Readers well aquianted with the food blogosphere will likely be familiar with Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot’s blog Ideas in food. Since December 2004 they have generously shared pictures, ideas, insights and inspirations online. As chefs they have eagerly integrated modernist techniques and elements in their cooking, allowing technology to improve their cooking whenever possible. No wonder I’ve been a long time follower of their blog! And needless to say I was also exicted to receive a review copy of their recent book Ideas in food: Great recipes and why they work.

First and foremost the book is a great collection of ideas explored by the authors. The ideas are exemplified through recipes (about 100 in total) which showcase the creativity of the authors, from the simple vanilla salt to innovative pasta and risotto techniques, red cabbage kimchi with a built in pH indicator, grilled potato ice cream and practical examples of how hydrocolloids can be utilized. It is certainly an engaging book, and my copy is filled with countless comments, “Try this!”, “Interesting!” and enthusiastic exlamations, but also question marks and disagreement. For some reason the book has been divied into Ideas for everyone and Ideas for professionals, the latter dealing mainly with hydrocolloids. But why the discussion of starch and gelation is reserved for the professionals whereas the recipe for homemade mozarella which calls for lipase, citric acid and rennet is placed in the “for everyone” section, eludes me.

I suggest you have a pencil ready when reading the book!

As the title suggests there are not only ideas and recipes, but also exlanations that sometimes dig deep into food science. The real strength of the book are the cases where a deeper understanding of the underlying science leads to new ideas. Having explored potatoes and hydration of starch, a simple yet brilliant idea which comes out of this is the parcooked rice (65 °C for 30 min) which subsequentially allows for a superfast risotto. As elegant is the hydration of dried pasta by soaking in cold water. Once hydrated, the pasta is drained and kept in a closed container/bag in the fridge. When dropped into boiling water the pasta will cook as fast as fresh pasta. Combining this with other ideas led to a mac’n cheese made from roasted pasta that is smoked and then hydrated in milk, reserving the excess milk with the surface starch for later stage to help thicken the sauce.

Pasta hydrates in cold water (1:4 ratio of pasta to water) within a couple of hours. The fully hydrated pasta cooks within a couple of minutes.

Explaining the science of food and cooking in lay terms is difficult, especially when striving for simple and correct explanations. On some occasions the authors strike a good balance here, but at times the explanations are either too simplistic or too detailed to be of any real help. I was often left with a feeling that the text desperately called for illustrations for the reader to properly grasp the concepts, for instance in their discussion of amylopectin, amylose and starch granules. Perhaps it’s because I’m used to science text books, but the fact that Ideas in food doesn’t have a single figure, diagram or photo is a drawback in my opnion.

Understanding how amylose and amylpection would be easier had they included a simple drawing like this one.

Ever since reading Hervé This’ book Révélations gastronomiques (available in German as Kulinarische Geheimnisse, not available in English) I have appreciated the approach that combines recipes with answers to the many whys that pop up in my mind. Comparing Ideas in food: Great recipes and why they work with This’ book, what shines through at places is the author’s lack of scientific training. Without doubt they know much more food science than the average chef, but it is surprising for instance that the Maillard reaction is not mentioned in their discussion of stocks. And the precision of the recipes is often questionable, especially regarding their use of metric units in the first section. Saying that 1/2 cup of milk equals 130 grams makes sense to me because I expect to see a rounded number. But an online conversion calculator I often use says that for milk 0.5 US cups = 121.8 g = 118.3 ml, so I would naturally have rounded this to 120 grams. On the other hand, when the authors state that 8 3/4 cups of water equals 1968.75 grams the precision implied by the number of digits will make for a good laugh for scientists reading this. And I’m puzzled by how the “cups” used apparantly range from 225 to 260 mL – is there something I’m missing here?. The ultimate solution to this of course would be to eliminate the United States customary units alltogether (sorry all Americans!). Ironically this is exactly what the authors did in the “Ideas for professionals” section.

In the light of the recent paper on the 6X °C egg the whole chapter on “perfect” eggs seems a little outdated. The recipes are probably fine (I haven’t tested them), but I was surprised to read that egg whites coagulate from 60-65.5 °C (this must be a typo) whereas egg yolks coagulate from 65-70 °C (true, but they start to coagulate at a lower temperature, and it’s a function of time and temperature).

