An Instructo-Geek Reviews The 4-Hour Chef 204
I bought the book with tempered high hopes. Watching Tim Ferriss in his TV interviews and reading the enthusiasm that leaps off of every page (each recipe even comes with a "song pairing," music to jam out to while making the dish), it's hard not to take a quick liking to him. He comes across as a man who who really does want to share his passion and not just sell books. He's goofily handsome in that way that women and some men often confuse with "confidence", although he does seem to possess a lot of actual confidence. But enthusiasm is the enemy of objectivity, and I was determined to review the book according to the criterion of how well the directions actually work, not based on how much fun it would be to hang out with Tim. Even though it would probably be fun.
In his interview on Jimmy Fallon, for example, they looked like they were having a great time, but Jimmy told Tim that he read the book and tried following the directions for making bacon-infused bourbon, then proceeded to show some "action shots" of the result that he achieved: a jar of what looked like solid bacon fat, which Jimmy said he did not drink. OK, I thought, that means that whatever comes next, in that case the directions failed. Tim proceeded to explain that you have to be careful not to overblend it, and to leave it in the freezer long enough to be able to scrape more of the fat off, so that if you get a result that looks like Fallon's jar of goo, then that's probably what you did wrong. Great advice, but, not in the book. "Bacon-infused bourbon" sounds like precisely the kind of recipe that will sell a lot of books (not surprisingly, it's listed on the back cover of the book jacket), but which is hard to write good directions for.
In the same interview, Ferriss showed how he cooked sea bass sous vide in a hotel kitchen sink and then finished it by searing it with the hotel's travel iron, which he cheerfully admitted the hotel was not too happy about. I'm all for re-purposing common household items to find a new way to achieve something, but only if it's an improvement over the more mundane way of doing things; otherwise, it's just doing things inefficiently for the sake of being weird as an end in itself. (When I posted a photo of my bookshelf with a hollow-core wooden plank C-clamped to it at one end, with the other end used as an anchor for my XOOM tablet so I could watch movies while lying flat in bed, it was because that was the easiest way I could find to do that.) To be fair, Tim's suggestion of searing fish with a travel iron was probably intended to get the reader into the adventurous spirit, not as literal advice -- but then, my mission remains to evaluate the actual cooking advice, according to the results it produces.
The short answer: Of the three recipes I tried, one came out barely edible, and the other two were palatable mostly to the degree that the raw ingredients themselves were tasty, so I might as well have just snacked on the ingredients separately instead of combining them. All recipes definitely showed signs that they could have been greatly improved by being worked over by the process I described in my last article — i.e., show the recipes to a group of genuine newbies, listen to their feedback about all the points where they get stuck, then keep revising according to that feedback until you reach the point where the latest round of newbie testers is able to get through the directions with no problem. (You may notice that this sounds like a very obvious idea, but most how-to directions show very little sign of having been put through this kind of scrutiny.)
The first recipe in the book was for "Osso Buko", Ferriss's "knock-off" version of ossobuco, using lamb shanks instead of veal shanks. With $60 for a new porcelain Dutch oven, $20 for the lamb shanks, and other miscellaneous expenses, it cost me about $100 just to try the recipe to see if it worked (although Fred Meyer let me return the Dutch oven after I realized I was never going to try this again, and yes, I know you can find cheaper ones). A few times in the recipe, the directions used an unfamiliar term that I would have expected to be defined in a text for true beginners (for example, I didn't know what a "dry wine" was, and even the Wikipedia article wasn't much help, but the grocery store stockboy helped me out). The bigger problem was that at multiple points in the recipe, the instructions were too ambiguous to know if I was following them correctly, or I was unable to follow them exactly and didn't know how big of an adjustment I needed to make (e.g. what to do if the smallest shanks I could find were bigger than the recommended size). I still have no idea if the mediocre results were caused by one big screwup at one particular step, or the accumulation of many small deviations from what a real chef would have done.
Specifically: (1) The recipe calls for a Dutch oven. Ferriss has a brand he recommends, but can I use one from the local Fred Meyer? How big? The recipe doesn't say. I picked a five-quart since it was big enough to hold the lamb shanks. (2) The recipe calls for "lamb shanks." Fore shanks or hind shanks? Does it matter? My grocery store only has "lamb foreshanks" anyway. (3) The recipe says each shank should be 12 oz, but the smallest ones I could find were all 16 oz. What adjustments do I make? I have no idea. (4) The recipe called for "1/3 of a bottle" of wine, but later said to pour in enough "to cover 1/2-3/4 of the meat," and I couldn't do that without pouring in the whole bottle. I assumed the "cover 1/2 of the meat" direction took precedence over the "use 1/3 of the bottle" direction, but at that point I was sure that I'd deviated so far from the intent of the directions that the dish wasn't going to work. I put the whole thing into the oven at 350 degrees for two hours, which is about the only part of the recipe that I was sure that I followed correctly.
