seems a little long

[seinman]

who needs 51 pages to call up pizza hut?

Geek Food

[Brit Aviator]

This assumes, of course, that geeks are willing to brave anything even resembling a kitchen. Most people I know of the technical inclination much prefer something that either a) comes in a bag or b) gets delivered to your table. After all, geeks have far more important things to use their brain power on, such as....er....um....yeah.

Re:Geek Food

[motox]

italian geeks cook well :)
Personally i love cooking, it creatively relaxes my mind and after a day spent on a cold computer an hot meal its really something. People should try good food sometimes instead of their "cold pizza"...

Re:Geek Food

[HalfFlat]

This observation, together with the more dubious recipes to be found in the collection, surprises me.

Many of my friends and acquaintances fall into the possibly geeky category. I say this because they are involved in or are interested in traditionally geeky things, like computing, mathematics, and academic arcana, and a good portion of them even having traditionally geeky hobbies like juggling or role-playing games, or SCA participation. Yet of all of them, I know of only one who doesn't give good food and cooking any real consideration. If I were to extrapolate from these people to geeky people generally, I would have thought that geeks typically took cooking and food quality very seriously!

I'm located in a city where there is a wide range of food available which is both cheap and of good quality --- this applies to both ingredients and to restaurants! It's possible that may explain some of the discrepancy.

Cooking though I think can appeal in many of the same ways that coding, or nutting out a new proof to a maths problem, or playing a musical instrument can. It's an opportunity to be both analytical and creative.

Given how quickly one can prepare a stir fry or pasta with fresh ingredients (25 minutes or less including washing up), there is not a lot of time to be gained by eating out save at the fastest of fast food places. Cooking for oneself can be practical in time and money savings, healthier than eating out, and intrinsically fun and interesting! If you the reader haven't before now, I'd recommend you give it a shot and do some experimentation!

It's not for geeks unless

[Pyromage]

it's 42 or 64 pages long!

Yay!

[Greyfox]

I will master the art of cooking using this book and challenge Iron Chef Morimoto!

Re:Yay!

[nomadic]

Quotes from that episode:

"Now Iron Chef Geek appears to be marinating the Mishima beef in some sort of brown mixture..is that soy sauce? Now he's coating it in what looks like flour..."

"Fukui-san!"

"Go ahead, Ohta-san."

"The Iron Chef Geek is soaking the beef in Jolt cola, then coating it in crushed penguin mints."

"Now that's just disgusting."

Oh my God!

[Accipiter]

I seriously hope that the macaroni and cheese recipe really needs "tabasco sauce", rather than "tobacco sauce", because I can't even imagine... no. Not going to think about it.

Dear Lord. A Slashdot editor griping about Spelling.

Did I get off on the wrong planet?

Other Good Cookbooks for Geeks

[Redking]

I'm not implying anything but I've found that bachelors' cookbooks are great sources for easy to make food for geeks. Also, the recipes are great for college people who live in their own apartments and have a kitchen!

Check out ISBNs: 0919845622 and 0962845302

me

Re:Other Good Cookbooks for Geeks

[SiMac]

Those are available at amazon at the following URLs:

ISBN 0919845622 (The Bachelor's Guide: To Ward Off Starvation)

ISBN 0962845302 (No More Mac and Cheese: A Bachelor's Guide to Cooking with Ease)

pdf?

[rnb]

Yeah, thanks for putting standard text into a 500k pdf. Seriously.

Variation on the Strawberry Banana Shake

[Col. Panic]

I make a kick-ass shake when I have 5 minutes before leaving for work:

Small handful of icecubes in blender. Add heaping tablespoon of frozen concentrated o.j., about a half cup of plain nonfat yogurt, a banana, and any fruit you like. It works great with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, plums, and even pear if you don't mind a somewhat grainy consistency.

REALLY tasty and lots of fiber to boot.

Re:Variation on the Strawberry Banana Shake

[PD]

I make banana shakes during the summer, but I use homemade yogurt.

1 really ripe banana
some sugar if you like
2 cups yogurt
a bit of water to thin

blend everything and drink it.

The yogurt is really easy to make too, and it's far cheaper than buying it.

use 1/2 gallon milk - I've tried everything from whole to skim, and all of them work about equally well. Put the milk in a plastic container and nuke about 25 minutes on high until it's boiling. Let it boil for about 2 minutes. The boiling causes all those proteins in the milk to stretch out, link up, and form nice long chains. Those chains actually cause the yogurt to be nice and firm. If you don't boil the milk as long, the yogurt will be goopy, but will taste the same. Boiling milk in a microwave is easier because it won't burn like in a pan on the stove.

