"Modernist Cuisine" by Myhrvold, Young & Bilet (Part 2)

[AaronM]

That "skill" is acquired by extreme levels of repetition. If the number of poorly done steaks I've received is any indication, it is also a rather rare one (see what I did there). Otherwise, using a thermometer is not a "crutch", it is quality control.

I suppose I'm the exception in this instance, but I worked as the chief butcher/grill cook at a restaurant for 2 years, then at a Ruth's Chris for a little under a year serving hundreds a day, and in that time I miscooked 2 steaks. I'm proud of that record, but I also strive to always be the absolute best I can at whatever the task at hand is.

I'm certainly not saying to not use a thermometer, I'm just saying that in a professional situation it shouldn't always be needed. If you have the time and supplies handy it's a good quality control, but I don't think the future of dining is replacing skill with a thermopen.

Again, this pertains to the professional kitchen, not the home cook. If a stage was trying to pull out a thermometer for every piece of meat they tried to cook, I'd assume that perhaps they weren't ready for the kitchen.

This is all thrown right out the window if you're dealing with something other than grill/saute - like sous vide or baking.

[Chris Amirault]

I suppose I'm the exception in this instance, but I worked as the chief butcher/grill cook at a restaurant for 2 years, then at a Ruth's Chris for a little under a year serving hundreds a day, and in that time I miscooked 2 steaks.

You mean you miscooked two steaks that you're aware of? After all, it's possible that patrons got other miscooked steaks and didn't report them, or decided "Oh, THAT's what medium rare is," etc.

I don't at all mean this as a criticism of your claim or your expertise! I merely want to point out that personal anecdotal evidence is notoriously tricky to use in claims of accuracy, consistency, and quality control.

[AaronM]

Fair enough.

[bostonapothecary]

Green Cuisine in Legoland

The theme is consistent: more from less. Necessity is a mother of invention while the illusion of plenty may be first cousin to lost opportunity: America, take note

a great article in times opinion pages about rene redzepi and his "trash cooking"

besides cooking food that i'm sure is aesthetically fantastic, noma is reattaching positive symbolic value to food sources that were symbolically bankrupt. this reattachment is very important to beauty's composite nature (aesthetic, symbolic) the sustainability idea that redzepi attaches to all his aesthetic work makes him widely accepted even though he is probably following the "soulless" MC play book in the kitchen. though Noma does appear to have a bigger emphasis on aesthetic substitution than i've ever seen in a cook book (haven't yet seen MC). its easier to feel and to practice than to convert to language and teach.

fantastic work. i can't wait to infuse my MC enabled creations with my own symbolic values. the potential is just so vast.

[Marlene]

Can I just mention that it's the heaviest set of books I've ever received?

[bobag87]

While other reviews may have more substance, my 5 year old daughter just pronounced the following on the Mac and Cheese made using the MC recipe:

"This is so yummy, I wish it would stay in my tummy for ever."

[emannths]

While other reviews may have more substance, my 5 year old daughter just pronounced the following on the Mac and Cheese made using the MC recipe:

"This is so yummy, I wish it would stay in my tummy for ever."

nathanm--you've got your blurb for the second edition!

[edsel]

Can I just mention that it's the heaviest set of books I've ever received?

The cheap bookshelves I put them on are looking a bit saggy. Time to upgrade the furniture.

[bobag87]

I don't know about that, but I will say anyone who is arguing about these volumes being too "high brow" or unaccessible for the home cook might want to discuss it with my daughter. With two ingredients ordered easily online and regular grocery store items (cheese, beer and pasta), this was an easy dish to prepare (fun for kids) and was absolutely delicious. The possibilities for the leftover cheese product are endless -- I am convinced that I am on the verge of creating the best queso recipe ever -- a major issue here in Texas.

[nathanm]

A couple general comments.

Canada has not recieved any books yet, but will in the next shipment in late march, so should ship by early April.

I am glad the mac and cheees is a hit!

It is absolutely true that somebody on hot line in a steakhouse, can develop great skills for cooking meat without a thermometer. They still won't be as accurate as a thermometer (i.e. plus or minus several degrees) but they will be accurate enough.

However, I don't think that there is something wrong with a steak cooked using a themometer. The steaks won't taste any better if doneness is determined by poking with a finger or using a timer than with a thermometer.

Actually, a timer is another example of a useful tool - you can cook without one, but a lot of things turn out better if you use a timer.

