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The Why of Cooking (2017)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#21

Post by dalore »

PMan74 wrote: post #3

> But recipes, for all their precision and completeness, are poor teachers. They tell you what to do, but they rarely tell you why to do it. This drives me crazy about recipes e.g. adding vinegar to poaching water is recommended in lots of perfect poached eggs guides but few explain why (makes the whites firm even faster to prevent them from dispersing in the water). It's really 'teach a man to fish' kind of stuff, k…

That's why I loved cookings shows like Good Eats by Alton Brown or ones with Heston Blumenthal. They approach cooking from a more scientific approach in that they explain the why (and with Good Eats often a funny demonstration).

And with the knowing why things are done, you can use that to experiment a bit more yourself.

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#22

Post by 317070 »

mikekchar wrote: post #15
jiehong wrote: post #6

The fact is that not all "why"s are known in cooking yet, and the combination of ingredients is so varied that it's not always easy to go from a myth to a reasonable explanation. Although, lots of research has greatly improved, and I warmly recommend you to read “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking” (2011). Then, for techniques, I strongly recommend following a book designed for chefs when they learn. F…

One of my favourite aha moments: Back when I was much younger virtually every cookbook said you should add olive oil to pasta cooking water. I could never figure out why. Later people pretty much poo-pooed the practice saying that it was some old wives tale about stopping the pot from boiling over or some such thing. Fast forward many years and I was trying to work on a bolognese sauce. My wife likes meat/tomato sauc…

The solution I came up with (watching many many cooking videos) is different: cook the spaghetti in the sauce for the last minutes. You get the same effect, but less of the oily mouth feel which I did not like. It also helps thicken your tomato sauce.

Also, +1 on `Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking`.

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#23

Post by mbaye »

> It’s a shame that the standard way of learning how to cook is by following recipes.

It isn't, not where I'm from. The standard way of learning how to cook in Poland is by watching your parents/grandparents do it.

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#24

Post by trymas »

mikekchar wrote: post #15
jiehong wrote: post #6

The fact is that not all "why"s are known in cooking yet, and the combination of ingredients is so varied that it's not always easy to go from a myth to a reasonable explanation. Although, lots of research has greatly improved, and I warmly recommend you to read “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking” (2011). Then, for techniques, I strongly recommend following a book designed for chefs when they learn. F…

One of my favourite aha moments: Back when I was much younger virtually every cookbook said you should add olive oil to pasta cooking water. I could never figure out why. Later people pretty much poo-pooed the practice saying that it was some old wives tale about stopping the pot from boiling over or some such thing. Fast forward many years and I was trying to work on a bolognese sauce. My wife likes meat/tomato sauc…

In my experience, olive oil helps spaghetti not to stick together, by coating them in oil, while putting them into the water. Also it adds taste after.

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#26

Post by pjc50 »

PunchTornado wrote: post #2

I so want to learn to cook good food, but it is so hard to start alone. Meanwhile an evening of sushi workshop in london costs 80£ and it is fully booked till August.

Hmm. Sushi is an odd choice for a place to start - it's so dependent on your suppliers, and it's traditionally eaten as a set of tiny varied dishes that are a terrible idea if you're cooking for 1.

(Also if you're looking to get into sushi and £80 is a problem I have some more bad news for you)

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#27

Post by spodek »

I spent too much of my life learning to do things by following rules, up to and including a PhD and an MBA. I've since learned to love learning by doing and diving in.

Food is probably the best success in that area, combined with the observation that constraints breed creativity. My cooking gets high reviews (from friends, not critics http://joshuaspodek.com/food-world-reviews) and has inspired my passion and podcast on leadership and the environment http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast.

Two constraints revolutionized my cooking:

- to avoid food packaging

- to avoid food where fiber has been removed

Joining a CSA/farm share helped a lot too, by forcing a deluge of new produce on me that I had to figure out what to do with. I guess a third constraint was not to allow any food to go to waste.

The three constraints force me to cook almost entirely from fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, and bulk legumes, nuts, grains, and seeds (filling bags I bring with me to the bulk food store).

My diet became bland when I stopped packaged food since I didn't know what to do and mostly steamed vegetables or fried them with garlic and onions -- not bad once in a while but not exclusively. I don't like bland and do like delicious (I'm funny that way), so I experimented and learned how to combine flavors and textures to my tastes.

Now my food is more delicious than ever. It's also cheaper, more convenient, and more social (I've met the farmers and visit their farm annually, and I invite people to dinner more than ever, plus I get invited to cook for friends' dinner parties). I love finding new local produce and the change of seasons bringing foods I haven't had for a year. I also pollute less -- I last threw out my landfill garbage in June.

If you've read this far and care for advice, I advise just forcing yourself to cook from scratch for six months, no exceptions. Your diet will be boring and bland for a few months, but by a year, you'll find your diet more delicious than ever. At least that worked for me. My blog posts a lot about avoiding food packaging http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/avoiding-food-packagin... and such if you click around.

Oh, and buy a pressure cooker.

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#28

Post by coldtea »

croon wrote: post #19

> Any one of these recipes offers a fix under specific conditions, but after cooking through enough of them, those isolated recommendations can congeal into a realization > The downside of learning to cook primarily through recipes, then, is that these small eurekas—which, once hit upon, are instantly applicable to nearly any other dish one prepares—are most often arrived at via triangulation. It’s like trying to lea…

> The downside of learning to cook primarily through recipes, then, is that these small eurekas—which, once hit upon, are instantly applicable to nearly any other dish one prepares—are most often arrived at via triangulation. It’s like trying to learn a language only by copying down others’ sentences, instead of learning the grammar and vocabulary needed to put to paper lines of one’s own.

So, exactly like how people learn the language they speak best -- their native one...

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#29

Post by coldtea »

PunchTornado wrote: post #2

I so want to learn to cook good food, but it is so hard to start alone. Meanwhile an evening of sushi workshop in london costs 80£ and it is fully booked till August.

>but it is so hard to start alone

With 100s of good YouTube channels on exactly that, it's easier than ever. And you can always ask a friend/relative to show you.

Except if by "good food" you mean "expensive high-end dishes" -- why would you start learning to cook with a "sushi workshop"?

Re: The Why of Cooking (2017)

#30

Post by tom_mellior »

mikekchar wrote: post #15
jiehong wrote: post #6

The fact is that not all "why"s are known in cooking yet, and the combination of ingredients is so varied that it's not always easy to go from a myth to a reasonable explanation. Although, lots of research has greatly improved, and I warmly recommend you to read “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking” (2011). Then, for techniques, I strongly recommend following a book designed for chefs when they learn. F…

One of my favourite aha moments: Back when I was much younger virtually every cookbook said you should add olive oil to pasta cooking water. I could never figure out why. Later people pretty much poo-pooed the practice saying that it was some old wives tale about stopping the pot from boiling over or some such thing. Fast forward many years and I was trying to work on a bolognese sauce. My wife likes meat/tomato sauc…

> I could never figure out why. [...] long pasta like that should be with an oil/cream based sauce.

You're doing the same thing you are complaining about: Postulating something as an axiom but not even trying to explain why you think it may be the case.

Anyway, as another commenter said, the commonly stated reason for oil in the cooking water is to stop the pasta sticking together. The commonly stated reason against oil in the cooking water is that it coats the pasta and makes it harder for the sauce to stick to it.

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