A Review of Modernist Cuisine - Volume 1

[Anonymous Modernist 301]

My wife rolled her eyes when I asked her for a $600 cookbook for my 50^th birthday. She immediately reminded me of the exhaustive list of my cooking appliances, both current and posthumous, our cabinets full of our current cookbook collection and inventoried the various gadgets stuffed into every nook and cranny in our large kitchen. Yet she ultimately relented. And, so I set off to acquire a copy of Modernist Cuisine.

I will spare you the long saga of the actual acquisition of the volumes, although the process involved haranguing phone calls, supplier lies and misrepresentations. Eventually, a third-party paragon of fairness interceded and I soon received a call from my wife that the box had come. ‚“It‚’s heavy,” she said. ‚“Are you sure you only bought the cookbook?” her tone indicated that I might have once again duped her by what she calls tag-a-long buying (a scheme where you promise to buy just one item, but under the cover of darkness you actually sneak in another kitchen gadget into the order).

It was certainly a big box! I had finally extracted my prize: five huge volumes encased in a ¼ inch

Plexiglas book container. Each book measured 10 ½ inches by 13 inches with cover photographs fit for a coffee

table. The sixth book, a soft cover kitchen manual, fit beautifully on top of its Plexiglas home. I gingerly opened the first book and audibly gasped with surprise. Each glossy page was packed with photographs, statistics, charts and graphs. The $600 list price was starting to look inexpensive (I got for less but cannot reveal my source). I positioned the volumes on the countertop and plotted my next move.

I first decided to get acquainted with the table of contents. Segmented into five volumes, the set includes: Volume 1: History and Fundamentals; Volume 2: Techniques and Equipment; 3: Animals and Plants; 4: Ingredients and Preparations; and 5: Plated-Dish Recipes. As a home chef who primarily cooks for my family and to maintain sanity, my first instinct was to dive into Volume 2 to see what I could whip up.

Instead, increasingly intrigued by the first volume, I decided to start by reading a few pages about the authors and their journeys and 335 pages later I put it down. The rest of this review focuses only on Volume 1. I know now to read each volume in order.

Chapter 1 covers the history of food. One of the central arguments described is that of the ”˜traditionalist‚’ versus the ”˜modernist.‚’ The debate probes: even if you can still eat the way your ancestors did, why would you? Further, food ingredients we associate with authentic regional cooking are, for the most part, not indigenous to the region ' so what is the meaning of ‚“traditional” in this context? Moreover, recipes we consider traditional today were really modernist in their time ' e.g. ‚“three centuries elapsed before the fruits [tomatoes] were fully accepted, due to lingering concerns over their safety.” Throughout the chapter, due deference is paid to the pioneers of the modernist movement and their origins and contributions.

After completing Chapter 2: Microbiology for Cooks, I was thoroughly horrified. The authors detailed surprising cycles of illness called ‚“The Strange Life Cycle of Toxoplasma gondi” which I will leave as a story to be discovered (hint: page 127). The book covers an accomplished range, from ‚“Why You Shouldn‚’t Eat People” to ‚“Crazy Cats and Mad Moose.”

Chapter 3 delves into the Food Safety, only furthering my depression. Confirming my suspicions, the chapter affirmed that various government food agencies are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. A recipe the FDA follows emerged in my head: 1 cup reality; 1.5 cups supposition; fold in one half cup of whipped hysteria to manipulate the masses and shake violently. Let cook indefinitely and deny any errors made along the way. I think the most useful part of the whole Volume is found on pages 192 to 194 ' Simplified Cooking Standards Based on Science. These pages and the authors‚’ preceding discussion are worth the reader‚’s investment and will ultimately lead to safer and tastier food results. Also, you simply must read the section on hygiene; review the UV powder simulation contamination on your hands.

By Chapter 4, I was ready to be uplifted. Instead, I found a chapter called Food and Health, where the authors systematically dismantle numerous long-held beliefs using statistical evidence. The net of this chapter is that we know very little about which foods cause what long term problems, but our pharmaceutical companies, medical community and billion dollar diet industry often disregard facts or statistical evidence anyway. Instead, they try to make a buck off of marketing tantalizing lifestyle changes.

Chapter 5: Heat and Energy and Chapter 6: The Physics of Food and Water cheered me up with upbeat facts about how things cook and freeze, essentially covering the whys that surround the hows. I recognized most of this content from my days of engineering school.

As I closed Volume 1, I was surprised by how much I‚’d learned in this brief time, despite the fact that I‚’ve been cooking for 35 years. If I had gone with my impulse and skipped the first volume, I would have missed incalculably valuable information,

and maintained my old mindset. Most books either fail to thoroughly cover the scope of material found in Volume 1 or cannot sustain the financial costs of publishing to do so with style and rigor. So when you buy Modernist Cuisine, start on page one.

If you'd like to see my review of volume 2 when I finish it, let me know.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/glenndhousesr

[Anonymous Modernist 708]

Great review. I'd love to read your review on volume two when you have completed it.