The results came out barely edible (I said "barely" — I still ate them, but I would never serve them or bring them to a party). Mostly it was a lot of work to cut through the tendons and small bones to get to the meat; if the Dutch oven was supposed to soften the meat so that everything fell off the bone, it didn't work.
The second recipe I tried was for crab cakes with harissa sauce. Right away I ran into a problem, since even in my fairly cosmopolitan city with multiple ethnic and specialty grocery stores, none of the ones I visited had ever heard of "harissa sauce." Now for directions that have been thoroughly beta-tested, this is where they would typically say, "Harissa sauce can be difficult to find, so here's where to look; otherwise, you can use this as a substitute." I found some forums saying you could use hot sauce, so I went with that. The crab cakes came out fine, but probably mostly due to the expensive crab ingredient, and I didn't like them enough to make them again.
The third recipe that I tried was for coconut cauliflower curry mash. The directions called for "crushed cashews," and said "If they're uncrushed, you can then crush them in your hands directly into the bowl. This is how Chuck Norris does it." By this time I was getting a little tired of the book being cute at the expense of being helpful — roasted cashews are physically impossible for most people to crush in their hands — but I flattened some under a rolling pin and followed the rest of the recipe. The result tasted OK, but probably only about as good as if I'd just mixed up the nuts and cauliflower and other ingredients and cooked them in a pot.
And that was the end of the ride for me. Three recipes and three results that I never thought about making again (one that was barely edible, and two that tasted only slightly better than the component ingredients mixed together, neither one all that good). Based on those sample results, my estimation is that for a true beginner going through the recipes in the book, the "success rate" would not be high enough to justify the time and money that they'd spend.
Full disclosure compels me to report that I did successfully prepare and "serve" one recipe in the book: bacon roses, which turned out about as well in my own kitchen as the ones he showed off on Jimmy Fallon. Most artificial roses have removable heads, and if you bake a couple of rolled-up slices of raw bacon, they come out resembling roses that can be threaded on the artificial-rose stems. But even then, the instructions in the book were overkill, requiring the reader to take a cupcake baking pan and drill holes in the bottom of each cupcake holder, so that you can cook the bacon in the cupcake holders while draining the fat out (but which also ruins the cupcake pan for the purpose of making actual cupcakes). For one thing, you can use silicone cupcake molds and just poke a hole in the bottom rather than drilling through aluminum; these can also be stacked when you're done, so that they take up much less storage space than a 12-muffin baking pan. But in any case I found that you could get perfectly good results just by rolling up the pieces of bacon and baking them sideways on a broiler rack; they hold their shape just as well as if you had baked them in the cupcake holders, since the rolled-up bacon hardly expands anyway. (This is the kind of thing that you also find if you have people beta-testing your recipes.)
To be fair, I'm only narrowly reviewing the book as an instructional guide to cooking. The book claims that the principles taught in its pages can be used to transform your life in a wide range of ways, including becoming world-class in "any skill" in about six months, which Ferriss says he has used to learn kickboxing, Spanish, shooting basketball 3-pointers, and Japanese horseback archery. Next on his list: writing cooking directions!
But now I'm being a smartass, and the truth is that there is potential for the recipes in these book to be transformed into something that could produce fantastic results in the hands of a beginner. Normally when I try out a "beginner's cookbook" — usually by using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to sample a few recipes from the cookbook and print them out for free — if the first three recipes produce inedible results, I throw them out and never give the cookbook a second thought. But I'm more optimistic about re-working Ferriss's recipes in accordance with the beta-testing process above, for two reasons. First, he really does seem to have a passion for helping people and not just selling books (that's important, because it's hardly going to drive book sales to take recipes from the book and beta-test them and improve them as a free web-based project). Second, he has legions of fans who would probably volunteer as beta testers. I myself would be happy to volunteer, since the commitment of a beta tester is minimal, by design, because you're supposed to simulate the experience of a real user without overthinking it: go through the instructions one time, and record the quality of the result you get at the end. (Optionally, make a note of any ambiguous directions you encountered along the way, which might affect the quality of the end result.)
