Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food
Page 5
Let’s use pancakes as an example. They’re quick to make, and the ingredients are cheap, so if you want to try variations, you’re not risking financial meltdown. (One friend told me about learning to de-bone animals in culinary school. It basically amounted to "do it 100 times, and by the time you’re done, you’ll know how to do it." That’s gotta add up.) Start by going online and searching for "pancake recipe."
Here’s the thought process that runs through my head. I look at three or four different recipes, reading through at least the ingredient list. Of the recipes, usually one of them will be an outlier with odd instructions or require something I don’t have on hand—say, yogurt—or call for ingredients that I’m not in the mood for (nothing against peanut butter). Of the remaining few, I look at the ratio of ingredients and pick one that looks reasonable. Don’t worry if it turns out not to be reasonable; you’ll learn afterward that it wasn’t—that’s the point!
Then, it’s off to the kitchen. The first time I make something from a recipe, I try to follow it as precisely as I can, even if I think it should be altered. For pancakes, I might think the batter is too runny (add more flour) or thick (add more milk). Or maybe the batter looks fine, but it comes out too thin (add more baking powder for cakier pancakes). Regardless, on the first pass, I remain true to the recipe because sometimes it’ll surprise me. I love it when this happens; it means there’s something I don’t understand and it gives me a chance to correct my mental model of how things work.
If you really want to geek out, print out a handful of recipes and figure out the ratios between the ingredients in each recipe, and then look at the differences in the ratios between the recipes. Why would some ingredients remain at a relatively constant percentage of the recipe while others differ? Even if you can’t answer the why, you’ll have a huge clue as to what’s critical in the recipe. If buttermilk pancake recipes always call for baking soda, there’s probably a chemical reaction going on with the baking soda. Compare those recipes to nonbuttermilk ones. Besides leaving out the buttermilk, there’s no baking soda. From this, you can infer that the baking soda is reacting with the buttermilk. Sure enough, buttermilk has a pH of 4.4–4.8, while regular milk has a pH of ~6.7, so it follows that baking soda will buffer and neutralize the more acidic buttermilk. (See Chemical Leaveners in Chapter 5 for more about the chemistry of baking soda.)
The following chart is the breakdown for eight pancake recipes that came up for me on an Internet search for "pancake recipes."
Eigen Pancakes: The Hello, World! of Recipes
No one’s ever wrong on the Internet, so the average of a whole bunch of right things must be righter, right? The quantities here are based on the average of the eight different pancake recipes from an online search. For each ingredient, I converted the measurement to grams and then calculated that ingredient’s percentage of the total weight of the recipe. (This is somewhat like a "baker’s percentage," in which ingredients are given as a percentage of the weight of flour in a recipe.)
In a mixing bowl, measure out and whisk together:
1½ cups (190g) flour
2 tablespoons (25g) sugar
2 teaspoons (10g) baking powder
½ teaspoon (3g) salt
In a separate, microwave-safe bowl, melt:
2 tablespoons (25g) butter
Note
By default, assume that the order of ingredients in a recipe indicates the order in which you should add the ingredients into your bowl. It doesn’t always matter, of course, but in this case you should add the milk before the eggs to prevent the eggs from cooking in the hot butter.
Add to the butter and whisk to combine thoroughly:
1¼ cups (330g) milk
2 small or 1 extra-large (80g) eggs
Pour the dry ingredients into the liquid ingredients and mix them together with a whisk or spoon until just incorporated. Little pockets of flour are okay; you want to avoid overstirring the batter to minimize the amount of gluten formed from two proteins, glutenin and gliadin, present in flour (they crosslink and bond together to create a stretchy, net-like matrix—think French bread).
Place a nonstick frying pan on a burner set to medium-high. Wait until the pan is hot. The standard test is to toss a few drops of water into the pan and see if they sizzle; the geek test is to take an IR thermometer and check that the pan is around 400°F / 200°C. Use a ladle, measuring cup, or ice cream scoop to pour about half a cup of batter into the pan. As the first side cooks, you’ll see bubbles forming on the top surface of the pancake. Flip the pancake after those bubbles have started to form, but before they pop (about two minutes).
