I'm Just Here for the Food 250
| I'm Just Here for the Food | |
| author | Alton Brown |
| pages | 287 pages |
| publisher | Stewart, Tabori & Chang |
| rating | 9/10 |
| reviewer | Matt Eberle |
| ISBN | 1-58479-083-0 |
| summary | This is a book about cooking, by a geek, for geeks. If you code and you cook, this is the book. |
Rather than giving precise directions about how many rights and how many lefts, Alton aims to give you the lay of the land. "Cooking is not defined by seasonings ... it is defined by the application of heat." That is why the first six chapters are devoted to a single heating method each: searing, grilling, roasting, frying, boiling, and braising. This first book doesn't cover baking, or other manufactured food. Another book, in a similar vein, by a chemist, Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking , actually begins with baking.
As partial proof of the author's geekiness, I present an excerpt from the introduction to the grilling chapter:
I am typing on a Macintosh G4 Titanium Powerbook, which is roving through my MP3 collection like a digital whirling dervish. When I need to speak to someone, which isn't very often since the G4 is wirelessly connected to the Web through a device in the house, I do so on a Nokia cell phone capable of trading files with my Palm V, which I really should replace since it's so 1999.
He's got his own web site, complete with blog. Throughout the book, he describes approaches to cooking that have everything to do with good food and geekiness, and nothing to do with the manufacturer's instructions. Back to the grill, he's removed one of the plates on the side of his grill and fitted it with a piece of tailpipe. Then, when he's grilling, he sticks a hair dryer in the tailpipe and uses it to whip the coals into an inferno. Which might explain why he gets his oven mitts from the hardware store in the form of welding gloves. When talking about ovens, he describes how he builds an oven out of firebricks, and how he uses a large terra cotta pot to cook a chicken in his oven. It's all in the name of even heat distribution. He's also not above rewiring his electric skillet to provide a greater range of temperatures. You know you've read something good when the author includes a mini-disclaimer to the effect of "if you try this at home kids, I and the publisher are not responsible."
Alton encourages improvisation, suggesting you hold a refrigerator roulette party: everybody brings three ingredients and then everybody has to make something of it. Now there's a team building exercise for the daring. Basically, a recipe is like an open source app that nobody's willing to muck with -- you either eat it when somebody else has already prepared it, or you compile (I mean prepare) it yourself, but follow the directions exactly. This just ruins the whole point of making the source (or the recipe) available. Tinker with it, make it better, make it awful, hey, it's just food.
From Alton's Rules I Cook By: If the food is an existing hunk or hunks of something to be cooked, you can generally mess with seasonings, herbs, spices, and so on to your heart's content. The book is filled throughout with examples of Alton's own improvisations -- like the recipe he used to win a cheap chili competition he and some friends dreamed up while sitting around on somebody's porch. In this case, the ingredients were tomato paste, chili powder, cumin, and salt he had in his pantry, some cheap beef stew meat and some lamb stew meat from the supermarket, and the cheapest beer available from the local taqueria and the chips and salsa that came with it. Total cost: $7.74
The end of the book includes appendices with a Critter Map, which shows where different cuts of meat come from, and The Basic Culinary Toolbox, where he describes necessary tools, from heat resistant spatulas and all kinds of thermometers to what makes a good knife. Also included are a very brief selection of suppliers for various dry goods and a selection on cleanliness that has some tips on recognizing a good meat and produce department. The one weakness of the book may be its index. Again, since this isn't really a cookbook per se, it might not matter so much that all the chicken recipes in the book are not listed in the index under Chicken, or that his great recipe for microwave popcorn is listed under M, but not P. As for the popcorn recipe itself, here's a hint: popcorn, paper bag, and 2 staples.
If you are reading this I highly recommend I'm Just Here For the Food as well as the show Good Eats. This is the book on cooking I've been waiting for someone to write ever since I started cooking. It gives you the tools and the principles so that you can cook what you want and experiment with flavors and ingredients you like.
Appetite whetted? You can purchase I'm Just Here for the Food from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Kitchen should be a geeks 2nd home (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Science? (Score:3, Funny)
He's also amazingly hot. I don't think that has anything to do with science, but damn.
damn
Geek Food (Score:2, Funny)
Recipie (Score:5, Funny)
Found this somewhere a few years ago. Enjoy!
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIESMaterials:
- 532.35 cm3 gluten
- 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
- 4.9 cm3 refined halite
- 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
- 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
- 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
- 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
- 2.0 CaCO3 encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
- 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacoa
- 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated juglans regia fruits (sieve size 10)
Procedure:To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients (1), (2), and (3) with consistent agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel (reactor #2) with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients (4), (5), (6), and (7), processing until the mixture is homogeneous. Add to ingredients in reactor #2, ingredient (8) and three volumetrically equal portions of the homogeneous mixture in reactor #1, processing after each addition until the mixture is again homogeneous.
Upon completion of the previous step, add ingredients (9) and (10), slowly with constant agitation at an impeller rate of 50 rpm. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place 10.0 cm3 nodules of the mixture in ordered ranks on a 316SS sheet (30.0 cm X 60.0 cm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnson's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown.
Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 297K heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to thermal equilibrium with ambient atmospheric temperature.
