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Cooking For Geeks
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
A site in a similar vein.
The microwave is usually the optimal algorithm, as it cooks food in logN time.
Alton Brown has been doing this stuff for years. Interesting stuff, in any case.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Just watch Good Eats with Alton Brown... the biggest geek of us all.
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 :(
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
cooking is. Everything raw, that's the way.
Of-course for a vegetarian it's a much easier proposition.
You can't handle the truth.
If you want to cook food in log time you should use an open fire.
Have you ever looked at the recipes on the back of a box of Saltines crackers? It's stoner food.
Lasagna: Saltines, Velveeta, ketchup.
Most of the geeks I know are also foodies, and a large percentage of them love to cook.
How To Cook For Geeks... How To Cook Forty Geeks... How To Cook For Forty Geeks!
For anyone interested in this sort of book, I'd also recommend Cookwise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking by Shirley O. Corriher. Not nearly as geeky as this book sounds, but it does incorporate a great deal of science into nearly every recipe. And it does it in a way that probably won't scare off non-geeks, either.
I am not a crackpot.
I concur, as the deer roast, slowly being braised in my oven with potatoes, mushrooms, carrots, onion and celery will attest. And when I pull it out, I will pop in some buttermilk biscuits I made a couple of weeks ago, and froze before cooking them, into the oven to quickly cook to go with my dinner. Protip for geeks, learn to cook a few really good, yet complicated looking meals. There are many simple recipes that look and taste as though you slaved for hours to make. And yes, there are really women in the world, and yes, a well cooked meal impresses them far more than how well you can program, even if the ability of program impresses them.
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.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
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.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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 visceral, five senses appeal of doing something that can be intensely creative.
But maybe it's just me.
Most humans have evolved to have a large section of their digestive systems outside their body.
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 to our body we are more mobile in some ways, and less mobile in other ways.
A human without a prestomach is a bit like a cow with one less stomach. The cow might still survive, but it is less likely to thrive (unless it has access to a special diet).
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
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.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
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.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
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 cook.
No mac-and-cheese and hotdogs though... make something good like the parent poster mentioned!
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 outputs they give, and iterate, iterate, iterate until you reach an optimal solution!
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
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.
In Liberty, Rene
And don't worry - just like code, you have nothing to actually show off a day later.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
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.
Yep....remember to always be careful if frying chicken nekkid...
Grease *pops*
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Contrary to popular belief, there really are only three food groups:
* Whipped
* Congealed
* Chocotastic
As per Dr. Nick Riviera.
I've got your sig, right here.
Here Here! I started cooking after the beginning of my marriage, and all I had was a four inch Ikea knife and an old cast iron skillet. I made some of the best meals I've ever made. Now almost five years later, with much nicer knives and cooking supplies, I can make the same meals much quicker, but only increased experience makes them any better.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.