Note
Wolfram|Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com) is a great resource for converting standard measurements to metric. Enter 1T sugar and it’ll tell you 13g; enter the entire Eigen Pancake recipe—use "+" between individual ingredients—and it’ll tell you 38 grams of fat, 189 grams of carbs, and 46 grams of protein.
Pancakes are a great way to teach cooking to kids. This is the first recipe my parents taught me.
Notes
If you use a nonstick frying pan, you don’t need to butter the pan first. If you’re using a regular sauté pan, butter it and then wipe out as much of the butter as you can with a paper towel. Too much butter on the surface of the pan will prevent parts of the pancake from reaching temperatures hot enough for browning reactions, as you can see here in the pancake on the left.
When a recipe calls for an egg, what size should you use? By default, use large eggs, unless you’re in the EU, in which case use medium eggs. (Fun egg trivia: quail eggs weigh about 9 grams on average, while duck eggs weigh around 70 grams. I was happy to learn that ducks themselves also weigh about 8 times more than quails.)
Cracking an egg? Tap it on the counter, not the edge of a bowl. The shell of an egg cracked on a flat surface will have larger pieces that aren’t pushed into the egg. Eggs cracked on a sharp lip are much more likely to have little shards of shell poked into them that then end up in the bowl and have to be fetched out.
Egg cracked on edge of bowl.
Egg cracked on flat surface.
Reading Between the Lines
If you’re still with me and haven’t already skipped to "the fun part," here are a few more thoughts on recipes, plus my favorite dish, duck confit sugo.
Recipes are, by definition, documentation of what works for their authors. When reading a recipe, realize that it’s only a suggestion, and it’s also abbreviated. Unlike software, where given the same code a machine will execute it the same way regardless of the hardware (at least in theory), the same recipe given to a dozen different experienced chefs will yield a dozen variations.
The main reason for differences in execution isn’t inexperience or error; it’s that recipes themselves are only notes, like a score or script. The oldest known recipe dates back to around 1,700 BC and reads more like a tweet than a scientific protocol.
Note
For a good history on food, see http://www.foodtimeline.org.
It wasn’t until sometime in the 1800s that cookbooks began to give more precise measurements (for an example, search Google Books for "Boston Cooking-School Cook Book"). Even with today’s precise measurements, variability in ingredients is beyond our control. A teaspoon of your dried oregano won’t necessarily be the same strength as a teaspoon of the recipe author’s dried oregano, due to age, breakdown of the chemicals (carvacrol in this case), and variations in production and processing. To a good chef, recipes aren’t about exact reproductions of the original work; they’re reminders of combinations, ratios, and steps.
In most recipes, the measurement accuracy exceeds the error tolerances; that is, if you’re off by a few percentage points on quantity of flour, it won’t make a marked difference in the results. In cooking, does it matter that this egg has slightly more of the compound lecithin than that egg, or that one onion has slightly more water than a second one? Probably not. But in baking, the error tolerances ar
e tighter than they are in cooking. It’s a small difference between the right amount of water to hold a dough together and too much water, making the dough too wet to dry when baking. In these sorts of situations, the recipe should give you hints such as "drizzle water into food processor until the dough forms a ball." When you see these kinds of things, you’ll get better results if you think to yourself, "why would the recipe say to hold back some of the water and drizzle it in?"
Maureen Evans’ Twitter Recipes
PHOTO BY BLAINE COOK; USED BY PERMISSION OF MAUREEN EVANS
Maureen Evans posts recipes on Twitter (@cookbook) limited to the length of a single tweet (140 characters). See her book Eat Tweet (Artisan) for more recipes.
How did you come up with the idea to tweet recipes?
I noticed there wasn’t a place for home cooking in people’s lives anymore, but there was still a lot of passion about the idea. I just on a whim started writing these recipes on Twitter because a lot of my friends are geeks and they were the early adopters.