As they're written now, I don't think the recipes in the book would pass the definitional test of good directions: Give them to beginners, have them try to follow the steps, and record the results. I had essentially the same thought about the business-launching advice in Tim Ferriss's first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, which I only bought as a companion to the new book. Now I think The 4-Hour Workweek does contain a lot of useful self-help advice — for example, to get over your fear of the worst-case outcome by visualizing it entirely and realizing that it's not that bad. (Although I cracked up at the part about "outsourcing your work," thinking of a certain Verizon employee who took the advice too literally.) But for a book whose key premise is that you can liberate yourself from a 40-hour workweek, the advice about how to start a successful business to do this, occupies a surprisingly small portion of the book (pp. 150-200, if you leave out the subsequent chapter about how to automate your business once it's successful). Well, I've been a part of various entrepreneur communities since before I graduated college, and over the years I've seen many people follow some variation of the steps in those chapters, and the reality is that even if the founder does everything right, most new businesses still fizzle out just like my mediocre "osso buko."
The key difference, I think, is that any formula on how to start your own wildly successful business and shrink your workweek down to 4 hours, cannot work without a lot of luck — if it could, angel investors would just start hiring "entrepreneurs" to follow the formula exactly, if every one of those entrepreneurs (or even 25% of them) hit it out of the park with their new business venture, the investors would make out like gangbusters. Most methodical research suggests that actually only about 5% of VC-backed businesses hit their projected break-even on cash flow -- suggesting that even the best VCs can't find any combination of personal attributes, or action steps, that leads to entrepreneurial success without a big dose of luck. (Ferriss himself says that The 4-Hour Workweek was turned down by 28 out of 29 publishers, which sounds like a testament to the importance of persistence; but most authors whose work is turned down by the first 28 publishers, will usually get turned down by the 29th one too, and there was obviously a certain amount of luck in the fact that that didn't happen to him.)
On the other hand, following a recipe and producing a delicious dish, ought to be possible without luck. What you need, though, are precise directions that have been picked apart by beginner beta testers to remove any ambiguities, until you reach the point where the latest wave of beta testers was able to get through the directions with no confusion, and produce great results in nearly every case. The recipes in The 4-Hour Chef aren't at that point, but Tim Ferriss has the fan-based manpower at his disposal to test and transform those recipes into truly idiot-proof directions for delicious food, if he wants to.
Reviews Should have rules too (Score:2, Insightful)
TLDR
Re:Reviews Should have rules too (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't have to read the whole thing.
Sentence #4 after the "fold":
That's where I stopped reading. I'm not a cannibal. I don't care how attractive or confident the cook is. I don't care what women think of him.
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TSDR, judging grom the few pieces that I managed to get to before giving up.
In just to make things clear, the S does not mean "short".
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TSDR, judging grom the few pieces that I managed to get to before giving up.
The first paragraph tells the story, everything after is to prove the first paragraph.
- My high school journalism class.
When I saw the articles length after hitting the "Read" link, I just took their word for it.
First clue. (Score:5, Funny)
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Any recipe that calls out a Dutch Oven is not something I'm going to try.
there are two kinds of people I hate in this World:
1. folks who are intolerant of other people.
2. And the Dutch.
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Your loss, dutch ovens are awesome. It's a slow cooker AND an oven, that you can take camping. Although I would never recommend a porcelain one. Cast iron or nothing.
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Amen to that. I had a stainless one that we inherited after my wife's grandmother died, and I was never able to get as good a casserole or even roast cooked in it as I can w/ my cast iron one. Not sure about the other commenter who said to take it camping, it's damn heavy.
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Not sure about the other commenter who said to take it camping, it's damn heavy.
People take them camping because you can put them literally into the campfire, cover them with coals and slow (or fast) cook. I think even the Boy Scout manual has some recipes for using a cast-iron dutch oven. Pro Tip: Bring a small one - Dutch Oven, not Boy Scout :-)
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You take them if you are car camping, not when backpacking.
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Re:First clue. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nobody cooks in naked cast iron. We use seasoned cast iron that has a protective layer of carbonized fat adhereing to it. I've made homemade tomato sauce in mine many times with no ill effects to either the dutch oven or the sauce.
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> protective layer of carbonized fat adhereing to it
protective layer of polymerized fat adhereing to it
There, fixed that for you.
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Considering that "dutch oven" is a term that is literally older than you are, it is downright stupid of you to brand anyone who misses your silly slang defintion as an aspie.
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double whoosh - your link goes to the definition of "define". Try this one:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Dutch+Oven [urbandictionary.com]
"Dry wine"? (Score:5, Insightful)
for example, I didn't know what a "dry wine" was
How on earth do you reach adulthood without knowing what a dry wine is?