To conclude, the compilation of great food ideas is what I found most rewarding in the book. And despite the shortcomings mentioned above I would wholeheartedly recommend the book, simply because of all the nice examples of how a new technique or theoretical insight can be extrapolated into related areas and lead to new ideas in the kitchen. I suggest that you get Ideas in food: Great recipes and why they work for it’s collection of ideas and the creativity of the chefs. But if you’re interested in the whys of cooking you will be better served by other books, the obvious choices being On food and cooking and Keys to good cooking by Harold McGee or The science of cooking by Peter Barham.

Ideas in food – Great recipes and why they work
Aki Kamozawa and Alexander Talbot
320 p, no illustrations/photos
2010, Clarkson Potter
ISBN 978-0-307-71740-5

It came as no big surprise that NOMA defended its no. 1 position in April. A lot of the press coverage of NOMA and René Redzepi focuses on foraging (some even claim that we are in The Era of the ‘I Foraged With René Redzepi Piece’). It is all about nature and natural ingredients. Many would probably claim that NOMA is as far away from molecular gastronomy and science as you could possibly come. In March René Redzepi attended The Flemish Primitives in Oostende. I was there, and the one question I asked René at the press conference was this:

ML: The Flemish Primitives aims to bring together chefs, scientists and artists. There is also a co-operation between Noma and the University of Copenhagen. What have you learnt from from working with scientists?

RR: A lot! A lot! There is an incredible amount of knowledge to be gathered. Chefs are caretakers of flavor whereas scientists care about why things happen. But they don’t care about flavor. Torsten Vildgaard, one of my chefs, has been working 4 months every year on the project at Copenhagen University.

In a recent interview with WSJ René also said that “a lot of the techniques developed during the molecular phase have now been incorporated even into our style of cuisine because of their practicality”. I find it very fascinating and reassuring that René sees no contradiction between a modern approach to cooking, utilizing science and technology for what it’s worth, on the one side and his own cooking on the other. He is truly open minded and lets modern equipment and techniques coexist with his foraging approach.

During the interview René also mentioned the Nordic food lab, a non-profit organization founded by René Redzepi and Claus Meyer that aims to scientifically explore the New Nordic Cuisine (manifesto, 40-page booklet). They promote open sharing of their results, and contrary to food research in universities the Nordic food lab is “committed to show tangible results on a more frequent basis and on a slightly lower academic level than would be expected from e.g. a university.” I really recommend checking out their news section (which is more or less in a blog format – unfortunately I could find any funtioning RSS link on the page, but http://www.nordicfoodlab.com/feed seems to work!)

Of course René also talked about other stuff than food science and molecular gastronomy. One thing that he’s particularily focused on now is the new food festival MAD foodcamp (MAD is “food” in Danish). It takes place on August 27 & 28 (the last two days of the Copenhagen Cooking festival). The topic this year will be vegetation, there will of course be chef & food, but there is also an International symposium and they have announced that Harold McGee is coming! René mentioned that the most challenging part is in fact to find writers and scientists who want to contribute to the symposium.

The authors of Modernist Cuisine: Maxime Bilet, Chris Young and Nathan Myhrvold

In 2003 Chris Young had an epiphany of a meal at The Fat Duck outside London, and by the end of the meal he knew he had to work with Heston Blumenthal. Things worked out well and after a stage he was hired to build and lead the experimental kitchen at The Fat Duck. In 2007 he returned to Seattle to work with Nathan Myhrvold who at that time was very active on the eGullet forum sharing his research on the sous vide cooking technique. The project that started off as a book on sous vide eventually grew into Modernist Cuisine with 6 volumes spanning more than 2400 pages. After many delays (one being due to Amazon’s drop test which showed that the casing wasn’t sturdy enough for the books totaling 20 kg) Modernist Cuisine is ready for release in March, and will be presented at The Flemish Primitives event in Oostende, Belgium on March 14. That’s one more reason to visit the event!

Martin Lersch: Congratulations with Modernist Cuisine – it is a truly amazing accomlishment! Will you be present in Oostende?

Chris Young: Thank you. Yes, I’m very excited to be present at The Flemish Primitives to talk about our book, Modernist Cuisine, and to share the work of our team with the broader culinary community. I will have pages that I can sign and that Nathan and Max will have already signed.