Fitting something down into 140 characters has got to be a real challenge.
I approach cooking as a metaprocess. I’ve never been one with a lot of patience for long-winded recipes. When I’m in the kitchen, I look at the overall processes and steps. I don’t find it too tricky to apply the way I think about recipes into these tiny clauses. I’ve sort of invented a grammar around cooking based on punctuation in order to cram as much information in as possible. Even a semicolon can convey a break in the cooking steps.
It sounds like the recipes are written for somebody who already knows how to perform the individual steps?
The first step when I write the recipe is trusting the intelligence of the reader, even if they’re just a beginning cook. People have the capacity to figure things out and to know when something looks right or wrong. I think the most geeky aspect of the recipe is the spirit that anyone can try things and tinker with them and learn by doing.
Any final thoughts?
Really, really old recipes tended to be about one line. I have one here from Famous Old Receipts by Jacqueline Harrison Smith from 1906 for popovers and all it says is "Popovers: 1 egg well beaten, 1 cup sweet milk, 1 cup sifted flour, salt to taste. Drop in hot tins and bake quickly." That’s it. People today are kind of freaked out by making that, but obviously back in the day, 112 characters was enough to explain stuff.
RT @cookbook...
Hummus: soak c dry chickpea 8h. Replace h2o; simmer3h@low.Drain.Puree/season to taste+⅓ctahini&lem&olvoil/½t garlic&salt/cayenne. Chill.
Garden Soup: brwn ½lb/225g chopd chickn/onion/3T oil; +t s+p/2T wine&herbs/bay/2c pep&carrot&tom/c orzo/5c h2o. Simmr15m. Top w parm&olvoil.
Yam Leek Soup: saute leek&onion/T buttr/t piespice. Simmr20m+4c stock/3c yam/tater/bay. Rmv bay; blend+½c yogurt/s+p. Top w tst pumpkinseed.
Lemon Lentil Soup: mince onion&celery&carrot&garlic; cvr@low7m+3T oil. Simmer40m+4c broth/c puylentil/thyme&bay&lemzest. Puree+lemjuice/s+p.
Spice Cookies: cream 8T butter&sug; +egg/t vanilla. Mix+2c flour/t cinnamon/½t bkgpwdr&salt/dash cayenne. Chill/roll/cut~25. 15m@350°F/175°C.
TWEET RECIPES USED BY PERMISSION OF MAUREEN EVANS
Duck Confit Sugo
Prepare four duck legs, confit-style, as described in Chapter 4 (see Duck Confit). This can be done days in advance and stored in the fridge. If you’re not in the mood to wait a day or don’t have a slow cooker, check if your grocery store sells prepared duck confit.
In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil for making pasta.
Prepare the duck meat by pulling the meat off two legs of duck confit, discarding the bones and skin or saving them for stock. In a pan, lightly sauté the duck leg meat over medium heat to brown it.
Add to the pan:
28 oz (1 can, 800g) diced tomatoes
8 oz (1 can, 225g) tomato sauce
¼–½ teaspoon (0.25–0.5g) cayenne pepper
Simmer the tomatoes and tomato sauce for five minutes or so. While the sauce is simmering, cook the pasta per the directions on the package:
1/3 pound (150g) long pasta—ideally, pappardelle (an egg-based noodle with a wide, flat shape) or spaghetti
Once the pasta is cooked, strain (but do not rinse) the pasta and add it to the sauté pan. Add and stir to thoroughly combine:
2 tablespoons (2g, about 12 sprigs) fresh oregano or thyme leaves (dried is nowhere as good)
½ cup (100g) grated Parmesan cheese
¼ cup (50g) grated mozzarella cheese
Notes
You might find it easier to transfer the duck mixture to the pasta pot and stir in there, because your frying pan might not be big enough. When serving, you can grate Parmesan cheese on top and sprinkle on more of the oregano or thyme leaves.