Re:"Dry wine"? (Score:5, Funny)
How on earth do you reach adulthood without knowing what a dry wine is?
They don't serve it in prison...
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People with names like "Bennet Haselton" don't go to prison.
Re:"Dry wine"? (Score:5, Funny)
This is the point I stopped reading. If looking at wine in a shop to see which ones are labelled as dry is beyond him I'm not surprised the results of his attempt to follow a recipe weren't great. Just because a book is intended for a "newbie" doesn't mean it'll work equally well for a retard.
Re:"Dry wine"? (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, I'm really puzzled about why so many people (especially women these days) can't seem to cook?
Didn't ya'lls mom's get you in the kitchen to help when you were young? If for nothing else, mine did to get help in the house, but also to make sure I knew how to take care of myself when I did leave the 'nest'.
But hell, of late, I can't hardly find a woman that knows how to cook shit. What happened there?
Actually, I know...somehow, somewhere along the way...everyone started eating out and eating crap.
I didn't realize this till after Katrina...when I lived with some friends while I got a place to live and job, etc.
I stayed with one family, two small kids...about 8-9 yrs old. The dad was out of town, so just me there with the wife and kids. I was shocked to see that so many meals at night were: Popeye's, Sonic....fast food. The others that were 'home cooked'...frozen, prepared food from the store. The home cooked meal from scratch was a rarity.
Me? I'm the opposite. I love to cook, and tho I don't have a lot of time, I dedicate my Sunday's to cooking. I cook often 2-4 entrees, and the same sides...and eat those throughout the week for lunches and dinner, finishing them by about Friday or so. Or, during the summer, I like to grill things...grill some meats and LOTS of veggies. And during the week, those are quick to warm up for salads, or pita sandwiches (whip up a quick taziki sauce)..or stuff like that.
I'd rather save up my pennies for dining out at a REAL restaurant. Not a chain, but a place with a real chef, and honest to goodness service and good wine, etc. I'd rather blow a good chunk of coin fine dining than a little bit here and there on crap food and no service .
And let's face it...fast food isn't all that cheap anymore. I do occasionally like a crap food day...Taco Bell was nearly $10. Ouch.
But anyway....cooking is easy. Good tools do help, money spent on good knives and pans are well spent. Drop some coin on a good Wusthof-Trident knives (a couple of basic ones will do), and maybe a couple of good All-Clad SS fry pans/pots. Yes, they are $$, but they will last you a lifetime.
Hell, start out with good cast iron, that is cheap and when cared for...will last you the same lifetime.
And then....look at the grocery store ads in your town. See what ingredients are on sale that week. Get on the internet, and look up recipes with those ingredients and pick something fun to try, and do it.
And try this too...to be a bit healthier. When shopping at the grocery store, try to shop ONLY along the outside perimeter of the store, where the real, non-processed foods are: veggies, meats, dairy. (It is ok to venture into the aisles if that's where they keep the beer, wine and liquor tho).
But seriously, it isn't rocket science. Try it. And if you're a guy, you can definitely impress the ladies with cooking skills, AND...it is a great excuse to get them into YOUR house, where you likely have a bed nearby.
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plus if you are a "civilian contractor" that needs to at times "redact" a client being able to cook gives you a GREAT way to do the job
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/* wine terminology should be pretty simple for most any adult */
I must preface my response to "Where the fuck do you live?" Wine knowledge in America is dismal. It's downright horrible. America, in general, is not a wine drinking country. Yes, there are many many exceptions and most of them are very socioeconomic. My parents did not drink wine. Beer? Yes. And I don't mean Microbrews, I mean Budweiser. My entire extended family is the same. Wine? Why get wine when you can drink Budweiser, or if y
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That's not at all sexist.. nope.
You "don't have a lot of time", yet you *dedicate* hours and hours one day a week to cooking.
It definitely sounds like you LIKE cook
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It reminds me of some research I read about how the totally inept (5th percentile) are so bad at something they don't realize it and think they're okay and have more confidence than the 50th percentile.
This? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
Re:"Dry wine"? (Score:4, Insightful)
By not drinking wines? What makes a wine "dry" and not "wet"? Pretty much the only thing I know about wine is that some are red and some are white and some are pink and it doesn't froth properly.
Not to mention that the wine description terms are all bizarre and might get you fired if someone heard them out of context.
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It's not 1950. There's this thing called the Internet. If you don't know what something is, then look it up. Even in the 50s, this could be done by using some reference material. The database was on paper and it was a bit of a bother, but it was still available.
Clueless in 2013? Just Google it.
