Kitchenhacker Manifesto

Last week, I read an article about sous vide cooking that admonished home cooks not to get too excited about it. Sous vide, it argued, was a new technique. Before they delved into its mysteries, they should master established cooking techniques. Sauté before your sous vide... or something like that.

I spent a good bit of time this morning looking for this article, but I can't find it. I suppose that's just as well, since I don't want to lend any credence to the argument I found there. Normally, I'm fairly charitable with the arguments of others, but this one made no sense to me. Why? Because cooking sous vide is just about the most basic technique I know.

Of course, this is dependent upon what I mean by basic. Sous vide is certainly new. It was invented about 50 years ago. Still, there's no reason we should be learning and mastering cooking techniques in the historical order in which they were developed. I haven't studied culinary school curricula, but I'm pretty sure that the first bit of it doesn't generally involve going out into the woods and tossing dead animals into campfires.

What does it mean to be a basic cooking techniques, then? Cooking is primarily about temperature control – the application of heat to food in a transformative manner. It seems to me that the most basic cooking techniques would be those that do very little other than allow you to apply heat in a controlled way.

In many ways, sous vide cooking is the most pure application of heat to food that I know of. Let's compare it to roasting in an oven. You might set your oven to 350 degrees. That heat will begin at the surface of your food and work its way in. When the surface of your food reaches 350 degrees, the center might only be a bit over room temperature. What you are doing when you cook sous vide is bringing the food up to a consistent temperature that is in equilibrium with its surroundings. You're essentially raising the room temperature. If you want your food to be 135 degrees at the center, and you cook it in an oven, you'll set the oven to a few hundred degrees. The outside of your food will be cooked far more than the inside. In sous vide, your food will be 135 degrees from edge to center. Moreover, when you roast your food, moisture drains away and gasses escape. In sous vide cooking, everything that was placed in your vacuum pack stays there.

It seems to me that if you understand how sous vide cooking works, then you are well on your way to understanding other sorts of cooking. Moreover, the precise temperature control of sous vide can give you tremendous insight into how different foods react at different temperatures: how collagen breaks down in meat, for instance – or when proteins in eggs coagulate. This knowledge is fairly easily transferable to other cooking techniques.

Personally, I think the biggest problem with considering sous vide as a basic cooking technique is the name. There are two big reasons for this.

The first is that “sous vide” refers to vacuum sealing food rather than equalizing it to a stable temperature. I don't know why this was chosen, but I think it was an unfortunate choice. People focus on the vacuum sealing. While important, it isn't really the what I consider the most central concept of sous vide cooking.

The second is that, well, "sous vide" doesn't roll of the tongue. It doesn't become a verb well. Consider the sauté, in comparison. We can't really talk about “sous viding” food. “Cooking sous vide,” is about the best we can do. That's a lot more awkward to say than roasting, baking, or frying.

The best thing I can come up with as an alternative term is Stabilization Cooking. To my mind, this captures, the essence of what this cooking technique is about. It's also easier to give instructions that involve stabilizing something at 135 degrees than it is to use a circumlocution like “cook it sous vide at 135 degrees.”

When I have a guest over for a meal, I always try to ask them whether they have any dietary restrictions or preferences. Oftentimes, they say that they don't. When they do admit to a restriction, they usually apologize for being difficult.

It is far from difficult, though... and the apology is unnecessary. For me, it makes cooking more interesting. Yes, trying to come up with, say, a vegetarian, gluten-free meal that doesn't include any alliums can be challenging. There are two ways to meet a challenge, though: you can shy away from it in fear, or you can embrace it. I can't say that I always do the latter, but when it comes to the kitchen I have a pretty good track record.

On occasion, I hear chefs complain about people who make special requests. The assumption is that the chef is the expert. While I am not going to doubt the general expertise of most chefs, there is a difference between general expertise and an application of that expertise in an individual case. In short, I think that individuals should be assumed to be the best judge of what they will enjoy eating.

