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The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking
daeley writes "Wired has a feature on Alton Brown, host of FoodNetwork's Good Eats and favorite chef of geek foodies everywhere: The Thermochemical Joy of Cooking. AB has his own website, of course, and his own blog, of course. (If you are familiar with Alton's distinctive delivery, you can hear his voice as you read. My only complaint is that he doesn't write anywhere near often enough.) He's also been interviewed on Slashdot. From the Wired article: 'Brown, 41, is a culinary hacker, the poster boy for a movement that's coming to a boil in kitchens across America. The essence: Cooking is a science, not an art, informed by chemistry, physics, and biology. "Everything in food is science," Brown says. "The only subjective part is when you eat it."'"
I was stuck with basic cable, but the cable guy accidentally left the Food network on. Nothing much to watch on basic at 3am, so Food network it was.
That's when I met the stylings of AB - he got me to love to cook. Granted, I always liked to cook, but after watching his show I *love* to cook.
For some reason his style just matches what I like - he talks about something and it sticks in your head. And because he shows the science behind the food, when you make a new dish, you can almost tell the outcome before you start - you know how eveything will react!
Plus, I dig the dry humor, how he refers to the ingredient list as "hardware" and soft(wet)ware", the camera angles you don't see on a regular cooking show - even the corny acting I like hehe.
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
I wish there were more explanations of WHY certain ingredients go well together.
eg: tuna & cheese, beef & tomatoes, carrots, onions & celery (aka "mirepoix"), etc.
Is it the balance between bitter & sweet? Or is it just "magic"
(ps: you should all try root beer & orange juice...now that's a mix that tastes great but looks awful)
TDz.
Cooks wish they were biologists.
Bakers are, in a sense, biologists. They know that yeast in bread and rolls thrive in warm temperatures, and that the ideal temperature for yeast activity is between 120 an 130 degrees F. Heat the dough to 140, and the yeast dies. Salt will kill yeast if brought in direct contact with it as well. And yeast loves sugar - so much so that if you leave the sugar out of bread, the yeast will start breaking down the complex sugars in the flour, which in turn changes the flavor of the breads.
Bakers must know the environmental conditions they need to set up for yeast (a living fungus), or they will find themselves without a bakery. In this sense, they have to be biologists, albeit in a limited sense.
A love beyond compare...
Well, Alton's certainly not training master artists that you'd find in a 4 star restaurant last I checked, but he knows what he's talking about in terms of food. To be a chef, from my experience.. I'm an amateur ... you first need to be a scientist. The art of cooking comes afterwards. If your bread doesn't rise, that's a piece of garbage, not your distinctive style of bread.
Also, Alton knows a whole lot about how to make the cooking experience more enjoyable so you can worry about the art more than the science. The best way to thaw a chicken.. put it in a bowl with barely running cold water spilling into it, rather than having it sit in the oven. See, now I can worry more about what seasoning to choose instead!
Chances are, you'll also like "What Einstien Told His Cook" by Robert Wolke. It's a very scientific view of cooking, telling you exactly why things happen the way they do in cooking and going over the chemical process. It's a very fun read, and is not only informative but humorous as well.
Great book. You can read reviwes and stuff about it here.
That was where i first learned the limits of chemistry as applied to food. it was making a mock beurre blanc. after the vinegar, lemon juice and wine were reduced i was told to whisk in a quart of heavy cream. now, as you yourself pointed out, tossing cream on top of hot, concentrated citric and acetic acids (reduced lemon and vinegar) would result in an instant hideous clumpy mess. oh wait...look, it's really rather smooth...add a bit of butter and beat it well, and it turns into a nice, thick, almost perfect approximation of beurre blanc that can be cooled, frozen, reheated and boiled without breaking! as near as i can tell, the acid-induced protein polymerization (curdling) was distributed evenly throughout the sauce, thickening it, while the added fat from the butter stabilized and emulsified the sauce. Dunno though. Quite a nasty shock, i literally didn't believe it even after i saw it. it tempered my scientific arrogance quite a bit, and was the first in many lessons that taught me that to truly master cooking, one must embrace both the hard science and the soft artsy side of it.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Cooking - making food - is not an art. It absolutly CAN be an art. Here's alton own words on it.
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It's kind of like, I'd love to own a Picasso. I like Picasso. If I could own a Picasso one day, that would be swell. But I don't want to paint like Picasso. It's like the really great chefs are artists and it's like, I'm going to go to the restaurants and enjoy it. I don't want to cook like that at home and I don't want them to publish books that tell me how because you know what? You can't! You can't. You can not do it. They can write that stuff down, you're still not going to be able to do it. That's why, I think Joseph? [sic, Thomas?] Heller, amazing chef, French Laundry, out in Napa, amazing guy. I can't cook any of the stuff in his book because it's not enough to have it written down. It isn't enough. No more than it would be enough for Picasso to have written How To Paint A Picasso book. That's what we're talking about.
There's a level... It's like, I don't call myself a chef. I'm not a chef. I don't have the creative chops to call myself a chef. Can I hack out a decent meatloaf? Well, yeah, because I understand the meatloaf and yackety-yak. But I am I going to create a great dish? No? I'm not going to create a great dish. Those guys have that artistry and I wish they'd just do it and sell it and let those of us that want to eat it and enjoy it and stop writing cookbooks. Because I know more people that have given up on cooking because they couldn't make Charlie Trotter's friggin' Rabbit Reduction sauce. It's so intimidating. It infuriates me that those guys feel like they don't make enough money already that they have to make the rest of us feel bad with their cookbooks. So, I don't buy them. I don't buy those cookbooks. I very rarely buy cookbooks, to be frank.
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Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.