Cooking for Geeks

If you've ever wondered how to adjust the taste of something you're cooking to give it the WOW factor or to add what's missing, this book is for you. With the added factor of umami (savory), along with salty, sweet, sour and bitter tastes explained by cuisine/country and ingredients, you're sure to find an explanation of «why» this or that ingredient is or isn't the one to add to mask or enhance your dish. Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter is more a book about cooking than a cookbook - new from O'Reilly Press.

Even though Geeks contains experiments with new ways of food preparation, overclocking your oven and sous vide, the science behind new techniques and centuries' old ones are explained in this book. Case in point, the Maillard reaction--how proteins react with heat and why you would want them to--explains the browning of your bagel, your sausage and even your self-tanning lotions!

Jeff Potter has taken the sting out of the moniker «geek.» Once you're through with his book, you'll proudly claim that title for yourself!

Echaudés and the Maillard Reaction

In my post on Echaudés - boiled pastry, I found that the recipe's instruction specifically say to use an unlined copper caldron or jam [confiture] pan to boil the pastries in. One of the interesting results of using a copper pan and heat would insure a reaction with the sugar in the dough to produce the Maillard reation, which will lead to browning once the dough is subjected to dry heat in an oven.

So when you next eat a pretzel or bagel or French echaudés, savor the flavor and the color of the outside of the pastry and be thankful for chemistry--otherwise, that bagel or pretzel or echaudés would remain as colorless as it was when removed from the boiling water of the previous step of preparation.