Geeks and Cooking
It is kind of funny to see how geeks approach cooking.
I tend to follow the recipe, just like an install, step 1, then 2 etc. If you do the steps out of order, it might work, but why take the chance.
I grabbed yet another cookbook the other day, Cooking for Geeks which is a technologists’ dream. It explaines the whys of cooking, for example, why a recipe calls for baking soda instead of baking powder from a chemical perspective. The author breaks down the chemical reactions that occur in a recipe to explain why you follow the steps of a recipe and times when you can fudge it.
Of course, armed with this knowledge it is easier to experiment.
He, Jeff Potter, through his confidence building style convinced me to make Duck Confit which, much to our surprise, both Dave and I liked.
On the high end of geeks and cooking, Dave forwarded me a note on the old CTO of Microsot, Nathan Myhrvold, who has created a 5 volume set titled Modernist Cuisine , which for the low price of $477 you too can own.
In his series, he has cut cooking appliances, pans, etc in half and analysed the process of cooking with beautiful full color photos. I am really not sure how else to describe this work, it is as unique.
As interested as I am, I think I will wait until my local library gets a copy…
On another note, I am currently playing with BigOven. They have a Windows 7 phone app as well, of course, as an iPad/iPhone app and a website. You can scan your old recipe cards into it for storage and they have a built in recipe box of something like 180,000+ recipes. I haven’t played with all the options yet, but so far I like having my recipes handy via phone or iPad when cooking. More on this to come.
If you haven’t been to ThinkGeek lately, the cooking search will show you many fun cooking related things, a few of my favorites:
The Molecular Cuisine Starter Set – which is a cooking chem lab in a kit. Now you can find out how to make your own Bacon Salt.
The Corn Dog Factory – REALLY?
The Cheat Sheet Kitchen Apron – contains cooking guides, measures and conversions written upside down (so you can read while wearing) – how handy is that?
ThinkGeek has the Cooking for Geeks cookbook as well.
At least I know as a Geek learning and expanding my cooking abilities, it is nice to know there are others out there blazing a geek trail to follow.