Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food (8 page)

What about us geeks who eat dinner solo? Cooking for one presents a number of challenges, especially if you don’t want to spend too much time or money. Without someone to help share in the cooking and cleanup work, more complicated recipes become less attractive. And the cost of ingredients doesn’t scale down linearly, meaning that recipes with longer ingredient lists become less affordable. On the plus side, cooking for yourself has the great advantage of allowing you to truly experiment and improvise without worrying about what others think. Pasta and fish? Chicken in a red wine sauce? Chocolate and beets? The sky’s the limit.

Preparing a batch of a particular common ingredient can also save you a lot of time over the course of a week. If you’re trying to save money or watching what you eat, try cooking a large batch of chicken breasts or stir-fried tofu on the weekend. Having a batch of precooked ingredients can help challenge you, too. This can be a great way to play with flavors and learn about new combinations as well, since chicken or tofu day-in, day-out by itself can get pretty darn boring. You’ll end up being driven to experiment with seasonings!

One way you can reduce the price of ingredients is to amortize it: plan a number of meals in a row that use common perishable ingredients. Unused tomatoes and parsley purchased for a chicken dish can be used with eggs the next morning or in a lunchtime salad. Sticking to specific types of cuisine such as Italian also increases the amount of overlap in ingredients between recipes, since the regional variation in ingredients is much smaller. Another trick: if your grocery store has a salad bar, you can sometimes find the ingredient you’re looking for. If I’m making a pizza for myself, I’ll sometimes skip buying a whole red bell pepper and yellow bell pepper and snag just the amount I need from the salad bar at my grocery store. The best part? Presliced and already roasted. And because of the “buffet” pricing at the salad bar, I’ve sometimes found things to be cheaper!

Look for oven-safe plates and bowls. You can cook items like chicken tenderloins directly in the bowl, meaning fewer dishes to wash. Be careful with the hot bowl, though!

Leftover sauces, and sometimes entire dishes, can be recycled as components in entirely new dishes. (School cafeteria food!) Chicken and vegetables from one dinner can be recycled into chicken noodle soup. Tomato sauce made for a pasta dish can be reused in lasagna the next night, and the lasagna can be reused as an unexpectedly delicious filling in omelets. Leftover cake scraps or bread can be turned into bread pudding. Sandwiches are a great vehicle for odds and ends. Using dinner leftovers for breakfast can be a huge, untapped resource for creativity as well. A slice of pizza can be turned into a breakfast pizza
by cracking an egg on top and putting it under the broiler for a few minutes. Next time you’re in the kitchen, open the fridge door and scrounge around for leftovers, doing your best to see past the functional fixedness that we talked about earlier.

If you do find that cooking for one ends up being too expensive or time consuming, consider finding a cooking buddy with whom you can split the cost of groceries and cooking duties. Getting together with someone on a regular basis to spend a few hours cooking a few days’ worth of meals can also help ensure that you eat and socialize regularly, especially for the busy geek.

Anytime you have someone else in your home, you’re the host and are responsible for taking care of their comfort. This doesn’t mean stuffy formality. Even a quick “Hey, good to see you, help yourself to a drink in the kitchen!” goes a long way toward telling the guest what’s acceptable. Your responsibility starts the moment you extend the invitation and even includes those times when you’re
not
cooking. Inviting people over for a party with “food and drinks”? Make it clear whether you’re serving an actual meal or just appetizers.

The most important responsibility you have when cooking for others is keeping them safe from allergic reactions and foodborne illnesses. Ask ahead of time if your guests have any food allergies. Being aware of dietary restrictions and of food aversions or intolerances in advance will spare you last-minute surprises. If you are cooking for someone with a true food allergy, you should take extra precautions to avoid triggering an allergic reaction.

You might find some guests are vague regarding whether they have an aversion or an allergy, as some people think of food sensitivity as an allergy and don’t realize the burden they put chefs through by overstating their needs. I’ve known individuals who get gas from consuming too much bread. This doesn’t make them gluten intolerant, however! Likewise, lactose intolerance is different from lactose allergy: a small amount of lactose will not hurt lactose-intolerant individuals (depending upon their tolerance, they might even be able to taste a milk-based dish without discomfort), whereas those with a true allergy might go into anaphylactic shock and die. When a guest tells you that she is allergic to something, check if it is an intolerance or an outright allergy.