ML: You studied mathematics and biochemistry, but how and when did your interest in food arise? And what made you want to combine this and approach food from a scientific perspective?

While at University, I came across an interesting book called On Food and Cooking, and it captivated me. Often, when I should have been studying science books, I was instead busy reading my copy of McGee. It made me realize how much I didn’t know about cooking. So I got to work filling in gaps in my knowledge, cooking my way through cookbooks such as Pépin’s La Technique and La Methode. But it was Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook that kept me toiling away into the night perfecting my brunoise, skimming stocks, trussing chickens, braising short ribs, and thinking about becoming a chef.

In the autumn of 2001 I came to the self-realization that spending several more years pursuing a doctoral degree was not in my future. A reasonable question, then, was what should I do? With degrees in biochemistry and mathematics, there was every reason to believe that I was employable. The problem was, however, that I wanted to do something completely different, so I decided to get a job as a cook. Besides, I desperately needed to subsidize my hobby with a job. My grocery bill was getting out of hand! I hesitated only slightly before quitting academic pursuits for a job in a kitchen.

To a lot of my friends, this seemed like a bizarre decision. But for me it was an obvious choice: I had always enjoyed cooking, so I reasoned why not pursue it professionally? I figured that I would become a better cook and make some money at the same time. Well, I was right about the first part anyway. I was lucky to get a job with the talented chef William Belickis at Seattle’s Mistral Restaurant. William took a chance on a me when no one else in town new what to do with a scientist who wanted to become a chef.

But, as I like to tell the story, cooking seems to have been predestined. If my parents are to be believed, my first word was “hot”, uttered after I pulled myself up to the stovetop. As a toddler, my favorite toys were pots and pans. And when I was slightly older, I would attempt recipes from my mother’s encyclopedic set of Time Life’s The Good Cook series of books.

ML: I’ve heard that you had an epiphany of a meal at The Fat Duck outside London, and at the end of the meal you knew that you had to work with Heston. Could you tell me more about that?

The whole story is that at the end of the meal I asked for a stage at The Fat Duck. They said yes, and I returned to England at the beginning of April 2003 and stayed until the end of June 2003. Sometime in April, a newly hired chef failed to return to work, and another chef was scheduled to take a two week vacation. As a result, I ended up working as the garde manger chef. It was a really challenging job, but I loved it. It also gave me a lot of time to interact with Heston during service. He and I just kind of clicked. That June, he asked me if I wanted to move to England permanently and help him open a new kitchen that was focused on developing new ideas and techniques. How do you say no to that kind of offer?!

Getting a work visa turned out to be a bit of a challenge, no one had every tried to get a UK work visa for an experimental chef! So between July of 2003 and June of 2004 I commuted back and forth between Seattle and London. I would do experiments in my kitchen in Seattle and have phone calls with Heston every Sunday morning to discuss the results. Every two or three weeks I would fly to London, land at 7AM, take a taxi straight to the restaurant, and begin work! I would stay for one to two weeks before heading back to Seattle. This has to be some kind of record for commuting to work!

By the summer of 2004 the work permit was sorted out, and I moved to London with my girlfriend (now my wife). Around July of 2004 we opened the experimental kitchen in one of the garden sheds behind the restaurant. About six months later, Heston purchased the Hinds Head pub and I moved the experimental kitchen to a closet in the pub and then later to a house that was purchased with the pub. Located across the street from The Fat Duck, today that house serves as the prep kitchen (downstairs) for The Fat Duck and the experimental kitchen (upstairs). It’s actually a pretty nice kitchen to work in, but when I first moved into the space it was an empty room with broken windows and paint peeling off the walls. You could actually see through the floor into the rooms below!

Over the next 3 years we built up the experimental kitchen and expanded the size of our team as The Fat Duck became successful. For me, it was an amazing opportunity to be part of it from the beginning. I owe Heston a lot for giving me the opportunity to open and run the experimental kitchen, even when he didn’t know how he would pay for it!

ML: In a recent TEDx talk you mentioned that one of the things you learnt from Heston Blumenthal was what a talented cook can accomplish when enabled by science in the kitchen. Is it possible for a chef to really excel today without some scientific backing or a co-operation with a scientist?

