Category — Books

This is a very interesting and somewhat controversial book written by French chef Hervé This (pronounced Tees). It’s interesting because he uses scientific thinking and procedures to investigate the scientific processes behind foods like emulsions and hard boiled eggs, behind phenonomena like taste and olfaction, and to prove or debunk kitchen traditions. It was this part of the book that many chefs did not like when the book was originally published. Many chefs did not appreciate what they viewed as a lack of respect for tradition, in challenging commonly held beliefs such as gnocchi are done when they float and that stock should be started with cold water. For the stock question, This conducts an experiment where he takes two pieces of beef, from the same cow, weighing exactly the same and puts one in boiling water and one in cold water and brings it to a boil. After a few hours he removes the two, weighs the beef pieces, and conducts a rigorous taste test. The pieces weighed the same after cooking and the tasters could tell little difference between the two. In fact, when differences were detected, the stock started in boiling water was usually preferred. I like his forward thinking and use of scientific reasoning in cooking. It really forces you to think at such an elementary level to improve every phase of cooking.

The book is organized into four parts, each organized into very small chapters in which he proposes a question, investigates the question with an experiment, discusses what the results mean, and explains how this can be used to the cooks advantage. Additionally, he often proposes new ideas and suggestions of what can be done with this new, and often surprising, culinary knowledge. In the first part he investigates “Secrets of The Kitchen,” disproving ideas like the already mentioned stock question and whether salting meat before or after grilling makes a difference. This’ experiments support notions that red wine is preferable for marinating meats and that copper is best used for cooking preserves. He goes beyond merely confirming these notions, however, and explains why. One of the more interesting chapters was about preventing oxidation, or browning when exposed to air, like apples and avocados do, in foods. He tested the idea that it is the acid in general from lemon juice that prevents foods from oxidizing. By this logic, vinegar would do the same trick since it is acidic as well. But, try dousing some cut apples in vinegar and they will brown. Upon closer investigation, we find that it’s the ascorbic acid that preserves color and freshness. What can this knowledge do for our cooking? If you’ve ever looked in the vitamin and supplement aisle at the pharmacy you may have noticed that they sell tablets of pure ascorbic acid. Lets say you want to preserve the color of an avocado puree for example. Use some ascorbic acid and the color will be preserved longer and you won’t overpower the flavor with lemon, if that’s a flavor you want to avoid.

In the second part of the book, entitled “The Physiology of Flavor,” a spin on Brillat-Savarin’s “The Physiology of Taste,” This investigates how we taste and perceive tastes, on a molecular and biological level. A lot of the language and terms he uses are dense, including a lot of talk about specific organic molecules and taste receptors, but he does a great job (and the translator who transcribed from French did a great job) of explaining what this means in lay terms. Basically we perceive flavors differently depending on a lot of things, like temperature, physical state of the food, and other kinds of molecules present in the food (fat as opposed to water for example). This means that, although recipes for roast duck that call for roasting the duck then making a stock from the duck pieces sound redundant, they make scientific sense because we taste the duck differently and for different amounts of time in both these forms. Brought together, they create a more complex and richer duck flavor.

The third part of the book is titled “Investigations and Models” and goes into great detail about things like how regional ecosystems affect the taste of cheese, what aging does to certain wines to improve their flavor, and the nature of emulsions. This loves emulsions, which are defined a dispersion of droplets of one liquid in another, usually water in fat. An emulsion that we all know is mayonnaise.

The third part blends well into the final section, “A Cuisine for Tomorrow,” where This suggests we use our scientific knowledge, logical thinking, and 21st century technology to be innovative and creative in the kitchen. He continues with his discussion of emulsions. This makes a mayonnaise without egg yolk. He explains that it’s the tensioactive proteins in the yolk that form a network of protein when whisked that traps the water in the fat. But egg white contains these proteins, and he whisks an egg white while slowly adding oil to make a yolkless mayonnaise. But why not go a step further and get rid of the egg completely? Gelatin contains tensioactive proteins. Dissolve a sheet of gelatin in some warm water and whisk it vigorously while adding oil. You have a oil-water emulsion without eggs. But go one step further. This explains how these proteins are present in almost any food, and are able to be used when the food is ground. Aioli is made by slowly adding oil to ground garlic. This makes a zucchini emulsion then a beef emulsion. This explains by varying how much protein you add, how long you whisk, and what type of liquid you use for the water and oil, one can make great emulsions and foams that are light and add great textural elements to a dish. A recipe that I am definitely going to try soon is a cream and egg-less chocolate mouse. This instructs us that we can make a chocolate emulsion by whisking chocolate with some liquid containing water and some gelatin over low heat. The ingredients will blend and thicken. When vigorously whisked on top of ice, air is added to the emulsion, the mixture increases in volume, and the color changes. Now we have a chocolate mousse. If this was made with egg whites, you can microwave it. The egg white protein mesh would set, trapping the chocolate molecules inside, forming a sort of chocolate cake.

Overall, I’m not the biggest fan of extreme molecular gastronomy that chefs like Ferran Adriá and Wylie Dufresne practice. I think a lot of the time ingredients are too far removed from their original form and the food becomes far too focused on technique rather than ingredients. However, This’ book presents a method of investigating food that is so in depth and revealing that it forces you to reassess how much you think you know about food.