Closely related to food allergies is food preference. Sometimes, you’ll be cooking for guests who are following restricted diets, either limiting certain types of foods — e.g., vegetarians (no fish or meat), vegans (no animal products), lacto-ovo-pescetarians (milk, eggs, and seafood okay, but no other meats) — or limiting certain classes of foods — e.g., avoiding saturated fats, simple carbs, or salty foods. Either way, in these cases, pick a menu that keeps various side dishes in different serving containers — putting grilled veggies in one bowl, bread in another, roasted chicken in another — as opposed to, say, making a stew or casserole. You don’t need to plan the entire meal around the one individual on a restricted diet, but you should have at least one dish that is suitable. This allows you the freedom to choose anything from your standard repertoire for most of your guests, while still showing consideration and addressing the needs of that individual.

Beyond the actual menu planning, think about doing something special to show that you care. Even a minor touch — a tablecloth, special plates, anything beyond your daily ritual — will communicate thoughtfulness. One of the easiest ways of showing consideration is to have a few appetizers on hand for your guests to snack on before starting the meal. Simple things like bread and olives, pita and hummus, or fresh fruit are quick, easy, and useful for guests who are hungry before the meal is ready or while you wait for remaining guests to arrive — or, in the event of a kitchen meltdown, the pizza delivery guy.

Speaking of kitchen meltdowns, don’t try out new recipes with first-time guests. When it comes to picking a recipe, choose something that you’re comfortable making. You’ll be more relaxed cooking a dish that you’re familiar with, which will translate to a more relaxed atmosphere for everyone. This isn’t to say that experimenting with dishes needs to be limited to those times when you’re cooking alone. I certainly enjoy trying out new things with friends, because their feedback helps me understand how others react to new dishes. Restaurants do the same thing, using their staff as beta testers: one cook will use leftover bits from the normal meal service to make a “family meal,” and the better experiments can end up on the menu. Just keep in mind who your guests are and their general openness to experiments. If you’re not sure, stick with the familiar.

Pick a recipe that’s in line with what’s expected by your guests. Making sushi for someone who likes his meat well done is probably too much of a stretch. Some dishes lend themselves well to a more casual, family-style meal (e.g., lasagna), while others are better suited to being plated in the kitchen, where you can spend time on the presentation.

Finally, choose recipes that leave you time to spend with the guests. After all, they’re there to see you! Depending upon the complexity of the meal and the number of people you are cooking for, try to pick recipes that have a distinct prep phase that you can do in advance of your guests arriving. I survived hosting a four-course dinner party for 40 by prepping individual servings of duck confit sugo (see
Duck Confit Sugo
, earlier in this chapter) and individual chocolate cakes in small ramekins. As people arrived, I snatched the appropriate number of ramekins from the fridge and tossed them into the oven. This left me time to work on the other courses and still hang out with my guests. (I used the ramekins a few weeks later for making Christmas fruitcakes that I sent off to my friends.) This attention to planning will limit the amount of attention you need to give to the preparation of food and will free you up to interact and socialize with your guests. After all, it should be fun!

Adam Savage on Scientific Testing

PHOTO CC-BY-SA-3 0 PORKRIND ON EN WIKIPEDIA COM

Adam Savage is co-host of Discovery Channel’s
MythBusters,
a popular science program that examines rumors, myths, and conventional wisdom, “putting them to the test” with a scientific approach.

How do you go about testing a myth?

One of the earliest things we realized on the show is that you always have to have something to compare to. We would try to come up with an answer like: is this guy dead, is this car destroyed, is this an injury? And we would be trying to compare it to an absolute value, like X number of feet fallen equals dead. The problem is the world is very spongy and nonuniform, and trying to nail down a value like that can be really difficult. So we always end up doing relative tests. We end up doing a control under regular circumstances and then we test the myth under identical circumstances, and we compare the two things. In that comparison, we get to see our results.

We did one where we were testing whether or not you could tenderize steaks with explosives. We had to figure out what tenderness is. The problem is you can give two different people each a piece of steak from the same cut compared to a piece of steak from a different cut, and they might come up with two different assessments of which one is more tender. We actually did a whole day of testing that didn’t end up on film because we realized we were using the wrong parameters for assessing steak tenderness. The USDA actually has a machine for testing the tenderness of steak that measures the pounds of force it takes to punch a hole through a steak. We replicated that machine and to our great surprise, it worked exactly as it was supposed to. Coming up with something for $50 that equals the USDA testing equipment: that was thrilling!

How can testing a myth translate into learning more about cooking?