Certainly it is possible for chefs to ignore science and still cook great food. Indeed, this is how we’ve cooked for most of history, and we humans have produced some pretty delicious food over the centuries. For me, the reason to be a scientifically-minded cook is for the creative possibilities it brings to the kitchen. Understanding the how’s and why’s of cooking inspires me to be a better chef; it gives me insights into cooking that help me make more delicious and satisfying food.

ML: How did you get in contact with Nathan Myhrvold?

The Fat Duck was where I met my co-author Nathan Myhrvold when he came for dinner. Because he lived in Seattle, and since I was more or less from Seattle too, we stayed in touch. We often exchanged ideas about Modernist barbecue-we’re both very passionate about great bbq-and other Modernist techniques. I would visit him whenever I was in Seattle. In July of 2007, I was thinking about leaving The Fat Duck. My son Jack had been born in April and my wife and I wanted to be a closer to home. I sent Nathan a friendly email telling him that I would be leaving The Fat Duck and that if he wanted to keep in touch he should use a different email address. Three minutes later, I received the following email:

> From: Nathan Myhrvold
> Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007
> To: chris@thefatduck.co.uk
> Subject: Crazy Idea
>
> Why don’t you come work for me?
>
> Nathan

Later, Nathan told me about the book he had started working on and that I really should move back to Seattle and help him write it. It wasn’t a very hard choice, because even then I knew that this was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

ML: Moving from The Fat Duck to Seattle and working with Modernist Cuisine, what was the biggest change?

One of the biggest challenges for me was writing everyday, rather than cooking. Cooking, with the goal of doing something new everyday, was something that I was comfortable with when I started this book. The writing, however, was a new challenge. Nathan and I really wanted to explain the how’s and why’s of Modernist cooking in a very approachable way; at the same time, we felt that we should not dumb down the relevant scientific concepts. This meant that we had to work very hard at explaining topics as clearly as possible, but in a way that wasn’t boring or irrelevant for a cook. We’ll find out if we succeeded!

ML: A couple of excerpts from the book have been published on the Modernist cuisine website and I must say that I’m stunned by the photographs. At what point during the project was it decided to move on from the ubiquitous black and white to a fully fledged art book?

Modernist Cuisine was never envisioned as being a black and white book. From the beginning, our entire team believed that this should be a no compromise book. We believed that the combination of beautiful photography, great writing, and clearly explained techniques and recipes would make this a unique cookbook that would capture people’s interest.

I will say that back in 2007, when I first started work with Nathan, we thought the book would be a bit smaller-perhaps only 400 pages!

ML: If I may paraphrase Sir Benjamin Thompson (aka Count Rumford), Which discovery in Modernist Cuisine will most powerfully contribute to increase the comforts and enjoyments of mankind?

Actually, I have no idea. This is one of the more intimidating things as an author, I have no idea how people will respond to Modernist Cuisine. I will be as interested as you are to see what ideas and techniques people gravitate towards. But more fascinating than what is in the book now, are the things we will discover need to be put into the next edition? So I suppose that the powerful contribution I hope our book will make is to inspire cooks and chefs to keep innovating and, thus, come up with ideas and techniques that are unknown today.

ML: With more than 2400 pages Modernist Cuisine takes a comprehensive approach to cooking. But in my R&D day time job I often find myself in the position that the more I know about something, the more questions I have. In which areas have you only yet scratched the surface?

Every chapter in our book could have been a lot longer. We tried to make sure we covered the most important points for each of the subjects we covered, but there were a lot of hard choices about what to leave out. At 2400 pages we obviously kept a lot in, but as you say, the more we researched a topic the more there was to know. That’s one of the great things about both science and cooking, there is no end to how far you can explore.

ML: For a student interested in modernist cuisine and molecular gastronomy, what would be good topics to dig into? Where are the white areas on the map?

I really think that we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what’s really going on in the kitchen. So my advice to anyone would be to dig into the topics that interest you the most. Hopefully we’ll have given you a good idea of where to start looking, but you’ll quickly discover how much room there is to innovate. Very simply, terra incognito in the kitchen is lurking just about everywhere you choose to look.

ML: A majority of the papers published in food science journals deal with food safety, health issues, storage stability, etc. Are the practical questions that arise in cooking or eating not scientific enough for scientists to spend time (and money) on researching them? Or to put it differently – is the pleasure of eating still not a good enough reason for governmental money spending?

