Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food (5 page)

I asked [food-marketing researcher Harry Balzer] how, in an ideal world, Americans might begin to undo the damage that the modern diet of industrial prepared food has done to our health.

“Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

• Have fun! Learning is about curiosity, not work.
  
• Know your type. Like to grill? Then grill. Rather bake? Then bake.
  
• Read the whole recipe before starting, and make sure you understand each step.
  
• Take time to taste things, both to adjust seasoning and to learn how the taste changes during cooking.
  
• Don’t be afraid to burn dinner!
  

I was talking with a friend of mine, a fellow geek who was just starting to learn to cook, when he said:

He’s right: make something you like, give yourself enough time to enjoy the process, and have fun doing it. Slaving through the
Joy
or Knuth will work, but it’s not the way most people learn to cook or write code. It’d be like picking up a dictionary to learn how to write. The culinary equivalent of
The Oxford English Dictionary
or
The Art of Computer Programming
is Harold McGee’s
On Food and Cooking
(Scribner). It’s a fantastic reference and a substantial contribution to our understanding of the everyday processes in food, and you should make space for a copy on your bookshelf. But it is not a book for learning how to cook.

If there’s one secret about learning how to cook, it’s this: have fun in the kitchen. Go experiment. Play. Take that hacker curiosity that you use in front of the keyboard and bring it with you into the kitchen, to the grocery store, and on your next meal out. Cook to please yourself. Doing someone else’s work is nowhere near as much fun as working on your own projects, and it’s no different in the kitchen: pick something
you
want to learn how to cook and try making it.

Caught between two different ways of cooking something? Do an A/B test: make it one way, then a second way, and see which works better.

Don’t cook a new dish for an important guest. If you’re nervous about how it’ll turn out, cook for just yourself, so you don’t have to worry about trying to impress someone (especially a potential romantic interest!). It’s entirely okay to screw up and toss it in the trash; it’s no different than a programmer refactoring code. Most people’s first drafts of software, food, or books need refinement before they’re ready to ship. Sure, it’ll hurt a little on the wallet, but it’s not wasted: you
did
learn something, yes? Success!

Finally, don’t expect your cooking to taste exactly like restaurant or packaged foods. For one, a lot of commercial cooking is designed to appeal to the palette via a salty, fatty, or sugary assault on the senses. Tasty? Yes. Healthy? Not exactly. Learning to cook is a great way to control what you eat and, by extension, your health.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don’t. Or is it 10 types: those who know binary, and those who don’t? All joking aside, “binning” yourself into the right category will make the learning process a whole heck of a lot easier. And in case you’re the irreverent type who insists you don’t fit into any standard category, work with me here. Consider the following:
vi
or
emacs
? Windows or Mac? PHP or Python? Sure, you might not have strong preferences, but it’s still clear that divisions exist.

The culinary world has its divisions, too. The biggest one in the professional world is that of
cooks
versus
bakers
. Cooks have a reputation for an intuitive, “toss it into the pot” approach, adding a pinch of this or a dash of that to “course-correct” along the way. Bakers are stereotypically described as precise, exact in their measurements, and methodically organized. Even culinary schools such as
Le Cordon Bleu
split their programs into cooking (“cuisine”) and baking (“patisserie”). But this is probably due to the differences in technique and execution. Cooking is split into two stages: prep work and then an on-demand, line-cook portion. Pastry and baking is almost always done production-style, completed in advance of when the order comes in.

This isn’t to say that professional cooks hate baking, or that bakers don’t enjoy cooking. But if you find yourself dipping your finger into the cake batter and being tempted to add more of this or that, pay attention to what it means. If you’re the type who really likes to have an exact set of instructions to follow, taking the guesswork out of the process, learn to relax and develop your kitchen instincts when whipping up a dinner. Give yourself permission to dislike some parts of cooking. For most of us, it’s a hobby, not a profession, so it’s okay to skip the culinary equivalent of documenting your code.

What Type of Cook Are You?