Let's consider some examples:

1. Albus goes into a steakhouse. It wasn't his choice of a restaurant, but he is there with a group of friends. The menu clearly states that they cook all their steaks to medium-rare. Albus was once a vegetarian and still gets nauseous when his meat is even vaguely pink. He likes well-done steak, but nothing else on the menu looks appetizing. Should he ask for his steak well-done?
2. Bartholomew doesn't have any food allergies, but he is sensitive to garlic, onions, chives, and other alliums. If he eats them in any quantity at all, he will have intestinal issues that are best not described at the dinner table. He's found that if he merely says he can't eat alliums, restaurants rarely take his request to leave them out seriously, and he has suffered as a result. Should he start saying that he's allergic to alliums?
3. Carmina is a supertaster of sorts. The chemicals that give heat to chilis, black pepper, ginger and their relatives taste incredibly bitter to her. Black pepper and bell peppers are merely unpleasant, but a dish that has jalepeños in it tastes like aspirin. Should she explain this when she goes to restaurants? How?

I can understand how, particularly on a busy night, a chef might get frustrated when faced with having to make nonstandard meals. I don't really understand why a chef would get frustrated with their customers for ordering things the wrong way. To me, that smacks of hubris. For my part, I enjoy cooking with restrictions. It forces me to think outside of my comfort zone and get creative.

Ever since reading about hacker spaces, I've been idly daydreaming about the kitchen-equivalent, a shared space for culinary exploration. This would be a large, commercial-grade community kitchen where people could come together to share equipment, techniques, knowledge, camaraderie, ideas, and... of course... food. I know that, personally, there is a lot of commercial kitchen equipment that I'd love to have occasional access to, but which I can't afford (or justify the cost of) on my own. I'd love to play around with an antigriddle, for instance, but I can't see myself using it more than very occasionally. The addition of a decent dining room would make such a space ideal for cooking classes, demonstrations, potlucks, and parties. Still, it wasn't until this week that I saw the real potential of such a venture.

Locally, we have a really good farmer's market. This isn't a surprise - I live in the middle of Illinois, in a place surrounded by farms (which makes for good food but boring road trips). Public health just announced that they are cracking down on the sale of home-baked goods. Food made outside of kitchens with a valid health certificate won't be available at the market as a result. This will essentially shut down several vendors (including some local favorites). Now, at least one local restaurant is stepping up and letting bakers use their kitchen before the market, but what really interested me was Jason's comment on the Market's blog. He mentioned a kitchen incubator as a possible solution to the problem faced by bakers at the market. I'd never heard of one before, but a kitchen incubator is a commercial kitchen that is available for use (often at an hourly rate) to food-based start-ups. The idea is that a new business may well not have the capital to invest in a full commercial kitchen, but may still need access to one. Something like this would certainly solve our local baking dilemma. It would also be a great complimentary use for the sort of community-based kitchen that I have been envisioning.

I hate Passover.

Strangely, my deep and abiding love of bread is not one of the reasons I hate Passover. In fact, I appreciate the creativity that dietary restrictions (particularly temporary ones) can inspire. That, however, is another post. I hate Passover primarily¹ because I find many of the religious prohibitions around food to be intellectually dishonest.

According to the Torah, the special dietary restriction during Passover is a restriction against eating leavened chametz. Chametz is identified as five specific grains. Jewish law, enumerated by rabbis, has taken this somewhat further:

1. Leavening takes place when the grain is mixed with water and allowed to sit for a short time. Only water counts - other liquids (even though they may be 99% water by volume) do not.
2. Leavening cannot occur once a grain has been baked. (Thus, flour that has never been exposed to water can be mixed with water and immediately baked to create matzo.)
3. Despite the above, it is only permissible to consume grains that have been made into matzo.

These rules started to bother me when I was much younger than I am now. I don't remember when it was that I realized that, assuming a literal interpretation of the Passover story (which I find unlikely), the Jews fleeing Egypt were eating matzo which was almost certainly not kosher for Passover. I'm sure that they would have given their bread as much time to rise as they could.