I think the unfortunate thing is that traditional scientists generally need funding to undertake their investigations, and, generally, the economic resources haven’t been available to enable them to explore the science behind the pleasures of eating. This was always something that saddened Nicholas Kurti, the renowned physicist who coined the phrase “molecular gastronomy” in an attempt to convince others that the pleasures of the table was a subject worthy of scientific research. Although Nicholas’ efforts certainly inspired chefs such as Heston Blumenthal and food writers like Harold McGee, it hasn’t changed the fact that most gastronomical research done by bonafide scientists has been done on their own time simply because they happen to be passionate about food and cooking.

ML: Sadly there have been no follow ups of the 2004 “International workshop on molecular gastronomy” in Erice. Do you see the need for such a meeting place today where scientists, writers, journalists, chefs and food enthusiasts can meet, eat and discuss in a truly creative and enthusiastic atmosphere? Are there any such meeting places today?

One of my personal regrets is that I was never able to attend one of the Erice conferences. It would be wonderful if someone could create an event that would bring together great chefs and scientists and foster collaboration between these two groups. Sadly, I don’t know of anything quite like this happening today.

ML: How does working at The Fat Duck and with Modernist Cuisine influence your home cooking when you opt for “comfort food”? What kind of dishes would you prepare?

Once upon a time I loved cooking elaborate, time consuming dishes at home. That’s kind of my day job now. So when I have the opportunity to cook for my family or for friends at my home I gravitate towards simple, but delicious things. In the summer I might barbecue ribs on a Sunday, in the winter it might be roasting a chicken or preparing a pot roast of pork. On the other hand, I have been known to do things a little differently in my kitchen than my neighbors-I do keep some liquid nitrogen around, which I use for everything from ice cream to preparing some pretty fantastic smoked ribs.

ML: Harold McGee has recently condensed his cooking experience into “Keys to good cooking”. It gives readers all the practical hints and tips for cooking. To what extent does Modernist Cuisine include practical hints and tips that chefs can use right away in the kitchen?

One of the design features of Modernist Cuisine are margin notes. We used these frequently to include bits of information that didn’t quite fit in the text and also as a way to include lots of practical cooking tips. An example of additional information is this margin note that shows up in one of our plated dish recipes for a beef rib eye:

Rib eye is not one muscle but three: loin (the eye), the deckle (cap), and the relatively unknown, but tender and delicious spinalus dorsi (see page TK). Many cooks know that the deckle is extra juicy and tender. This muscle is actually part of the deep pectoral muscle that is constantly exercised in life by breathing. This makes for a very tender, finely grained muscle (see page TK on why a well-exercised endurance muscle can be more tender). Unfortunately, because it sits on the outside of the roast, it is often overcooked. So it’s best to remove this muscle and cook it separately.

Some of these tips are things that a chef on our team discovered while working on a technique or recipe. For example, in our section on tofus, we have a margin note that explains that an alternative way to quickly make silken tofu is by hydrating 0.2% iota carrageenan and 0.1% kappa carrageenan in soy milk at 85 °C / 185 °F and then chilling it to set.

Some tips help explain how to use part of a recipe or technique in different situations, such as adapting a Russian-style smoked salmon to a Lox-style preparation by slightly modifying the cure.

We used margin notes liberally throughout the book, and we tried to include them with most recipes. In part, this was because we wanted to give people a reason to take the time to read through the recipes, even if they would never attempt a particular recipe because it seems too elaborate.

ML:I have no formal cooking education but I love to cook, and I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Modernist Cuisine. What in Modernist Cuisine do you think will be of greatest interest for the amateurs cooks?

I also started as an amateur cook, with no “formal” training. Modernist Cuisine is the book that I wish had existed when I became passionate and serious about my cooking in the late 1990s. So in that sense, Modernist Cuisine has a tremendous amount to offer any one who is enthusiastic about cooking.

Our book is not just about elaborate recipes prepared with exotic equipment, indeed much of what we cover can be done by anyone in their own kitchen with very little in the way of equipment. To me, the real value of Modernist Cuisine will be its ability to broaden and deepen a reader’s insight into the why’s and how’s behind techniques and recipes. Fundamentally, I believe that by explaining basic scientific principles that govern both traditional and Modernist cooking in a understandable and practical way will be the key to giving cooks greater creativity in the kitchen, regardless of what type of food they are interested in.