When I prepare a meal, I typically:

1. Rely on classic dishes my family has always enjoyed
   
2. Substitute more healthful ingredients
   
3. Follow a recipe step-by-step
   
4. Rarely use recipes and like to experiment
   
5. Go all out and try to impress my guests
   

Some of my favorite ingredients are:

1. Lots of bread, starches, and red meat
   
2. Fish and vegetables
   
3. Beef and chicken
   
4. Vegetables, spices, and unusual ingredients
   
5. A trendy ingredient I saw on the Food Network
   

In my free time I like to:

1. Visit with friends and family
   
2. Exercise or take a fitness class
   
3. Organize the house
   
4. Take part in creative or artistic pursuits
   
5. Be spontaneous and seek adventure
   

My favorite things to cook are:

1. Home-baked goodies
   
2. Foods with fresh ingredients and herbs
   
3. Casseroles
   
4. Ethnic foods and wok dishes
   
5. Anything that lets me fire up the grill
   

Other people describe me as:

1. Really friendly
   
2. Health-conscious
   
3. Diligent and methodical
   
4. Curious
   
5. Intense
   

There may be overlap in the answers you give, but is there one letter that you picked most often? Here’s what your answers say about your cooking style:

1. Giving:
    Friendly, well-liked, and enthusiastic, giving cooks seldom experiment, they love baking, and like to serve tried-and-true family favorites, although that sometimes means serving less healthful foods.
   
2. Healthy:
    Optimistic, book-loving, nature enthusiasts, healthy cooks experiment with fish, fresh produce, and herbs. Health comes first, even if it means sometimes sacrificing taste.
   
3. Methodical:
    Talented cooks who rely heavily on recipes. The methodical cook has refined tastes and manners. Their creations always look exactly like the picture in the cookbook.
   
4. Innovative:
    Creative and trend-setting, innovative cooks seldom use recipes and like to experiment with ingredients, cuisine styles, and cooking methods.
   
5. Competitive:
    The “Iron Chef” of the neighborhood, competitive cooks have dominant personalities and are intense perfectionists who love to impress their guests.
   

Used by permission of Brian Wansink, author of
Mindless Eating

Avoid Problem Exists Between Knife And Chair–type errors by Reading The F’ing Recipe! Recipes
are
code, although they require some interpretation, so read the recipe, top to bottom, before starting. One interviewee, Lydia Walshin, explains:

Every. Word. Matters. I’ve watched geeks with PhDs in chemistry skip right over steps that say “turn off heat” in the middle of a recipe that involves melting chocolate in simmering port. Turn off heat? But melting things requires heat! In fact, the residual heat from the port will melt the chocolate, and this way you don’t accidentally burn it.

It’s okay to go “off recipe.” In fact, it’s a great way to learn; just do it intentionally. Maybe you don’t have all the ingredients and want to substitute something else. Perhaps the recipe is poorly written or has errors. Or, as in programming, you can see there’s more than one way to do it and you want to do it differently. A recipe isn’t a strict protocol, but do understand the suggested protocol before deviating.

There’s a lot of room for personal preference in cooking. Just because a recipe for hot chocolate might say “½ cup heavy cream, 1 cup milk,” that doesn’t mean you
must
use those quantities. As another interviewee put it, “Please, let’s get off the recipes!” I couldn’t agree more. If you’re following a recipe and think it needs more or less of something, or could benefit from an extra spice, go for it. I usually stick to the recipe the first time I make something, but after that, all bets are off. I’ll pull out a pencil, make notes, change quantities, drop and add ingredients. I encourage you to do that to this book! After making something, take a pencil and make notes as to what you’d do differently next time. That way, when you next pick up the book, you’ll remember how to tweak the recipe to your taste. (And if there are any errors in the text, you won’t repeat them.)

If a brownie recipe calls for walnuts, but you really like almonds, yes, it’ll still work! Out of vanilla extract? Those chocolate chip cookies will be fine. Your timer says the chicken has been in for the prescribed time, but it’s still got that gross, raw chicken look? Pop it back in the oven. (Better yet, use a probe thermometer, as explained in
Thermometers and timers
in
Chapter 2
.)