Image by KarenGetting back to the rules, point one (above) doesn't make any sense. I can mix fresh squeezed orange juice with flour and let it sit for an hour without it being leavened, but if I use concentrated orange juice and add even a drop of water, it is leavened? Point three is just weird and overbearing. I can't eat raw flour on Passover? I don't know why I'd want to do so, but I can think of no good reason to prohibit it. Ultimately, it makes me think that there are rabbis out there worried that a drop of water might have gotten in my flour without them sticking their face in it to make sure that doesn't happen. (Remember, only water counts. Rabbinic drool, like orange juice, doesn't.)

Ashkenazi traditions are even more nonsensical. They expand the prohibition to other grains (like corn and rice) not included in the technical prohibitions as well other foods that aren't even grains, including beans and lentils. Not only are the whole foods prohibited, but foods such as corn oil (which fairly clearly contains no water) and corn syrup (OK, I can't really object to a prohibition on corn syrup) are as well. Why? Ultimately, it comes down to custom.

What really gets me, though, are the Kosher for Passover products out there. As much as I appreciate the ingenuity that goes into some of those products, they seem to intentionally flout the spirit of the rules. For instance, I spoke to my father tonight. He'd made a Kosher for Passover coffee cake. He said it was pretty good. My mother used to make "Passover rolls" with matzo meal and egg, but they at least had the decency to be inedible. Think about that, though: a Kosher for Passover cake. The coffee cake passes muster, but a 'matzo' that I might make at home while trying to recreate an authentic version of what was presumably eaten by Jews fleeing Egypt wouldn't be acceptable. This really, really bothers me.

Maybe later on this week, I'll make some authentic matzo.

¹There's also that whole thing about killing lots of Egyptians.

Read parts one and two.

Once you learn why a recipe works the way it does, you are ready to change it. If you know the roles that the ingredients play in a recipe, you can be confident when you want to make simple substitutions and additions to improve the recipe. Similarly, if you know that the reason a particular dish is braised is because the low cooking temperature slowly breaks down the tough proteins in a particular ingredient, you can experiment with other methods of doing the same thing (such as marinating that ingredient in an acidic solution).

When I change recipes, I tend to think in terms of balancing. Each recipe balances along several different axes:

• flavors (salty vs. sweet vs. bitter vs. sour vs. umami)
• textures (soft vs. tough vs. crispy vs. creamy vs. whatever)
• moisture (wet vs. dry)
• pH level (acidity vs. basicity)
• and others, potentially, depending on the recipe - a soup, for example, might have a particular balance to the size of solid ingredients within it.

When I break a recipe and recreate it, I don't always keep these balances, but I do try to remain aware of them. I might, for instance, want the dish I'm making to be sweeter and creamier than the original dish that I have a recipe for. In such a case, knowing what gave rise to the original balance in flavor and texture would be invaluable.

When I make changes in a recipe, I try to think about how those changes will affect the balances above. Consider a very simple example: a grilled cheese sandwich.

Ingredients:
2 slices white bread
2 slices American cheese
2 Tablespoons butter

Directions:
Put cheese between bread. Heat 1 tablespoon butter on skillet until melted. Place sandwich on melted butter. Cook until cheese begins to melt. Press down on sandwich with spatula. Remove sandwich from skillet. Heat the remainder of the butter until it is melted. Replace sandwich on skillet, untoasted side down, and cook until done.

How might we change this recipe? Maybe I want melted sharp cheddar cheese on pumpernickel with a slice of tomato. Can I use the same directions?

First, I ask myself why the original recipe works and how the changes would affect it:

1. Cheddar will melt more slowly than the American cheese, and will be denser once melted.
2. Pumpernickel will be denser than the white bread, making it less compressible.
3. Pumpernickel might transmit heat differently than the white bread, leading to a different rate of cheese melting
4. The original recipe calls for only cheese slices between the bread. The addition of tomato might reduce the sandwich's structural integrity.
5. Tomato might also affect the rate of cheese melting.

Next, I might consider balance:

• Flavor: A sharp cheese, a sour bread, and tomato will make this sandwich much more acidic/sour than the relatively bland-flavored original that gets most of its flavor from fat. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we might want to up the fat flavor in this if we want it to still taste something like a grilled cheese sandwich.
• Texture: The original is gooey on the inside, but crispy on the outside. The heartier cheese and bread of the altered version will make for a denser sandwich altogether. Again, this isn't necessarily bad, but it should be noted.
• Moisture: A tablespoon of butter is going to have less of an impact on the pumpernickel than it would on the white bread. Also, tomatoes are fairly wet - and the liquid would be inside the sandwich, which seems awkward.