The Modernist Cuisine cooking lab in Seattle. Want more? Check out this 26-minute video tour.

ML: If you were to recommend three pieces of equipment/kitchen gear which each cost less than $500 to an amateur cook, what would they be?

First things first, you absolutely should have a good digital thermometer and scale. The thermometer should be accurate to at least 0.5°C (just because a thermometer will display a tenth of a degree doesn’t mean that it is accurate to a tenth of a degree) and the scale should be accurate to at least 0.5g, although 0.1g would be much better (but will obviously cost more). These two tools are as fundamental to me as a knife. Beyond these, I think a pressure cooker is a must. I use them for everything from stocks and sauces, to quickly transforming tough cuts of meat and plant foods into succulent dishes. A pressure cooker is not only a time saver in the kitchen, but can do delicious things that are simply impossible by other means of cooking.

ML: On an art-science axis, where is high-end cooking today? And where do you think it will be in the future?

Actually, this question presumes that art and science are independent of one another, which is something I personally disagree with. To me, science and art are both ways of exploring ideas, and new ideas are the currency of both scientists and artists. The confusion comes because people who have avoided science, or only experienced it in the boring environment of the classroom associate science with facts and structure, whereas they associate art with creativity and whimsy; but actually you need to be very creative as a scientist.

One of the joys I get from my work are applying both the scientist and the chef aspects of my personality. At face value it might seem like these methods of thought are at odds, but really they combine to be the catalyst of doing innovative work in the kitchen. Fundamentally, I believe all chefs are scientists at some level. It’s just a fundamental part of cooking. Anyone preparing a dish is conducting an experiment, which makes them a scientist in my view.

ML: With Modernist Cuisine hitting the shelves next month, is this it, or will there be a sequel?

Well, right now I’m travelling a lot to promote the book, as are Nathan and Max. But certainly there are a lot more areas of cooking that we’re interested in exploring. So, yes, there could be another book. But we’d like to see what people think of this one first.

ML: Chris, thank you very much for fitting this interview into your busy schedule!

Further reading: You can pre-order your copy of Modernist cuisine and while you wait for the books to arrive you can visit their website and blog for more information.

Remember the public cooking lectures at Harvard that I mentioned in September? According to the website they are *very popular* and the auditoriums are packed! This is good news, but the best thing is that the lectures are made available through YouTube and iTunes for free! So far 9 of the sessions are available, but I guess all will be available soon. If the picture is difficult to read, here’s the list of all the lectures:

Lecture 1: Science and Cooking: A Dialogue. Speakers: Harold McGee, Ferran Adria (elBulli), José Andrés (minibar by josé andrés, Jaleo, The Bazaar) with commentary/moderation from Professors David Weitz and Michael Brenner (Harvard).

Lecture 2: Sous-vide Cooking: a State of Matter. Speaker: Joan Roca (El Celler de Can Roca).

Lecture 3: Brain Candy: How Desserts Slow the Passage of Time. Speaker: Bill Yosses (White House Pastry Chef).

Lecture 4: Olive Oil & Viscosity. Speaker: Carles Tejedor (Via Veneto).

Lecture 5: Heat, Temperature, & Chocolate. Speaker: Enric Rovira.

Lecture 6: Reinventing Food Texture & Flavor. Speaker: Grant Achatz (Alinea).

Lecture 7: Emulsions: Concept of Stabilizing Oil &Water. Speaker: Nandu Jubany (Can Jubany).

Lecture 8: Gelation. José Andrés (ThinkFoodGroup, minibar, Jaleo).

Lecture 9: Browning & Oxidations. Carme Ruscalleda (Sant Pau, Sant Pau de Tòquio).

Lecture 10: Meat Glue Mania. Wylie Dufresne (wd~50).

Lecture 11: Cultivating Flavor: A Recipe for the Recipe. Dan Barber (Blue Hill).

Lecture 12: Creative Ceilings: How We Use Errors, Failure and Physical Limitations as Catalysts for Culinary Innovation. David Chang (momofuku).

[Thank's to Matthew Pierce for the tip!]