Re:"Dry wine"? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Google, the definition of a "dry" wine is one that is not "sweet." They are not labeled "sweet" or "dry" when you go to the grocery store to buy one. Their descriptions have things like "baked, feminine aroma with tight, zesty, legs" or some other such nonsense.
Wine is something that it really sucks to have to buy for those of us that don't do it very often. What's the difference between a $100 bottle of wine, a $30 bottle of wine, and a $10 bottle of wine? Which do I want to pour on top of my roast? Will any "dry" wine do? Do I want one from California or from Argentina? And no, the guy stocking selves in the grocery store cannot answer these questions and google does not know which varieties of wine my grocery store has in stock today.
If I am just going to go and "ask google" how to make my roast, why the fuck did I buy a cook book?
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They are not labeled "sweet" or "dry" when you go to the grocery store to buy one. Their descriptions have things like "baked, feminine aroma with tight, zesty, legs" or some other such nonsense.
Except, that's only true in strawmanland. Wine terminology is pretty consistent and reproducible. Exception, as usually, exist. Also, don't you have at least one decent wine store in the region where you just could ask something like "I need something to braise a lamb shank in, what would you recommend?". They tend to know their stuff.
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True. Round here it says shit like "doux" or "sec". WTF is all that about?
some places they are labelled dry/sweet (Score:2)
The local liquor store has the sweetness codes for each wine as part of the label, right beside the name/price/etc.
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same that makes everything else either dry or sweet. what is lamb? what is a pot? what is salty?
I'm just wondering what the fuck is a lazy ass book review of a shitty cooking book doing on slashdot..
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Similarly - How on earth do you survive in modern times without knowing how to Google or having the common sense to ask for help?
The author is a complete ass, and this crappy "review" disinclines me to listen to anything else he has to say. Cooking is like any other skill, you can't follow instructions robotically and expect to come out with an edible result - you have to think and you have to practice. Yes, you'll screw stuff up, but you won't learn without trying.
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How on earth do you reach adulthood without knowing what a dry wine is?
Too busy with his furniture hacks? [slashdot.org]
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â¦you are someone who doesn't drink alcohol (to any serious degree, though I have had sips of various things)?
(Purposefully possibly wrong: I *think* it just means it's not sweet, but given various wine, I couldn't tell where the dividing line between dry and not dry is.)
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You couldn't teach someone who doesn't know what a dry vine is because you have a reduced capacity to realize that that would be necessary or even appropriate.
Yes you could, because people aren't *that* stupid. Even if you have no clue what a dry wine is, there are people who make a career out of selling wine. You can go to one of those people, and ask them to help you pick a wine out. They are usually easy to find anywhere you can buy wine, for some reason.
The same goes for any ingredients. The only situation where a person can't be taught how to cook is if they don't know how to use a measuring cup, or they don't have the right tools. Neither are impediments th
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Using speech-to-text software is OK, but you need to lose the German accent.
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Do you at least know how to read a label, and see which ones are labeled "dry"?
I'm a car newbie. I don't have a clue about motor oil. But if someone tells me "get synthetic motor oil", I at least know how to find a bottle of it at the store, because "synthetic" is right there on the dang label.
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why not just add a parenthesis with something like "I suggest Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, or Pinot Noir. A $6-$7 wine will be fine for this recipe"?
Because it's bullshit. If a recipe calls for "red wine", you can just grab a bottle at random and you'll be OK. Hell, I know a chef who uses Night Train as his default cooking wine, and the results are pretty tasty.
Wrong objective (Score:3, Insightful)
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A proper "cookbook for geeks" wouldn't have complete recipes, it would have a bunch of examples of techniques - here's how to make a roux, here's how to make that into a white sauce, you can do a bunch of stuff to that white sauce now like make it a cheese sauce, that kind of thing.
Reading the "review" it sounds like he really doesn't have much idea about food or cooking. I don't really understand how someone can grow up not knowing the basics of cooking and eating.
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A proper "cookbook for geeks" wouldn't have complete recipes, it would have a bunch of examples of techniques - here's how to make a roux, here's how to make that into a white sauce, you can do a bunch of stuff to that white sauce now like make it a cheese sauce, that kind of thing.
There's enough of that kind available - Jacques Pepin's Techniques is quite good, though the illustration quality lacks sadly.
But, yeah, that review is atrocious. Sadly, enough people seem indeed to grow up withour knowing the basics of cooking and eating. We are losing parts of an essential cultural technique outside of some niches. Hell, I once saw premade scrambled eggs on toast deep-frozen in a supermarket. WTF.
