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Former Microsoft CTO Builds Kitchen Laboratory
circletimessquare writes "Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft, is self-publishing a cook book with scientific underpinnings. The man who presided over the original iterations of Windows has built a laboratory kitchen, hired 5 chefs, and plays with misplaced lab equipment: using an autoclave as a pressure cooker, using a 100-ton hydraulic press to make beef jerky, and using an ultrasonic welder for... he's not sure yet. The article includes a video on how to cryosear and cryorender duck. 'It's basically like a software project,' Dr. Myhrvold said. 'It's very much like a review we would do at Microsoft.' Is it possible to BSoD food?"
For those who don't know, this is nothing new. Heston Blumenthal, who runs The Fat Duck at Bray, Berkshire, for those of you with a few hundred euros to spend on dinner, has been doing this for years. Blumenthal uses laboratory equipment because it gives better, more consistent results than standard cooking equipment and is designed to stand up to the workloads of a commercial kitchen, but he has extended this a long way to develop new ideas. I'm assuming that this guy knows about him and his work and decided to try to go one better (possibly because of his connection to a company famous for doing precisely that?)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Thou shalt not brute-force cooking. REAL chefs will have no interest in your stupid book.
Never heard of Heston Blumenthal then...
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Or Wylie Dufresne, or Homaro Cantu, or the field of Molecular Gastronomy.
Lots of chefs are using cutting edge technology to do really exotic things with food both in technique and results. And, they've been doing it for a long time.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.