Nathan Myhrvold giving a TED talk about some of his many interest (click image to see video). Photo by Neil Hunt from flickr.com (CC BY-NC 2.0).

If you’ve played around with sous vide cooking there’s a good chance that you’ve visited the massive eGullet thread on sous vide (currently spanning more than 100 pages and 3000 posts), and in that case you’ll be familiar with Nathan’s many well informed posts on sous vide. There have been rumours about an upcoming book for quite some time, and things are getting more and more exciting. The last I heard was that he had a team of 5 people working on a book about sous-vide. This has now increased to a team of 15 people, including 5 professional chefs, a photographer, an art director, writers and editors. And there’s more:

“The project has grown in size and scope. Originally planned as a 300-page discussion of sous vide, an increasingly popular restaurant technique of cooking food in vacuum-sealed bags in warm water baths, the book has swelled to 1,500 pages that will also cover microbiology, food safety, the physics of heat transfer on the stove and in the oven, formulas for turning fruit and vegetable juices into gels, and more.”

Wow! Let’s hope that Nathan’s “one year left” statement is actually true this time. I’m really looking forward to see this book!

A sourd dough bread made from a spontaneous starter

After 7 days of feeding my sour dough starter “took off” and was ready for baking. Even with a water bath set to 28 °C it took longer than expected. I started off with 100% hydration as this is convenient when you have to feed your starter frequently. Using only whole grain rye flour and water, I fed my starter every 12 hours (I’ve included details of the “feeding schedule” at the end of this post). This time interval is based on the growth cycle of yeast, where the yeast after an exponential growth phase reaches a plateau after 8-12 hours. This is the best time for feeding the starter.

There seems to be a consensus that a wet starter (more…)

Last year’s book bonanza (Remember The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, Alinea and Under pressure right? Not to mention BakeWise, The Flavor Bible (not science, but I love their systematic approach), Cooking – The Quintessential Art, A day at el Bulli, the bilingual Sous-Vide, the German Verwegen Kochen and the Danish Molekylær gastronomi – did I miss any?) will be difficult to beat, but several interesting books will appear this fall as well. It’s as if this field is exploding with books now. When I first set up the webpages which later evolved into Khymos only a handful of books were available (you can travel back in time and view the single page from 2003 – only in Norwegian, sorry), but even I have a hard time now keeping track with all the books which cover the interesting intersection between cooking and science, aka molecular gastronomy. Sometimes I think – is this book really necessary? Do we need it? What does it add? But addicted as I am, I can’t help it – so I’ll probably get hold of most of these books as they become available

(more…)

One of the more curious cookbooks I own is a German one entitled “Kochen und Backen nach Grundrezepten” (Cooking and Baking with Base recipes). It was first written in 1932 and has been updated regularily ever since. Each section typically has a standard recipe which indicates the ratios to use followed by suggested variations (just like The improvisational cook). It also has nice summaries of dos and don’ts (just like BakeWise and CookWise), and what really makes the book stand out is that is so compact yet still comprehensive. It’s one of those books I actually use when cooking. Many other books have a little too much text – you have to read a lot to pick up the key points. Anyway – the reason I mention this is that as I read about the new “Ratio” book by Michael Ruhlman (MR books, MR blog), the German cookbook was the first book that came to my mind.
(more…)

There’s a new book by Hervé This available in English: Building a meal – From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism. In the book he examines six bistro favorites — hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise, simple consommé, leg of lamb with green beans, steak with French fries, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate mousse — and discusses the chemistry of the preparation and the eating of these dishes. I haven’t seen the book yet, but it seems to be something like In search of perfection meets On food and cooking. I’ve also had troubles finding the original French title for this one. There is an excerpt chapter covering consommés available from the publisher website.

Bruce Bryan demonstrated a glowing cocktail drink (top left), and tempted us with fluorescent cake frosting (top right). The chocolate surprise boxes included a lollipop (bottom left) and I was quite busy sucking the lollipop, listening to the translation of the Belgian/French/Spanish contributions, taking notes and photographing at the same time (bottom right).