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I saw frozen mashed potatoes once. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if you can't be arsed to make them properly (and I sometimes can't) isn't that what the powder/granules are for? Kids today...
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When the combined one-volume edition of Techniques was published, the publisher photo-reduced the printed pages of the original two volumes, rather than go to the expense of having new half-tones made. If you want to see what the photos are supposed to look like, you need to dig up copies of La Technique and La Technique II.
Hmmm. Thanks for that tip. Time to consult Amazon.fr, I guess :D
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A proper "cookbook for geeks" wouldn't have complete recipes, it would have a bunch of examples of techniques...
Irma Rombauer's timeless classic "Joy Of Cooking" is such a book. It should be the "starting point" of any culinary flowchart.
Dinner: Sorted.
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A proper "cookbook for geeks" wouldn't have complete recipes, it would have a bunch of examples of techniques - here's how to make a roux, here's how to make that into a white sauce, you can do a bunch of stuff to that white sauce now like make it a cheese sauce, that kind of thing.
Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle already wrote that book.
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Everybody needs to eat sometime.
Cooking is generally a pre-requisite for that.
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Usually, but in an increasingly large part of the world, "cooking" means upacking a prefab and putting it in the microwave.
I confess I'm guilty of that sometimes... there are nights I just don't have the time to cook properly, and I use prefab sauce to save time. The modern industrialized world just doesn't lend itself to having that kind of time, unfortunately.
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"Don't overbeat the muffins".
Yeah. I've heard that one. From my mom, who makes the best scones in the world. She told me a zillion times not to do that. And one day I watched her make scones. She put the things into the kitchenaid, and turned it on slow. Just as she should. Then she suddenly put it on full blast. I was like "WTF! Why?!!!" She shrugged and said "It did not look right, now it's OK"
The scones were perfect and I have never made anyone like hers. That is what experience does.
Cooking books more worthy to be on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking [amazon.com]
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen [amazon.com]
The Science of Good Cooking (Cook's Illustrated Cookbooks) [amazon.com]
Posted this instead of bitching about this review not being "News for Nerds and all that Matters."
Re:Cooking books more worthy to be on Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
I would also add, "CookWise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking, The Secrets of Cooking Revealed" by Shirley O. Corriher to the list. It explains rational behind why things work the way they do (i.e. why lard or shortening produce a flakier crust than butter). It doesn't shy away from details, discussing things like Maillard reactions, and the recipes are well chosen to focus on what's being described and tasty too.
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I have all of the above books and being a chef as well, i'm going to watch this one argument play out.
I would add that Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher are great influences in the food scene.
Nathan Mhyrvold is a great guy with the dough to pull off what he did with Modernist Cuisine.
Mcghee's book is standard learning now.
Anything by Cooks should be regarded as well done, they don't miss much if anything.
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Anything by Cooks should be regarded as well done
Great, I hate finding blood in my steak after ordering it well done.
Sounds like a lack of experience all right (Score:3)
" porcelain Dutch oven"
All the dutch ovens I've ever seen are cast iron- designed for their original purpose- to be an iron oven you can drop into a campfire and bake stuff in.
Re:Sounds like a lack of experience all right (Score:4, Informative)
He's talking about enamel-covered iron Dutch ovens. They're nice in that they don't rust and can be thrown in a dishwasher. They're generally white inside, which can be an advantage over the black cast iron ones, especially in a recipe like this where it helps to see the brown stuff sticking to the bottom of the pan.
The best-known ones run $200+ from La Creuset, but I picked up one by Tramontina for under $40 and it does a fine job. It's a nice item to have on hand, and you can also use it for general large-pot purposes (making pasta, soups, etc.) You could use a plain cast-iron pot about as well, and considerably cheaper, though honestly if all you have is your basic six-quart steel pot, it would also serve for this recipe. (Do avoid the ultra-cheap flimsy aluminum ones, which will burn your food, and then the handles will fall off.)
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If you can't drop it in a campfire, what good is it? I have a cast iron "dutch oven" without legs and no rim on the lid. I can't figure out what it's good for. I already have a slow cooker and an oven, so...?
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Sounds like it's pretty redundant, though if you cook a lot you might find there are days when you need a second large pot.
I don't have a slow cooker, but I'll often use my large cast iron dutch oven in the oven set to a low temperature (150 or 180). That accomplishes much the same purpose, with the bonus that I could start it on the stove top (say, for browning meat or sweating onions).
That takes up oven space, of course. One great thing about a slow cooker is that it works off an electric outlet, and it d
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Oh, I forgot the other thing a dutch oven is good for. Frying. Can't do that in a slow cooker. Though you can do that in a wok.
