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Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

modernistcuisine.com

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Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#81

Post by diego_moita »

This book is just pretentious and expensive bullshit. It is just hype to grab fools' money.

If you want to know how much "science-infused" is this cooking just look at any picture of its author. Nathan Myrvhold is obviously overweight, a sure sign that he doesn't understand nutrition or basics of health science.

You don't need spherification, sous-vide baths or ultra-speed blenders to make tasty and healthy food. All you need is lots of practice, good taste and good quality ingredients.

Developed countries have this weird obsession of over-engineering things that don't need to be complicated. It is not only Americans that do that, Germans and Japanese are very much the same.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#82

Post by diego_moita »

NegativeK wrote: post #72
zabzonk wrote: post #69

Forget all this crap - just get yourself a pan and a knife an Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking": https://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Provincial-Cooking-Elizabeth... And all her other books, if you can.

Not mutually exclusive.

Considering that you'll need to spend your restricted money and time on the 2 different approaches then they are, to some degree, mutually exclusive.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#83

Post by diego_moita »

yumraj wrote: post #42

Most cookbooks seem to optimize for taste. Are there any cookbooks that optimize for nutritional/health value of food with a reasonable emphasis on taste? Not looking to be just pointed to vegan cookbooks.

The Cooking Light magazine has been doing that for decades.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#84

Post by giraffe_lady »

turnsout wrote: post #46
giraffe_lady wrote: post #6

This came out at the end of my career as a serious professional cook and I have mixed experience with it. It's kind of an escoffier guide culinaire type deal for the 2000s. It documents & standardizes, or at least presents emerging conventions for, a huge range of techniques that were in use in certain kinds of restaurants in the preceding two decades. In terms of food like that you sit down and eat with other people…

This comment is gold, and helps me contextualize a “book” which has always intrigued me. What are your takes on the later additions, Modernist Bread and Modernist Pizza? I have the Bread tome, and some of the base recipes have worked out.

I have no experience with the pizza one at all. I liked the information in the bread books a lot, about the history of wheat cultivation and the enzyme processes during fermentation and baking. I only ever did one recipe out of it (brioche) and it wasn't better or worse than the more traditional recipe I normally use. Seems fine if you like their recipe format, though there are a lot of great bread books out there.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#85

Post by urxvtcd »

tptacek wrote: post #56
scarby2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sous vide is still used quietly because it's a very practical technique with good results for certain protein preparations, and there are plenty of other useful bits of craft through the book. Similarly I guess mayo didn't exactly disappear from american cooking. I was reading the first part of your response and my mind was immediately going "but sous-vide is everywhere" It's one of those things that's just really…

Circulator eggs never made a whole lot of sense, because you already have a reference temperature to work from and so cooking any number of them is just a matter of setting a timer (do what the Ideas in Food people do and steam them). I can't remember the last time I circulated a steak. But we did a rib roast for Christmas, and I did that in the circulator, in advance, "for insurance purposes", and then cooked it off…

I’ve never tried sous vide eggs, but I imagine the biggest benefit is easy consistency. I have a pretty solid recipe for soft boiled eggs adapted from Heston Blumenthal but it still leaves some room for imperfections. Can you share more about the steam eggs? Tried to find the reference but no luck. Is it from their book?

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#86

Post by tptacek »

urxvtcd wrote: post #85
tptacek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circulator eggs never made a whole lot of sense, because you already have a reference temperature to work from and so cooking any number of them is just a matter of setting a timer (do what the Ideas in Food people do and steam them). I can't remember the last time I circulated a steak. But we did a rib roast for Christmas, and I did that in the circulator, in advance, "for insurance purposes", and then cooked it off…

I’ve never tried sous vide eggs, but I imagine the biggest benefit is easy consistency. I have a pretty solid recipe for soft boiled eggs adapted from Heston Blumenthal but it still leaves some room for imperfections. Can you share more about the steam eggs? Tried to find the reference but no luck. Is it from their book?

Put a steamer basket in a pot, put some water in the pot, bring to a boil, put some eggs in the basket (how ever many you want to cook), set a timer for 7 minutes, cover. In 7 minutes, remove the soft-boiled eggs.

(Longer for hard boiled).

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#87

Post by turnsout »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #84
turnsout wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is gold, and helps me contextualize a “book” which has always intrigued me. What are your takes on the later additions, Modernist Bread and Modernist Pizza? I have the Bread tome, and some of the base recipes have worked out.

I have no experience with the pizza one at all. I liked the information in the bread books a lot, about the history of wheat cultivation and the enzyme processes during fermentation and baking. I only ever did one recipe out of it (brioche) and it wasn't better or worse than the more traditional recipe I normally use. Seems fine if you like their recipe format, though there are a lot of great bread books out there.

Thanks! Yeah, so far the main value I'm getting out of it is learning the "why" behind some of the recipes in other books. It's helping me narrow down which variables I should tweak to achieve certain outcomes. But all of that info could probably be condensed to a normal 200 page book without all the glossy photos.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#88

Post by bigstrat2003 »

jorvi wrote: post #36
scarby2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sous vide is still used quietly because it's a very practical technique with good results for certain protein preparations, and there are plenty of other useful bits of craft through the book. Similarly I guess mayo didn't exactly disappear from american cooking. I was reading the first part of your response and my mind was immediately going "but sous-vide is everywhere" It's one of those things that's just really…

Plus, y'know, leaching plastic into your food is generally ill-advised. It won't matter much if you don't eat out all the time / don't do sous-vide at home, but otherwise, yeah.. best avoided. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3222987/ > Results: Almost all commercially available plastic products we sampled—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals having reliably detectable…

Or you could not worry about it, like most people do, and be just fine.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#89

Post by erikerikson »

azinman2 wrote: post #22
dluan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and founder of the largest patent troll "Intellectual Ventures". both efforts now feel dated and cringey.

I don’t hear about it anymore. What happened to it?

A Texas court reduced the viability of the business with one of its rulings. This meant that Intellectual Ventures had to spin out a bunch of companies to actually defend the patents they held. I believe they had mixed success. An example is Pivotal Commware.

Re: Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

#90

Post by bigstrat2003 »

cwizou wrote: post #30

The good thing about Modernist Cuisine is that it goes deep into some niche topics (gelling and hydrocolloids, food safety, etc etc), so if you like that kind of thing (and crazy photography of sliced in half stuff), it's great. In terms of recipes, some have mentioned it but it's barely practical, even if you like spending hours reproducing recipes from Michelin stars restaurant books. There are a few gems, like the…

> The at home version is a lot more practical but is also a bit dated at this point imo. The mac and cheese with sodium citrate is a good example of what to expect.

That recipe is an absolute banger, so are you saying that the rest of the book is full of great recipes as well?

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