[IndyRob]

Can I just mention that it's the heaviest set of books I've ever received?

Well, to be fair, I think that a year's collection of National Geographic magazines are frightfully heavy. The sort of heavy that makes one astounded by the extent of the force of gravity. I believe articles have been written that propose that their combined weight threatens to crush the Earth's crust.

[nathanm]

I have two long posts on the Modernist Cuisine website.

The first is about the current and near future shipping issues with the book.

The second is about how many copies should we print for the second edition.

I have until Monday to figure out how many copies for the 2nd printing - and I am soliciting advice if anybody has a good rationale. The post describes all of the factors we are thinking about.

Edited March 12, 2011 by nathanm (log)

[FrogPrincesse]

After > 9 months of hesitation, I finally took the plunge and moved the book from my "Wish List" to my shopping cart, and placed my order.

Estimated delivery April 22, 2011 - May 13, 2011

I hope it was not too late to get the first printing. I am excited!!

[Wholemeal Crank]

Still seeing an estimated delivery date of next week, but no 'your order has shipped' or delay expected messages. Very odd. Given how late I was to the pre-order frenzy, it seems highly unlikely I'd get one of the very first copies....but still hoping. My birthday is coming up soon, would be great timing to get it just before....

[LetterRip]

Indeed, McGee has many pages on rice, though he does not say anything about why cooking it would not work perfectly every time. He points out a number of ways of cooking it, but doesn't mention pot size as an important parameter.

I'm speculating here so my apologies if I'm completely wrong

Two things I would try - distilled water - there was a thread somewhere on this site that mentioned using distilled water working for soaking old beans where distilled water would work to soften the bean whereas they would remain hard otherwise.

Second thing I would try is adding some distilled vinegar - which is claimed to make rice fluffier.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5589754_cook-rice-adding-vinegar-water.html

I don't know enough about the structure of rice to know if the above are useful advice just some random thoughts.

For pot size - hmm that would give differences in thermal mass, it would change the surface area of the water, neither of those would I expect to be significant factors for boiling rice. I can't imagine why it might be a factor (only reason it might be is if you dump a bunch of rice in and the water loses boil due to a pot with really low thermal mass. To counter this I would add salt to increase the boiling point, and put a lid on to increase the boiling point)

Edited March 12, 2011 by LetterRip (log)

[LetterRip]

Is there any way to cook cranberry beans without losing their awesome coloration?

I think you've stumped the book there, Renn -- but I'm also pretty sure that the answer is a flat "no," because the pigments in mottled beans like cranberry beans are water-soluble.

ETA: Just checked McGee (485): yep, they are.

Hmm I know some pigments can be stabilized during cooking by adding cream of tartar,

Color Preservation

When vegetables are boiled, they often lose their pigmentation and wind up looking visually unappealing. Cream of tartar can be added to boiling water in order to help prevent boiled vegetables from losing their colors. Since cream of tartar is an acid, it can keep the vegetable pigments intact and reduce browning. Only a small amount of cream of tartar (about a half-teaspoon) is needed to preserve vegetable color without affecting the taste.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5380504_cream-tartar-do.html

Not sure if it works for the particular pigment of cranberry beans though.

[LetterRip]

And what this book does is to show that anyone with enough money to buy the book and the with right expensive gadgets, with a scientific mind, an analytical bent and a bit of practice can be an accomplished cook, no matter the skill level or years of experience. And logically, one might say, so? That’s a good thing – kind of evens the playing field. And maybe even leaves more room for the creative process now that the basics are nailed down.

But I feel like it takes all the nostalgia and romance out of the process.

What is interesting is that this almost exactly parallels the view artists had of computer animation, and early computer animators had of advances in computer animation tools. Technical tasks that took a long time to master were made faster, easier, or obsolete by technical advances. Now artists can know little or nothing about the technical side, and produce brilliant art work and animations. Instead of painstaking crafting of each polygon, you can sculpt in detail as if working with clay, then retopologize. Instead of painstaking placement of bones and careful weighting of each vertex so it bends right, you can autorig and autoweight in minutes. Instead of painstaking hand animation of facial expressions, you can get a facial motion capture rig and act out the animation. The tools are making artist more productive than ever, allowing new artists to start at a point that it took artists of the past 5 years to achieve. Asside from nastalgia though, today is far better. It allows artists to get to the 'art' part of art immediately instead of having to constantly fight technical limitations. One no longer has to be half technician/half artist, but instead can be pure artist.