Changing one variable is probably the single hardest thing for people to understand. Change only one variable. It’s not like changing only a small number of variables; it’s really changing one variable at a time, because only then do you know what caused the change between your first test and your second test. You get so much clarity from the process that way.

I’m an avid cook. My wife and I both cook a lot of elaborate things, and we really do love playing around with single variables, changing things and learning how things work. We were reading Thomas Keller, and he talked about how salt is a flavor enhancer, and he mentioned that vinegar does a similar thing. It doesn’t add a new taste, but it often alters the taste that’s there. My wife was making a cauliflower soup, and it was kind of bland. I didn’t want to put any more salt in it, because I could tell it was about to go in the wrong direction. We tossed in a little bit of vinegar and the whole thing just woke up. It was thrilling! I love that.

Have you done other myths related to food?

We have — certainly a whole bunch of drinking myths. We did poppy seed bagels to see if eating a poppy seed bagel causes you to test positive for heroin, which is absolutely true. In fact, parolees are completely forbidden from eating poppy seed bagels. They’re told if you test positive for drugs, we are not going to wonder why. You are just going to go back to jail, so make it easy, don’t eat poppy seeds.

I had a whole episode written called the surreal gourmet, which ended with tenderizing steak with dynamite, but it had all those other things like poaching fish on your catalytic converter or cooking eggs in your dishwasher. Jamie loves the idea of tenderizing meat in the dryer.

I thought of roasting almonds in a dryer, but not tenderizing meat.

Also, the idea of
is it safe to eat fresh road kill
. We think that would be just hilarious and gross.

The problem-solving aspect of the show is really fascinating. Do you have any advice on how to get to where you want to be when problems arise?

The first thing to realize is that you’re not going to end up where you think. The world is smarter than you are. A craftsman isn’t somebody who never screws up. A craftsman screws up just as much as you do. They can just see it coming, and can adjust; it’s an ongoing process. Everybody’s oven heats at a different rate. You open it up to check, the temperature drops. There are all sorts of variables. Maybe it’s humid, maybe it’s not. Humidity was affecting all sorts of my wife’s cookie recipes. People tend to overfocus on the final product, when you’ve got to be awake to the process. So problem solving doesn’t mean doing whatever it takes to get to the end result; it means following the path that you’re on. You’re going to probably end up changing your definition of what the result is before you’re done.

The better you get, the more that things start to turn out like you planned. When my wife started doing really serious baking, I couldn’t believe how much of a difference just having all your ingredients at room temperature made in terms of the emulsifying and chemical reactions — getting the doughs flaky, for instance. Just the simple thing of pulling all of your ingredients out of the refrigerator an hour before you start cooking has a massive effect on the final product. Or things like certain kinds of berries in certain kinds of pastries; the acidity of the berries means having to add more baking soda. I love that. You just have to learn as you go.

What do you enjoy cooking?

My favorite thing to cook of all is eggs. After years of practice, I’ve almost mastered the pan flip for an omelet without the spatula. I’ve actually held brunches for 15 people where the theme was “come and I’ll cook you eggs any way you want.” My kids are both really getting into it now. They wake up (they’re 10-year-old twins) and they both have their specific ways that they like cooking eggs. My son Addison prefers the hobo egg, in which you cut a hole out of a piece of bread and fry an egg in that hole, and my son Riley likes scrambled eggs. He likes them a little bit on the hard side, but I’m trying to teach him not to cook them too much.

That does seem to be a common affliction, overcooking eggs and getting dry scrambled eggs.

With enough sauce, they’d work, but when you start to cook them right, it turns out that there is this tiny band in which they’re unbelievably good. That’s why I like the eggs. They’re kind of unforgiving in some ways and that’s really exciting.

One of the great things about cooking is that, unless you’re doing something really specifically unforgiving, most recipes are really quite impressively forgiving. That’s a part I really love. You can change all sorts of variables and it still comes out pretty darn good. It’s a great test platform.

How do you learn from the things that don’t succeed?

I hand-whipped my first whipped cream about six or seven years ago. I whipped it, and the very first thing I did once it was whipped was I whipped it too far on purpose. I thought, “I know this is perfect, but I want to know where the line is,” and I just kept on going until I had butter. It was surprisingly fast and taught me a really clear thing about exactly where you can go with whipping cream.

Whipped cream tastes great. Flavoring it and sweetening it is just trivial. If you’re good, you can do it almost as fast as it takes to get the mixers and the bowls out and do it all mechanically. It’s a lovely thing to sit there and talk to your guests while you’re hand-whipping cream.