Harold McGee, author of the seminal On food and cooking: The science and lore of the kitchen (which is one of my favorite non-recipe books for the kitchen) has done it again! The book Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes is to appear in October, but is already available for pre-order as I write. The book is one step closer to the kitchen and the actual cooking than On food and cooking. In a mini Q&A with NY Times in 2008 Harold McGee said the following:

“I’ve heard from many cooks that while they value the scope and depth of “On Food & Cooking,” when they need practical help with a specific technique or ingredient it’s often hard for them to locate the information. So my next book will be nothing but practical information and directions, concise and brief.”

I think it’s fair to say that Harold McGee, more than any other person I know of, has been very successful at distilling scientific work into a very readable and accessible form. He did this back in 1984 with the first edition of On food and cooking, and then again in 2004 with a more or less rewritten edition in 2004. A complete book with practical information rooted in science can easily become the single most useful book in your kitchen!

If you’ve followed my blog more than a year you probably remember that I took part in The Flemish Primitives in Brugge in January 2009. The visit resulted in four blog posts (just in case you wonder what it’s all about): The Flemish Primitives: A travel report (part 1), Chocolate surprise (part 2), Heston Blumenthal (part 3) and Glowing lollipops (part 4). It was a day packed with experiences and interesting meetings. But let us not ponder more with 2009 – Bernard Lahousse has let me know that the next event is just around the corner. In fact it’s only a couple of weeks away. Like last year the venue is Concertgebouw Brugge and the date is February 8th, 2010 (Yes – you have to hurry up with your reservations!).

As for the program, I quote from the invitation folder (my highlights):

Whereas during the first edition in 2009 the academic part, the keynotes and the chefs’ presentations were presented separately, they will be fully integrated for this edition. You may expect a very lively day during which “The Flemish Primitives” will present their recipes and projects to demonstrate the Flemish culinary identity. The chefs want to demonstrate that the Flemish gastronomy has reached a whole new level that does not copy chefs from abroad.

Every culinary project starts with inspiration. The chefs will start by introducing somebody who has inspired their work: expect musicians, architects, choreographers, etc. During the presentations the problems and challenges the chefs encountered while working on the recipe or project will be explained and illustrated by reverting to the international chefs (such as Joan Roca and Jonnie Boer), specialists (such as Harold McGee and Brian McKenna) and the teams of scientists of the different participating universities (Gent, Leuven, PIH Kortrijk, TU Delft & The Culinary Institute of America).

For registration and more information head over to The Flemish Primitives website. And if you want to participate, be prepared to pay the price of €295. For the food-science-art show you’re gonna get it’s probably a small price to pay

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:

the application or study of scientific principles and practices in cooking and food preparation

This definition includes both the fundamental scientific aspects and the applications of these. But to me it’s too close to “food science”. Where is the enthusiasm? Where is the delicous meal with tempting aromas and textures? As you might know several definitions have been launched over the last couple of years. My favorite definition is still Harold McGee’s (although he does no longer use the definition himself): “Molecular gastronomy is the scientific study of deliciousness”. In my opinion it joins the two worlds which for too long have been separated – the world of science and the world of gastronomy and everything delicious.

It was a German blog post by Benedikt Köhler over at molekularküche (German blog on molecular gastronomy) that made me aware of the Oxford dictionary definition, and he also reminded me of the hype cycle, a term coined by the US based analyst house Gartner (read more about it in the book “Mastering the hype cycle”). It features the following 5 phases shown below and I agree with Benedikt that these terms can also be applied to the rise and fall (and hopefully also resurrection) of molecular gastronomy:

1. Technology Trigger
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations
3. Trough of Disillusionment
4. Slope of Enlightenment
5. Plateau of Productivity

Phase one started as the term was first used in the 80′s, and I guess it all peaked sometime between 2004 and 2006 with chefs all over wanting to cook with liquid nitrogen and other fancy stuff. Then, with the statement on new cookery by Adria, Blumenthal, Keller and McGee and Heston’s declaration that “molecular gastronomy is dead” we had clearly reached the trough of disillusionment. Today however we’re past that point.

Hype cycle (Concept copyright by Gartner, diagram by Jeremy Kemp under CC-SA).