OK, you've boiled the milk, now put it into a covered container and let it sit and cool down.
When it's about 125 degrees or less, open the top and dump in a container of unflavored unsweetened yogurt with live acidophilus cultures. This yogurt can be a cup of your previous batch, or it can be a new cup from the store to get you started. Stir it up with a clean spoon and put the top back on the container.

Let that yogurt container sit on the counter for 8-12 hours at room temperature. When you open that thing up, you will be only the latest talking monkey to take part of a long human culinary tradition that probably spans over 10,000 years. Smell that yogurt - that's our HISTORY in that bowl. Save a bit in a clean jar for the next batch and start making those fruit shakes.

Already exists.

[aussersterne]

The best Web site on the net is just such a cookbook, and it can be found here.

Tobacco Sauce

[JohnG]

Big Tobacco doesn't want you to know this, but Philip Morris has been adding tobacco sauce to their kraft macaroni and cheese for some time now, in hopes of getting younger children addicted earlier.
Truth is contagious; Infect-truth.

DISCLAIMER:This parody is in no way associated with Infect-truth or truth.com. Had this been a really infect-truth commercial, it would have been much less logical.

Re:Tobacco Sauce

[sphere]

Little does JohnG know that many chefs de l'haute cuisine in New York City and Paris have been using tobacco as a spice/flavoring agent in fancy-pants recipes, especially desserts!

NOTE: This is actually true and has been amply documented by the New York Times--"Hmm, Hot and Spicy. It's What? It's Not!" by Melissa Clark (1/31/01). Don't believe me? Be my guest.

The ticker

[Faux_Pseudo]

There is a ticker on the site that is currently showing just a hair over 10,000 visits. Now we can watch the /. effect in real time.

By the way I have been looking for a geek style cookbook for a while.
Any one know of a cook book that specializes in recipes that can be cooked up a week in advance and in bulk that will not loose their flavor or require more than 30 ingredients?
I have visited numerous bookstores in the last month and have as of yet to find such a book.

alt.gourmand and the USENET Cookbook

[plalonde2]

The real cookbook for geeks dates back into the deep dark days of the usenet, before the great renaming. Not that I expect anyone on this board to remember.

Alt.gourmand was archived, and various bits of unix software (deceptively close to the man page system) could be used to not only format the cookbook, but also to glom it together, build a permuted index, and drop the lot to your printer.

I have a lovely spiral bound edition from around 1986... Does anyone know where to get these collections anymore?

Re:alt.gourmand and the USENET Cookbook

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, THAT brings back memories...

You've got two options:

1. I found an online version of it here.

2. If you really want to recapture the "old school" experience, you can get the original troff sources here - but then you have to go to Finland to find the "recipes" macro package that you need to process them successfully.

Enjoy unblocked arteries while you can...

[EvlPenguin]

All I can say is... "ewwwww".

Check out the "Breakfast Sandwich" on page 2. It involves frying a bagel and eggs in bacon grease! This gives you: greasy bagel/cheese/eggs/cheese/bacon/greasy bagel. A noxious concoction which would probably not only turn any surrounding napkins translucent with lipids, but maybe even the table itself. You may as well lick a Lard Pop (tm) every morning while drinking your coffee mixed with olive oil and Crisco.

This sort of stuff makes me proud to be a vegatarian.

*real* cookbooks for geeks

[dghcasp]

The best "geeky" magazine about cooking is Cook's Illustrated - Every issue is filled with articles similar to the following (except serious and useful):

I always wondered what the best way to BBQ a steak was, so I bought 50 Kg. of steak, marinated some with oils, some with non-oils, put seasoning on some, and all possible combinations of the above, then grilled each one at 300,325,350,375,400,425 and 450 degrees for 3-19 minutes per side, either turning once, twice, or 2*N times.

The results are presented in the following handy table and graph, with results from our 50 food tasters in 54 categories...

BTW, the magazines are much better than the books that they also publish... The books mostly contain only the final recipe, not the experimental log book that led to it.

The best "general" cookbook I've found is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Each chapter starts up with several pages of "how to" and "How to do this right" information (such as how to dice tomatoes without making a mushy mess,) then follows up with tons of recipes.

No pictures but lots of drawings of techniques such as which part of the cow that steak came from... (IIRC, there's also some info on butchering that steak yourself.)

Re:*real* cookbooks for geeks

[gregbaker]

I agree. Cooks Illustrated is a wonderful thing to have around the kitchen. I'm in the process of convincing myself to buy their hardbound collections and indices from the years before I subscribed..

My favourite cookbook, by a long shot is The New Canadian Basics Cookbook. The recipes are uniformly excellent and bulletproof. I don't think Canadian tastes differ that much from American tastes. I would imagine it would be just as useful for those south of the border.