[LetterRip]

I totally disagree regarding the analogy to Impressionism and modern art - with those the end result is different from earlier art forms, but the methods and materials used were still traditional.

Going back to my earlier post, I think the better analogy is graphic design, creating art using computer imaging and photoshopping. Or with music, creating it with the use of the synthsizer rather than orchestral instruments.

I think the synthsizer analogy is apt. To write a complete orchestral symphony and have it played beautifully one no longer needs an orchestra, just skill in the creation of the original scoring, about 3000$ worth of software and 1500$ worth of hardware. Now composers of great skill are no longer dependent on finding the significant funding needed to get their compositions played, and the additional skills of conducting and auditioning to get the music played correctly, or of finding a venue with good acoustics to get the sound to resonate correctly. It takes it from being a vast array of necessary skills and large amount of resources, to one dependent on much more limited resources and primarily the individuals skill.

[LindaK]

If folks haven’t already read it, the lengthy review in Wired magazine is worth checking out.

Two paragraphs near the end struck me as provocative and relevant to the conversation here:

Ironically,

Modernist Cuisine

will start tormenting UPS drivers with its bulk at the same time that the movement it celebrates—avant-garde, science-driven cooking—is waning. Ferran Adrià is closing El Bulli this year. Achatz is opening a new restaurant this spring that won’t emphasize the techniques he helped popularize. “I think the book will have long-lasting importance in gastronomy,” Achatz says. “But the particular style of cooking that it highlights might not. It’s clear that the tide is turning...”

The tools and techniques that chefs like Adrià and Achatz popularized are trickling down… But the artistic part, the creativity of avant-garde chefs that Myhrvold finds so inspiring, seems to be shrinking. If that’s so,

Modernist Cuisine

isn’t the

Principia

of the kitchen but its

Consolation of Philosophy

, the book that collects and summarizes all the knowledge in a field at the moment the field implodes. It’s a eulogy.

[LindaK]

As I write this, I'm listening to an interview with Nathan on National Public Radio about MC. The NPR website says you'll be able to listen to it online at noon EST: Science Nerds Meet Foodies in 'Modernist Cuisine'

Interviewer Linda Wertheimer ends by noting, "Amazingly, people are buying it."

Nice interview, Nathan!

[Fat Guy]

The claim that modernism is imploding is more of a leap than the evidence can support.

El Bulli is not closing as in going out of business. It is closing to retool as part of a nonprofit foundation and the planned reopening is for 2014. It goes into its hiatus as the top restaurant in the world -- not because, for example, the clientele got old and the food got boring.

Achatz and Kokonas are opening an arguably non-modernist restaurant (if anything it is postmodern), Next, but Alinea is still going strong. Alinea and Achatz are currently emphasizing the emotional component of food, and it's true that Achatz in public appearances is saying we're moving beyond modernism, but the Alinea kitchen remains resolutely non-traditional and high-tech.

That 6,000 copies of this $500 book have been snapped up is just amazing. That the current internal debate is whether to order 20,000 or 25,000 more is pretty strong evidence that modernism is not imploding. Rather, it seems to evidence that the trickle down has been profound in its extent. Home cooks using the Sous Vide Supreme, etc.

[JBailey]

It is my impression that while the food and recipes Chef Achatz will be taking to his two new restaurants is to be different, he continues to use some of the most successful equipment he has found on the journey. I imagine we will read that equipment from Polyscience and CookTek, among others, will be in the kitchen. Maybe he will be using what is already available for purchase, but it is equally likely he will be trying some next generation kitchen appliances.

[emannths]

Next may not be particularly modernist, but the cocktail bar Aviary sure is. At least if their youtube teasers are any indication:

[AaronM]

The assertions of that Wired article are bogus. This is the problem with people who would ever talk about 'food trends.'

"Oh, I'm so over liquid nitrogen."

Well, the other 99% of the population that hasn't had the chance are still very interested.

[nathanm]

AaronM makes a good point. People love to identify new trends, or claim that trends are over. Being late to recognize a trend isn't very special, so people tend to jump the gun.

In MC chapter 1 I discuss an article by Gael Greene from New York Magazine in 1981. In it she says that Nouvelle Cusine is "over, finee, mort, dead". It is the sort of broad prouncement that journalists love to make, especially those who position themselves as jaded sophisticates. Instead of being dead, Nouvelle went to in inspire a generation of American chefs.