The secret to duck confit sugo is in its combination of ingredients: the heat of the capsaicin in the cayenne pepper is balanced by the fats and sugars in the cheese, the fats in the duck are cut by the acids in the tomatoes, and the aromatic volatile compounds in the fresh thyme bring a freshness to this that’s just plain delicious. If the world were going to end tomorrow, I’d want this tonight.
So, what can go wrong in making this dish?
Hot or cold pan? Any time you see a recipe call for something to be sautéed, that means you should be browning the food. Maillard reactions begin to occur at a noticeable rate at around 310°F / 154°C, and sucrose (sugar) caramelization and browning start to occur at around 356°F / 180°C. (We’ll cover these two reactions in Chapter 4.) You’ll have a hard time getting those reactions to occur when putting cold duck into a cold pan. On the other hand, you don’t want an empty pan to overheat, especially if you’re using a nonstick frying pan, which can offgas chemicals when too hot. When sautéing, heat the pan empty, but keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get too hot. (You can hover your hand above the surface to check for radiant heat.)
When separating the duck meat from the duck fat, skin, bones, and gelatin (the clear gloppy stuff that’s culinary gold), how do you determine what’s good and what’s not? Duck fat will be whitish and slippery; the meat will be darker and more strand-like. When in doubt, if it looks yummy, it probably is. And yes, the duck confit is already cooked, so feel free to sample the goods. Since the meat is to be browned, you want to avoid the gelatin, as it will melt and then burn as the water boils off.
When pulling fresh thyme off the stem, be careful not to get the actual stem in the food. It’s woody, chewy, and not enjoyable. Pinch the top of the stem with one hand and run the fingers of your other hand down the stem, against the direction the leaves grow in, to strip them off.
Start by gripping near the bud end of the plant.
To strip the leaves, run your fingers down toward the base of the stem.
Lydia Walshin on Learning to Cook
PHOTO USED BY PERMISSION OF LYDIA WALSHIN
Lydia Walshin is a professional food writer who also teaches adults how to cook. She founded Drop In & Decorate, which supports and hosts cookies-for-donation events to benefit local community agencies and shelters in more than 30 U.S. states and across Canada. Her blog, The Perfect Pantry, is at http://www.theperfectpantry.com.
Tell me a bit about your blog.
The Perfect Pantry is a look at the 250 ingredients that are in my pantry with recipes for how to use each ingredient. Every time I would open my refrigerator or go into the cupboard, there were things I used every day in the front, and then things in the back that I’d bought for one particular recipe and never used again. The blog is about all of the ingredients in the pantry and giving people different ways to use the things they’ve already bought.
How do you go about learning what to do with unfamiliar ingredients?
The best way to learn how to use something new is to substitute it in something familiar. So, for instance, I have a great butternut squash soup that I make in the fall and winter. When I get a new spice that I think might have similar characteristics to somethin
g in that soup, I start by making a substitution. First, I’ll substitute part of the ingredient for part of another ingredient, and I’ll see how that tastes. And then maybe I’ll substitute that ingredient entirely.
Using the butternut squash soup as an example, my recipe uses curry powder, which in itself is a blend of many ingredients. Recently I discovered an ingredient called vadouvan, a French curry powder. How do I learn the way vadouvan behaves? I put it into something I already know, and I say, if I take half the curry powder and substitute it for vadouvan, how does that change the taste? And then the next time I make it, I substitute vadouvan for all of the curry powder, and how does that affect the taste?
Once I understand the difference between something that’s familiar and something that’s unfamiliar, then I can take that into other kinds of recipes. But if I start with a recipe that I don’t necessarily know, and it uses an ingredient I don’t know, then I don’t know what the ingredient has done in the recipe, because I can’t isolate that ingredient from the recipe as a whole.
You speak of isolating ingredients almost like how a programmer would when writing code: isolating one variable at a time and going through and changing just one thing to see how the system changes. One thing I think a lot of geeks and techies forget to do is to take that set of skills that they have in front of the keyboard and go into the kitchen with that same set of skills, to apply that same methodological approach to food.