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He might be talking about a ceramic one... they do make them out of pure ceramic, and they are as good at retaining heat as the cast iron, but dishwasher safe.
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Remember to get the metal knob. Melting the plastic one when making bread does not a happy home cook make.
http://www.amazon.com/Le-Creuset-Stainless-Medium-Replacement/dp/B006MVYE44/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363990411&sr=8-1&keywords=metal+knob+le+creuset [amazon.com]
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He said. Fred Meyer, which for those of you not blessed to live in Cascadia, is a child company of Kroger''s. (well, it is now- my dad actually KNEW the original Fred Meyer and at one time battled against him putting one of his "One stop shopping" supermarkets in Albany, Oregon back in the 1960s).
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I assume he meant enameled cast iron, like La Creuset. I would love to know where he found one for $60.
I got one for $50 at Ross. It had a 'seconds' sticker on it, but it works fine.
My other one came from the Le Creuset store cost four times as much.
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Thanks, I was unaware of that term for that. How is this related to cooking fish?
Songs for cooking? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this book comes with songs for each recipe that you can cook by, that should have been your clue things weren't going to end well.
As to the reviewers comment about using the instructions as if a beginner were going to read them, that is the same approach I take when developing installation instructions. You have to assume the person reading the instructions has no clue of what they're doing and give them step-by-step instructions.
It might seem simplistic, but it insures there is no misunderstanding of what needs to be done. Including pictures does wonders to help get an idea across to someone.
The FOSS community should take note of this practice when releasing products into the wild. Maybe their software would be more readily accepted instead of people having to search web sites or being told, "RTFM newb!".
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Mod parent up... as a UX person, I can never seem to remind people often enough that they are not the user. Sure, you know what everything does and why, because _you built it that way_. Every other person, not so much.
You have to laugh at how the core of Ferriss's time- and effort-saving plans all seem to involve variations on, "have other people do it", "have expensive devices that can do it for you", "take advantage of other people" (in this example, ruining a hotel's iron so that nobody else can use it)
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Are you hiring or know someone who is? I might be losing my job sometime this year (government related) and would prefer not to wait until I'm kicked out the door to find something else.
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That's not what UX people do. It's what ergonomists/human factors specialists do.
UX "people" tell you to make all the icons invisible until you press them because that looks more elegant.
Instructions to tie shoes (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you in most cases people cannot follow instructions for the following reasons: low level of literacy, unfamiliar with art, or some sort of manual dexterity is required. We do not sit athletes down with books and just let them practice. We go to great expense to provide them with coaches because there is a process of physical movements that must be observed and corrected.
At it's basic level cooking does not require much physical dexterity, but to expect a begineer to be able to follow instructions for the first time and get it right is like thinking a beginner can read a book on basketball and then make a shot for the first time. It is not a reasonable expectation.
The reason some people think it is a reasonable expectation is that they have background. If I took a person who has been shooting baskets for her entire life, then yes they might be able to read a book and do a better job. Likewise a person who has experience in the kitchen, is familiar with the art, can equally understand and be a better cook. Such a person has experience with the tools, the heat, the pans, the knives. They have context.
But without context then practice is required. Even boiling noodles is not going to happen the first time.
The point of this that any cook book requires some previous knowledge. If one have never used a dutch oven to cook in the oven, then there is going to be no possibility of success. If one does not understand how an item is supposed to be transformed in cooking, then there is no possibility of success. Cooking is not magic where you throw some stuff in a better stuff miraculously appears. It is a high skill. Sometimes I think that because it is traditionally 'women's work' some cannot comprehend how difficult it is. One would not expect a random person off the street to come in a code even 'hello world' in C simply from instructions. Yet everyone who can boil water and make Ramen noodles think they should be able to make a Soufflé.
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At it's basic level cooking does not require much physical dexterity, but to expect a begineer to be able to follow instructions for the first time and get it right is like thinking a beginner can read a book on basketball and then make a shot for the first time. It is not a reasonable expectation.
Physical dexterity has to be learned. Like you say, there's no physical dexterity in cooking. So this isn't a valid analogy at all.
The reason some people think it is a reasonable expectation is that they have b
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. Like you say, there's no physical dexterity in cooking. So this isn't a valid analogy at all.
Knife skills are physical dexterity. Fileting a fish. Deboning a chicken. It's not all about dexterity, sure, but it plays into it. The analogy is fine - some things, like estimating done-ness of a piece of meat, you only learn by trial and experience and not by reading a recipe.