Re:*real* cookbooks for geeks

[abischof]

For those interested in giving it a try, you can get a free issue of Cook's Illustrated. I just signed up for the free issue, and I figured I'd give it a try.

Cooking?

[yzf750]

Don't most slashdot readers just eat whatever mom puts on the table?

Hey, thanks this is perfect!

[JoeShmoe]

Now I actually have some recipies to swap over all those peer-2-peer networks like Kazaa, Direct Connect, eDonkey, etc!

I mean, that's what those networks are all for, right? Right?

- JoeShmoe

.

Re:well, i just had dinner...

[nomadic]

I've heard it before. "but aren't you woried about salmonella?" I'm not - salmonella, et all, are largely a product of industrial-style meat manufacturing. Real meat is not manufactured. I buy my meat from the local organic food store. It's raised naturally, without antibiotics and hormones, etc. I eat my meat on an empty stomac, so all there aren't any obstacles between the stomac acid and any "bad" bacteria that might happen to be present.

So you're assuming the local organic food store isn't lying to you about where the meat came from, and their distributors aren't lying to the store where the meat came from, and the individual farmers aren't lying to the distributors about where the meat came from. But that's besides the point. Raw meat is dangerous, no matter where it comes from.

There are many, many parasites and bacteria that it can contain beyond e. coli. I like steak tartar, but I don't eat it--it's just too dangerous (and raw chicken just sounds disgusting).

Raw vegetables can be very healthy, of course, as long as you stick to to ones that can be consumed raw. A lot of them (such as potatos) are toxic when uncooked, however.

Read the superhealth report (link in my first post). It explains why we (I'm not the only one who eats raw meat) don't worry about salmonella or e coli or whatever the food-borne-illness of the month happens to be.

I went to this site, and found it to be of dubious accuracy, and some of the proposals to be dangerous if followed. For example:

It's now conceivable to me that most aging stems from mind-programming - cultural brainwashing. If you're interested in health, life-extension, stopping and reversing aging, and physical immortality, you must study his book.

This is not a place I would go to for health advice.

And remember, salmonella and e. coli and all the rest of those microorganisms weren't created by industry; they evolved in the natural world, and while industrial meat-processing can contribute to their spread, organically grown beef and poultry is not immune to them.

Usually I don't really care when people believe in strange things, but when they start giving dangerous advice to others based on them, I feel compelled to speak.

recipes to scare you to death

[Alien54]

As seen on the Appalachian Voodoo Kitchens Website.

Kentucky Bourbon Deviled Crab
Bacon-Burger-Fried Okra
Potato Candy
Turmeric Potatoes
Hot Sweet Pickled Durian
Chocolate Steak
Sausage and Muenster Couscous
Chicken-Bacon-Banana Kebobs with Garlic Rice
Survival Biscuit Casserole
Rockcastle County Vampire Tonic
Bubblegum Sauce
Baked Calpis Soda Ham
Marzipan Milkshake
Appalachian Voodoo Beer Cheese
Sweet Potatoes Baked in Hazelnut Oil
Pocky-Paraffin Edible Architecture
Squambo

Something to terrify just about anyone. Some how I think some of these are weird enough to be japanese or geek recipes (thinking of the japanese mint beer)

Ask Slashdot

[Khopesh]

gee. this seems rather simple: do an Ask Slashdot on the subject and put top submissions into a Slashdot cookbook of our own, much like an interview.

Good Eats

[SupahVee]

I think the majority of the people who are posting replies to this at least watch Iron Chef, which is cool in it own right. But by far the best cooking show for geeks is Good Eats, with Alton Brown. I have learned more about making my own food taste better by watching him than any other cooking show, ever. He doesnt just cook food, he shows why it cooks the way it does, how to get that perfect done-ness out of steaks, eggs, etc. That and the show is damn funny.

And to the guy who down below who says potatoes are toxic when uncooked, please, get your facts straight, as well. Potatoes are NOT hazardous when uncooked, no more than fresh corn or green beans. Take it from someone who loves a good red potato raw. The last person I heard who still believed spuds were poisonous was my great grandmother, and she no longer bought into that crap, either.

sheesh, some people's facts....

two more links

[nido]

http://www.rawpaleodiet.org/ - Raw Paleo Diet Web Site
http://www.beyondveg.com, specifically http://www.beyondveg.com/cat/paleodiet/index.shtml
The second site is the "anti propoganda" - because I'm reasonable. A buddhist principle to keep in mind as you look through it (specifically in regard to raw animal foods) is to "rely on the teaching and not the person". (The author of _Instinictive Eating_ wasn't much of an instinctive eater, smoked, and died a couple of years ago of cancer - the author of some of the beyondveg pages seems to hold this against the diet).