That's what you think.... (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Mr. Brown:
Our law firm represents Emiril Lagasse [emerils.com] and his associated restaurants. It has come to our attention that several of the recipes you employ in your book "I'm Just Here for the Food" may infringe on the recipes copyrighted by our client and his enterprise.
These recipes, while not explicitly identical to Mr. Lagasse's, are similar enough to clearly be derivative works. It is our assertion that your recipes are in violation of our client's copyrights as well as his trademark on "hot and spicy Louisiana cookin'".
We require that you pull your book from publication immediately, and submit a deposition regarding the origins of your recipes. We intend to file suit immediately for damages resulting from loss of profits due to your theft of our clients' recipes to the sum of not less than $2,000,000 (two million dollars) plus fifty percent of all profits from your book.
Sincerely,
The Law Firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe
Cc: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, Legal Department
Warning: (Score:2, Funny)
I like "tweaking and compiling" open source recipes, but last week I used a string variable when I should have used an array. It looked good to me, but when I ran it through my FPU (Food Processing Unit) I started getting SegFaults and wound up taking a huge core dump.
From his blog: (Score:5, Funny)
To Serve Camels (Score:4, Funny)
he has a website (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of "Stirred Eggs" (Score:3, Funny)
by Buwei Yang Chao
Copyright 1945, 1949 0 1963 by Buwei Yang Chao
Published by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. in 1970.
ISBN: O-394-71703-1 LCCCN: 73-89692
Vintage Books Edition, April 1972
Pages 133 to 135
Chapter 18 EGGS
13.1. Stirred Eggs
Stirred eggs may be said to be the most everyday dish made by applying the most everyday method to the most everyday material. Learning to stir-fry eggs is the ABC of cooking. As this is the only dish my husband cooks well, and he says that he either cooks a thing well or not at all I shall let him tell how it is done.
"Obtain:
6 average-sized fresh eggs (for this is the maximum number of eggs 1 have cooked at one time)
3 grammes of cooking salt (or, as an alternative, 4 grammes of table salt)
50 c.c. fresh lard, which will approximately equal the content of 4 level tablespoonfuls
1 plant of Chinese ts'ung (substitute with scallion if ts'ung is unobtainable) about 30 em. long by 7 mm. in average diameter. (This ingredient is optional.)
"Either shell or unshell the eggs by knocking one against another in any order.* Be sure to have a bowl below to catch the contents. With a pair of chopsticks, strike the same with a quick, vigorous motion known as 'beating the eggs.' This motion should, however, be made repeatedly and not just once. Automatic machines, aptly named as egg-beaters,' have been invented for this purpose.
"Make cross sections of the ts'ung at intervals of about 7.5 mm., making 40 sections altogether. Throw in the ts'ung and the measured amount of salt during the final phase of the 'beating.'
"Heat the lard in a large flat-bottomed pan over a brisk fire until it (the lard) begins to give off a faint trace of smoke. Pour the contents of the bowl into the oil at once.
"The next phase of the operation is the most critical for the successful stir-frying of eggs. When the bottom part of the mixture becomes a puffed-up soft mass on contact with the heat, the upper part will remain quite liquid. Preferably using a thin flat piece of metal attached to a handle, the operator should push the mixture to one side so as to allow the uncooked liquid portion to flow onto the hot fat on the now exposed portion of the bottom. (Sometimes this may be facilitated by slightly tipping the pan.) Quickly repeat this until abut 90 per cent of the liquid has come in contact with the hot fat and becomes puffed. Then, still using the flat piece of metal, make the entire content of the pan revolve through 180 degrees about a horizontal axis. This delicate operation is known as 'turning it over,' which in the hands of a beginner may easily become a flop.
"It can be done neatly and without waste only after repeated practice with different sets of eggs.
"If the turning over has been successfully carried out, wait for 5 seconds, which is about the time it takes to count from 1 to 12, then transfer the contents to the bowl or a platter, when the dish is said to be done.
"To test whether the cooking has been done properly, observe the person served. If he utters a voiced bilabial nasal consonant with a slow falling intonation, it is good. If he utters the syllable yum in reduplicated form, it is very good."-Y. R. C.
*"Since, when two eggs collide, only one of them will break, it will be necessary to use a seventh egg with which to break the sixth. If, as it may very well happen, the seventh egg breaks firt instead of the sixth, an expedient will be simply to use the seventh one and put away the sixth. An alternate procedure is to delay your numbering system and define that egg as the sixth egg which breaks after the fifth egg."
Mr. Chao was an engineer...and apparently quite as geeky as anyone would wish... Happy cooking!
Re:Kitchen should be a geeks 2nd home (Score:2, Funny)
My kitchen Aide has more torque than my Black and Decker drill does.
Additionally you need to eat every day, whereas you don't really NEED to use power tools everyday (unless thats your occupation).
Re:This is a great book (Score:3, Funny)
I'll second that. I got 'How to Cook Everything' as a chistmas gift last year. I was sitting at my parents place the day after christmas, lounged out reading this book from cover to cover, when I let out one of many large chuckles. My mom came out the kitchen to see what I was laughing at, only to comment, 'only you would laugh at a cook book.'.
The intro's and summaries are great. This is a good book. Not just receipes, it is entertaining and well written.