The chocolate surprise box was one of the highlights at The Flemish Primitives that I’ve blogged about three times already. As I promised you in the last post I’d come back to the lollipop that was included in the box. Between chocolates number 2 and 3 Bruce Bryan entered the stage. The lights went off, we were instructed to suck intensely on the lollipos and then – when I took the lollipop out of my mouth it was glowing! (more…)

Loquat fruit (known as pipa in Chinese) piled up at Mercat St. Joseph in Barcelona.

Molecular gastronomy was recently chosen as word of the month (not quite sure exactly which month this was). They give the following definition:

the art and practice of cooking food using scientific methods to create new or unusual dishes

This is not the best definition I’ve seen, to be honest. Why should one limit it to new or unusual dishes? When taken to extremes this only results in gimmickery. Strangely enough there are no hits when I search for “molecular gastronomy” at www.askoxford.com, so one might wonder whether they changed their mind? Personally I feel that molecular gastronomy should strive to improve both home cooking and restaurant cooking. That’s also what I tried to convey with my 10-part series with tips for practical molecular gastronomy.

The Webster’s New Millennium dictionary has this definition:
(more…)

The avalanche of books in the food/science intersection this fall has been truly amazing. Three books in particular have showcased special restaurants: el Bulli, Alinea and The Fat Duck.
(more…)

Now this is yet another book I’m looking forward to this fall – I’ve got quite a list now!. Shirley O’Corriher, best known for her book CookWise (not to mention her video “Shirley O. Corriher’s Kitchen Secrets Revealed” and TV appearance in case you live in the US), has been working on this book for a while (NYT article from 2004, free registration requried). Finally it is due to appear in October! The title BakeWise suggests it has the same structure as CookWise. The good thing about CookWise is that the food science theory is applied directly to recipes. In addition it has nice tables on what-went-wrong and what-to-do-about-it. In fact it’s a problem solving manual for the kitchen.

According to the publisher BakeWise “reads like a mystery novel as we follow sleuth Shirley while she solves everything from why cakes and muffins can be dry to génoise deflation and why the cookie crumbles”. And they continue:

Restaurant chefs and culinary students know her from their grease-splattered copies of CookWise, an encyclopedic work that has saved them from many a cooking disaster. With numerous “At-a-Glance” charts, BakeWise gives busy people information for quick problem solving. BakeWise also includes Shirley’s “What This Recipe Shows” in every recipe. This section is science and culinary information that can apply to hundreds of recipes, not just the one in which it appears.

In the seemingly endless series of new books related to molecular gastronomy appearing this fall I just found out that Hervé This and Pierre Gagnaire also have a book due in October: “Cooking – The Quintessential Art”. The book is part of the California Studies in Food and Culture series which features interdisciplinary texts and has been characterized as “an intellectual exercise wholly removed from food-entertainment television”. The book is divided in five parts with the following titles which give further clues to the style of the book: The Beautiful Is the Good, Classical Ideas of Beauty, Beauty in the Middle Ages, Artistic Creativity Unbound, and The Present and Future of Cooking.

The book opens with the question “How can we reasonably judge a meal?”, signifying that this is not a cook book. According to the publisher:

This explores an astonishing variety of topics and elaborates a revolutionary method for judging the art of cooking. Many of the ideas he introduces in this culinary romance are illustrated by dishes created by Pierre Gagnaire, whose engaging commentaries provide rare insights into the creative inspiration of one of the world’s foremost chefs. The result is an enthralling, sophisticated, freewheeling dinner party of a book that also makes a powerful case for openness and change in the way we think about food.

There is really no end to all the exciting books that will appear this fall! I just learnt from the molecular gastronomy mailing list that the book “A Day at el Bulli” by Ferran Adrià, Juli Soler and Albert Adrià will appear in October. The publisher let’s us know that the book

documents all the activities and processes that make up just one day of service with stunning colour and black and white photography of the kitchens, staff, creative workshop, dishes, the restaurant itself and its striking surroundings near the town of Roses, north east of Barcelona

The fact that a 600 page book covers a single day at el Bulli says a lot about how much thought they put into their cooking

A number of books related to molecular gastronomy and food science will appear this fall – I’ve previously mentioned the Fat Duck and Alinea cookbooks. But there is more, much more! This time I would like to draw the attention to two books on sous vide which are due to appear in October. And notice how nice the titles compliment each other – one is under pressure, the other one under vacuum!