Benedikt Köhler writes that we’re now on our way to the slope of enlightenment, and personally I think we might’ve reached the fifth phase already, the plateau of productivity. Molecular gastronomy is a term that will live on for years to come, only to disappear as the results and ways of thinking become so common that they’re simply referred to as “cooking” and the result as “really good food” (to quote Michael Ruhlman).

As you might have noticed I’ve decided to stick with one term – molecular gastronomy – for both the scientific, technological and practical parts of “science enabled cooking” (a term Harold McGee uses in The Fat Duck Cookbook – I think that’s a good term). Just like the word “chemistry” is used to describe fundamental research and technological applications I can’t see why the applications of molecular gastronomy (i.e. the food) should be given a different name than the fundamental scientific studies. Some (including Hervé This) have proposed terms such as molecular cuisine or molecular cooking to cover all the practical aspects in order to reserve molecular gastronomy for the “pure science”. There was a debate last year in August on the molecular gastronomy mailing list and Hervé This participated and defended his viewpoint (as he also does in a recent blog post). I actually didn’t take part in the discussion as I had a pretty long private email discussion with Hervé back in 2007 following the EuroFoodChem XIV conference. The conclusion was that we disagree.

I don’t think we should ditch molecular gastronomy, just because it was hyped. But I suggest that we use it to describe more than foams, alginate spheres and liquid nitrogen ice cream. Do you agree?

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.

I own the first two and both – in different ways – are very satisfying. In line with previous releases from Ferran Adria, A day at el Bulli is extremely thorough at documenting exactly that – a complete day at the restaurant, with minute-by-minute photographs. It’s all very appealing – and you’ll be surprised by all the recipes that are included! The nice thing about this book is that it serves both as a coffee table inspirational book (for us geeks), but also as a great resource for those who are professionally involved.

The Alinea book is not as documenting in it’s style, but the level of detail and sophistication does not stand back from that of el Bulli. And the number of recipes included and details described is amazing. It has a very nice and useful index with main ingredients pointing you to the respective recipes, so if you want to cook with walnuts for instance, the index immediately tells me that there are eight recipes to chose from. And even though each single dish/presentation typically includes 3-5 separate recipes; for an amateur like me it’s perfectly fine to extract only one of the recipes from a presentation and turn that into a dish on it’s own.

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook is still on my wish list – I expect to receive it in January and I’m truly looking forward to that. The reviews have been great and – well – there’s probably a lot more to say about a book that weighs more than than 5 kg, but I’ll leave it there!

Apart from these three books it’s hard to get around Under pressure by Thomas Keller, especially when considering that I got my immersion circulator the other day. It’s a book completely devoted to sous-vide cooking, written by one of the pioneers who elevated sous-vide from a convenient boil-in-bag method to the realms of gastronomy. Many (most?) of the recipes are not suited/intended for normal everyday cooking – at least if you depend on a regular grocery store like mine that doesn’t stock rabbit, quail and squab. But you’ll be surprised by how many recipes he includes for vegetable and fruit sous-vide!

Apart from these must-have books I’d check out the following books which would be recommended Christmas gifts for those interested in food or science or both. The title The Hungry Scientist Handbook immediately caught my attention (just like anything does that combines food and science). According to the description in includes more than 20 DIY projects ranging from edible origami to glowing lollipops and cryogenic martinis. O Boy! I can’t wait till I receive my copy

For those looking for a gift that combines science with Christmas I can warmly recommend the classic Can Reindeer Fly?: The Science of Christmas. In an entertaining and light hearted style topics such as the psychology of giving, the laws of shopping and the thermodynamics of turkey preparation are covered. And the most important question of all – how does Santa manage to deliver all those presents in one night? – is also answered in a proper scientific manner. I can only recommend this book – it’s the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who needs to be (or already is) convinced that science can be fun!

And then there are all the classics of course: On food and cooking, CookWise (now supplemented by BakeWise), The Science of cooking, Molecular gastronomy – exploring the science of flavor and Kitchen Mysteries – Revealing the science of cooking. You can find many more suggestions over at the static pages in the section molecular gastronomy.

If you’re looking for for a true gift-for-geeks you can buy a printed copy of “Texture – A hydrocolloid recipe collection” for only $4.95 + shipping from lulu.com, a print on demand company. It’s current sales rank is #104,208 so I don’t expect it to found under very many Christmas trees You can of course also download the pdf at no cost!

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?