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This is a very interesting cookbook co-written by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein. It contains dishes made entirely of raw food. The concept was partly inspired by Woody Harrelson, as Roxanne Klein explains in the forward that, when on a trip with Harrelson, he explained how he only ate raw foods. Whereas this vegan type of cooking isn’t exactly my cup of tea, I do enjoy raw vegetables and the book contains a lot of interesting and simple techniques. Some recipes appear quite complex but are broken into smaller component recipes, some of which are nothing but blended vegetables, water, and seasoning to make a nice sauce. They use blended sauces, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, juiced ingredients and have interesting recipes for making “cheese” out of nuts. I have yet to try this but, according to the book, they taste surprising like real cheese (they certainly look like it). I especially liked the recipe for Bleeding Heart Radish Ravioli with Yellow Tomato Sauce which was where I got the idea for my Beet Ravioli recipe.

Other recipes include Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup with Spaghetti Squash and Portabello Mushroom Pave with White Asparagus Vinaigrette.

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I just finished reading Becoming A Chef by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. This book is filled with advice from leading American chefs on how to succeed as a chef, restauranteur, and person. Chefs interviewed include Mario Batali, Alice Waters, Todd English, Emeril Lagasse, Charlie Trotter, and Jaques Torres, among many others. The book presents how becoming a chef can be a different road for everyone. Mario Batali and Charlie Trotter, for example, never went to culinary school but had an intense work ethic, great management skills, and a passion for food. Others, like English and Lagasse, went to culinary school and worked their way through the ranks in the kitchen. All their stories shared common characteristics needed to become an excellent and successful chef. One was restaurant experience. The world’s best chefs worked in many kitchen, some for years and some for a matter of weeks (according to Dornenburg and Page, Trotter worked in 40 different restaurants in 3 years before opening his own). Secondly, the chefs all had an intense passion for food and a creative flare that they insisted you must never let become stagnant (even if it means leaving a high paying job that has deflated your creative abilities). This includes dining out, cooking, and reading about food in your free time. Chef Lydia Shire writes, “I see to many cooks who stop thinking about food when their eight hours are done.”

This book has inspired me to write letters to the chef’s at some of Chicago’s top restaurants when I begin school in the fall, asking if I could work in their kitchens, even for free for a while (this is what’s called “trailing” in the business). Although one of my quarters will be spent interning at a restaurant, I think the extra experience and long hours will train me well for a future as a chef.

Links:
Dornenburg and Page’s Official Website
Mario Batali

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I recently finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It was published last year and named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times. Although the question “what’s for dinner?” seems simple and inconsequential, omnivores have risks and hard choices to confront when choosing foods as opposed to a panda bear, who eats only bamboo and never even thinks about the question. Answering “what’s for dinner?” has caused increased cranial capacity and critical thinking skills in omnivores, and was essential in human evolution. However, Pollan suggests we have digressed.

Pollan investigates the three different food chains of our modern world, The Industrial, the Pastoral, and the Forest, which culminate in four distinct meals. These food chains reflect how Humans’ evolution from relying on hunting and gathering, to agriculture, and now to industry and fossil fuels–part of our “national eating disorder.” Pollan keenly observes that the more and more American’s worry about the food they eat, the unhealthier we get. Mega marts and frozen, canned, and other processed foods have sadly added two more questions to the omnivores dilemma: “where does my food come from?” and, “what am I eating?” His discussion of the industrial food chain is fixated upon “the plant that has domesticated man:” Corn. Of over 45,000 supermarket items available, over 20,000 contain corn in some form (chicken nuggets have 13 ingredients directly derived from corn). Pollan visits a corn farmer, a corn silo, buys and visits a cow at an industrial CAFO plant (where steer are fattened and slaughtered), and eventually tours a corn processing plant. This section of the book is somewhat depressing, as Pollan reveals that humans have completely severed the link between animals, plants, and the seasons that make traditional farms so efficient. The chapter culminates in the ultimate industrial meal: McDonald’s consumed at 60 miles per hour.

Pollan then goes onto the pastoral food chain. He begins with what he calls “Industrial Organic,” which is mostly Whole Foods. These organic mega companies are for the most part unchanged from their mega mart counterparts, but sell you less food for more money by imbuing the food with the company’s story or political connotations. His Industrial Organic meal is an organic microwave dinner, complete with the artificial preservatives still allowed in the loosely regulated organic industry.

The story gets more hopeful when he visits Joel Salatin, a self-proclaimed “grass farmer” and owner of Polyface Farms. Polyface uses scientific know how and hard labor to create a self sustaining community of plants, animals, and people. They raise cattle, chickens, and rabbits and sell their food only locally. Chefs who buy from Polyface rave about how the chicken “just tastes more like chicken” and the superb quality of their eggs. Pollan enjoys a sustainable organic meal is grilled Polyface chicken with corn and chocolate souffle made from Polyface eggs.

The forest food chain is the most interesting and fun part of the book. Pollan sets out to make a meal entirely from food that he hunted, foraged for, or grew himself. He hunts with an Italian woodsman in California and bags a wild boar. He then accompanies mushroom hunters and gathers chanterelles and morel mushrooms. He even goes on a dangerous abalone hunting expedition. In the end he uses he newfound knowledge to cook a multi course meal for himself and the characters that helped him along the way. Pollan explains how obviously foraging, hunting, and growing all your food is a novelty today, and not very feasible for everyday life, but it helped him establish a connection and respect for his food and the omnivore’s dilemma that he never experienced before.