Thomas Keller, known from the French Laundry, Bouchon and per se, has written the book “Under Pressure – Cooking Sous Vide” (the Under Pressure title was also used by NY Times in a 2005 feature article on sous vide). According to the publisher, Keller and his chefs de cuisine have blazed the trail to perfection through years of trial and error and they show the way in this collection of never-before-published recipes from his landmark restaurants.

The book “Sous-Vide Garen im Vakuum” (Sous vide cooking under vacuum) by Viktor Stampfer (known from the Ritz-Carlton in Dubai) has received much less attention, but certainly deserves to mentioned. The title is in German, but do not despair – it seems to be a bilingual edition with German and English text (can anyone confirm this?), but so far it’s only available for preorder from the German Amazon. According to the publisher the book gives an introduction to the equipment used including sealing devices and recommended temperatures for cooking together with numerous recipes.

These are not the first books to appear on sous vide – enthusiasts have probably obtained one or more of the books by Roca, Farber, Ghazala, Leadbetter, Choain/Noël and Calmejane/Barrier – but I’m quite sure that the new books will complement these very nicely, and they will certainly be more available as several of the others have unavailable for some time.

I recently blogged about the Alinea cookbook, and then in a Q&A with both Grant Achatz and Heston Blumenthal I discovered that there is another great cook book coming up this fall: The Big Fat Duck Cookbook! It’s quite amazing that these two books will be released within weeks of each other this fall.

This is what the publisher promises us:

In the first section of The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, we learn the history of the restaurant, from its humble beginnings to its third Michelin star (the day Heston received the news of this he had been wondering how exactly he would be able to pay his staff that month). Next we meet 50 of his signature recipes – sardine on toast sorbet, salmon poached with liquorice, hot and iced tea, chocolate wine – which, while challenging for anyone not equipped with ice baths, dehydrators, vacuum pumps and nitrogen on tap, will inspire home cooks and chefs alike. Finally, we hear from the experts whose scientific know-how has contributed to Heston’s topsy-turvy world, on subjects as diverse as synaesthesia, creaminess and flavour expectation.

With an introduction by Harold McGee, incredible colour photographs throughout, illustrations by Dave McKean, multiple ribbons, real cloth binding and a gorgeous slip case, The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is not only the nearest thing to an autobiography from the world’s most fascinating chef, but also a stunning, colourful and joyous work of art.

Compared to the Alinea cookbook this one is one is more expensive and has fewer recipes. But hey – who buys cookbooks based on the price/recipe anyway?

For more than a decade Ferran Adriá has allowed us to take part in the creative process through the magnificent El Bulli books. And now – finally – we will have the opportunity to look behind the curtains in another top restaurant where molecular gastronomy is practiced. The book Alinea, named after the Chicago restaurant headed by chef Grant Achatz, is due to appear in October this year. According to the publisher, this is what to expect:

A pioneer in American cuisine, chef Grant Achatz represents the best of the molecular gastronomy movement – brilliant fundamentals and exquisite taste paired with a groundbreaking approach to new techniques and equipment. ALINEA showcases Achatz’s cuisine with more than 100 dishes (totaling 600 recipes) and 600 photographs presented in a deluxe volume. Three feature pieces frame the book: Michael Ruhlman considers Alinea’s role in the global dining scene, Jeffrey Steingarten offers his distinctive take on dining at the restaurant, and Mark McClusky explores the role of technology in the Alinea kitchen. Buyers of the book will receive access to a website featuring video demonstrations, interviews, and an online forum that allows readers to interact with Achatz and his team.

More links:
Alinea book homepage

For some reason Heston’s follow up to to his book In search of perfection had passed my attention unoticed. Following the same scheme as in the first book, in Further adventures in search of perfection Heston examines eight classic dishes in great detail: Trifle, Baked Alaska, Fish Pie, Hamburger, Peking Duck, Chicken Tikka Masala, Risotto and Chilli Con Carne.

[Via Der Kompottsurfer]