In most modern cookbooks, recipes are laid out in two sections: ingredients and methods. The ingredients section lists the quantities and prep steps for each of the ingredients, and the methods section describes how to combine them. Recipes in this book are laid out in a more conversational format that walks you through the recipes with ingredients listed as they come up. Pay attention to the notes, as they show where you can do things differently.

To get started, consider the recipe for hot chocolate on the following page.

The recipes in this book give both weight in grams and standard U.S. volume-based quantities. Sometimes, the weights are rounded up or down a bit. 1 cup milk, for example, actually weighs 256 grams (1 cup = 237 ml). We’ll cover when to use weight and when to use volume in
Chapter 2
, but be aware that the conversions given between the two are sometimes rounded for convenience’s sake.

What kind of milk? Whole milk? Skim? If a recipe doesn’t specify, it shouldn’t matter too much, although as a general rule I tend to split the difference and grab lowfat/semi-skimmed milk. Sometimes the choice is governed by taste preference, so if you’re used to that watery stuff or are the stick-of-butter type, go for it. Some cookbooks will specify defaults in their introductions, perhaps defining milk as whole milk. The most common generic term is flour. When it’s called for, you can assume that what you need is AP (all-purpose) flour. AP flour really isn’t all-purpose; it just has a moderate amount of gluten (10–12%) as compared to cake flour (6–8%) or bread flour (12–14%).

When a recipe calls for something “to taste,” add a pinch, taste it, and continue adding until you think it is balanced. What constitutes balanced is a matter of cultural background and personal preference for some ingredients, especially seasoning ingredients such as salt, lemon juice, vinegar, and hot sauce. There’s some evidence that some of these preferences are actually a matter of biological differences between the way different people taste, as discussed in
Chapter 3
.

Hot Chocolate

In a saucepan, gently heat over low heat until hot, but do not boil:

• 1 cup (250g) milk
  
• ½ cup (125g) heavy cream
  

Once the milk and cream are hot, turn off heat, add, and whisk until completely melted:

• 3 tablespoons (40g) chopped bittersweet chocolate
  

Salt to taste. (Why add salt? See
Salty
in
Chapter 3
.)

Notes

• Try adding a few pinches of cinnamon or cayenne pepper. For a smoky version, use powdered chipotle peppers. For a lighter version, use just milk.
  
• Be careful not to burn the chocolate! Adding chocolate to hot liquid with the heat off will prevent this.
  

Oaxacan Drinking Chocolate

Heat until hot (stovetop or microwave) in a bowl that you can whisk in:

• ½ cup (125g) whole milk
  
• ½ cup (125g) water
  

If your mug is wide enough, you can use a whisk directly in the mug, rolling it back and forth between your palms.

Once hot, remove from heat and add 2 to 3 small squares, about 20 to 30 grams, of Oaxacan chocolate (“Mexican chocolate”). Thoroughly whisk to melt the chocolate and combine.

Notes

• The Oaxacan (roughly “o-a-hawk-an”) — who live in a region of Mexico known for chocolate production — use a chocolate that has skipped the conching process, which Europeans use to create a smoother chocolate. Oaxacan chocolate has sugar and sometimes cinnamon added into it as well.
  
• Pre-Columbian Oaxacan would have used only water rather than including milk. Try making this variation and compare. For a modern dairy-free version, replace both the milk and water with hazelnut milk, which makes for a fantastically light taste.
  

f(g(x)) != g(f(x))
Translation? Order of operations is important! “3 tablespoons bittersweet chocolate, chopped” is
not
the same thing as “3 tablespoons chopped bittersweet chocolate.” The former calls for 3 tablespoons of chocolate that are then chopped up (taking up more than 3 tablespoons), whereas the latter refers to a measure of chocolate that has already been chopped. When you see recipes calling for “1 cup nuts, chopped,” measure the nuts,
then
chop; likewise, if the recipe calls for “1 cup chopped nuts,” chop the nuts and
then
measure out 1 cup.