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Correctly combining the egg foam and almond in a French Macaron is certainly something requiring learned dexterity and much swearing while learning it.
Reviewer FAIL - That's not what cookbooks are for (Score:2, Insightful)
You can't follow most types of cookbook recipes verbatim because ingredients vary... flavor intensity, fat content, availability, and everything else about ingredients is highly seasonal and regional. On top of that, individual tastes vary and most cookbooks "play it safe" by under-counting spices and flavorful ingredients so that if someone does follow the recipe verbatim they won't complain that the results were overly spicy. The only exceptions to this rule are when very specific chemistry is involved,
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Cookbooks are to provide ideas and get you to try new/unfamiliar techniques. They aren't to give you a step-by-step guide for making specific dishes.
Julia Childs must be spinning in her grave to read this, at precisely 2409 rpm.
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First I used Pasture fed Beef shanks from my Farmer's market, they were gamey and I didn't want to give up on the recipe on my first try. I had another set of beef shanks from Wegmans which were less gamey, but still not great. I then decided to get some actual lamb at the markey next time I was there and wonder of wonders it still sucked.
Folks saying the reviewer didn't pick the right recipe, Osso Buko is the first recipe in the book and they are supposed to build up in difficulty from there, each recipe b
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Want to try my recipes? (Score:2)
How to write documentation? (Score:2)
(http colon //24.5-cent.us/egoless_documentation.doc), published in SysAdmin mag.
Try writing recipes that way.... Note that I saw *DRAFT* when I give it to users, *before* publishing....
mark
I agree (Score:3)
Except instead take "cookbooks" and replace it with Open Source documentation and you have the same exact dilemma. A bunch of idyllic elite snobs writing instructions they find painfully obvious and unimportant but missing the 400 steps and details required to do set up something correctly so that it actually works.
reviewer the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want to really learn how to cook... (Score:5, Informative)
Just go watch some old episodes of Julia Child or anything by Jacques Pepin. If you're an Amazon Prime member, all 10 seasons of Julia Child's "The French Chef" are available for instant viewing.
If you prefer to read, then the same two people are both great choices. While all of Julia's books are worth reading in my opinion, the first volume of "The Art of French Cooking" and "The Way to Cook" (which she considered her magnum opus) are excellent. Julia doesn't just provide recipes, but she explains techniques (dice vs chop vs mince vs etc.) and rational (i.e. why drying meat before browning is critical).
On the Jacques Pepin side, his Complete Technique is like a textbook for how to cook anything. The best part is there's literally thousands of photos of how to do every step. As the book is really just a translation of his two french books ("La Technique" & "La Methode") there are some parts that might not be too applicable for most Americans, but overall it's well worth a read.
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I second that. As a next step, I suggest Robuchon's "The Complete Robuchon" - it's a mixture of technique and actual recipes, showing basic preparations for all kinds of meats and produce. French tradition at its finest, in particular the potato chapter.
My and my wife ate a 16 course tasting menu at Joel Robuchon's restaurant in Vegas. $700 per head. Best meal of my life and cheaper than blackjack. The man knows how to cook.
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Plus it has the culinary equivalent to MAN pages.
Though I'll always take Julia Child for sheer delight.
Most cookbooks suck (Score:2)
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Chef? (Score:2)
Haselton? Stove? Sharp objects? 2800+ Words. (Score:2)
Unrealistic Expectations? (Score:2)
It's cooking, not alchemy. Why did you expect cauliflower and nuts cooked in a pot to not taste like cauliflower and nuts cooked in a pot?
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Thank you, AC.
Much obliged.
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It looks like he took a search-and-replace axe to Time Cube.
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Chicken? I'm pretty sure you didn't make an Osso Buco then. Chickens don't have very big ossos (bones) to roast, and likely wouldn't be cut in any way to expose the marrow, which is an important part of the dish.
I realize your point is being able to wing it, and of course chickens have wings...
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Osso Buco with chicken????? You do realize that a chicken's equivalent to the same cut includes the chicken foot and is a big as the tip of my finger?
Are you sure you did not read a chinese recipe for chicken feet soup? Or hang out in a South African township??
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Chicken feet make great stock.
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I was just going to jump in with a recommendation for Cook's Illustrated (the magazine that predates and is affiliated with the show).
I'm can't really evaluate it in terms of being beginner friendly in terms of terminology and such. (I had already cooked professionally by the time I first got a subscription.) But if you want tested? Oh yeah. It was first described to me as the popular mechanics of cooking, and I can't disagree. For quite a while my two favorite cooking related mags were CI and then Saveur,