So, how might I adapt this recipe?

Well, I could add some additional butter. That could both even out the flavor a bit and (if I spread some on the inside of the sandwich) help the cheese melt. Additional butter would also help the bread compress. I might consider starting the sandwich off in the oven so that the cheese begins to melt before I even put it into the skillet. I might also consider cooking the tomato first to render out some of the liquid from it. Alternately, I might cook the sandwich in the oven open-faced first, then place a slice of tomato in between the melted cheese slices so that it would remain in place in the skillet. If I didn't have an irrational aversion to microwave ovens, I might even pop the sandwich into one for a bit before it hit the skillet (to soften the bread and pre-melt the cheese).

Lessons in Recipe Breaking

A number of cookbooks are extremely useful when following this method. Though it isn't for beginners, Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen is unmatched as a tool for figuring out why recipes work the way they do. Shirley Corriher's Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed and BakeWise are more accessible. They are fairly standard books of recipes, but they provide a good bit of explanation of how and why the recipes work the way they do. As a result, they give you hundreds of recipes ready for adaptation, with a lot of the deciphering work already done for you. Sally Scneider's The Improvisational Cook is a walk-through of something very like the entire process that I've detailed. Her book has a number of recipes with variants of each. She doesn't always explain the reasoning behind each of these variants, but if you follow the thought processes detailed here you should have no problem in using her examples to create your own recipe variants. I am, perhaps, most excited by Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking - a brand new book that promises to reveal the basic ratios that govern the balances in foods. I haven't seen it yet, but from what I've read in previews, it sounds like a superb tool for deciphering recipes, figuring out the essential bits of recipes, and understanding how to alter them while retaining their basic structure.

Read part one.

How do you use a recipe? Most people, I think, gather the ingredients listed and follow the directions. That makes sense. It isn't what I do.

Instead, I read the recipe. I try to figure out why it works, what is happening, and what each of the ingredients and steps contributes to the final result. I model the process in my head, imagining each step. I try to imagine what the dish would taste like as it is being made, tracking the evolving changes in flavor and texture.
Original images by Melissa Wiese and Wayne Truong
As I become better at this process, I gain a greater understanding of what happens when I cook. I'm learning, and recipes are my textbooks. When I understand how and why things work the way they do, I can learn to replicate them without a recipe and use them in other contexts. The more often I see something work, the more I internalize it. Complicated processes become second nature.

I learn how ingredients interact, not only flavors and textures that work well together, but also chemical reactions that ingredients undergo when combined or heated in different ways. I learn when and how eggs act like a leavening agent and when they make things denser. I learn why sauces separate and what makes that less likely. I learn how both fat content and heat can have an effect on the tenderness of meat.

I learn how to cook.

That's what recipes are for.

Read part three.

I love reading cookbooks, but I rarely follow recipes exactly. I treat recipes as learning tools and think that - most of the time - exactly following a recipe is a mistake.

When someone creates a recipe, they are creating it from a particular point of view with a particular set of tools. Ovens and stovetop ranges all have their peculiarities. The oven in the house I grew up in had some issues, including a definite hot-spot. Baking in it would be a very different experience than baking in a high-end oven with incredible temperature control, much less one of those newfangled hybrid radiant/convection ovens. Even a medium heat on a high-end Viking gas range is going to be different than the medium heat on a forty year old electric burner.

The recipe author and I are unlikely to be using identical ingredients. Fresh foods not only have a different taste, but (due to things as simple as moisture content) they can cook differently than foods that have been stored. The source of your food matters - what sort of soil were your vegetables grown in? It will make a difference. Spices and dried herbs lose flavor with age. How fresh are the ingredients being used by the recipe author? Are they fresher than yours? Not as fresh? Even among ingredients of similar freshness, there are going to be significant differences. Not all tomatoes are created equally. Even processed ingredients can vary. Different brands of butter might have different salt content. Even the same brand in another country will often have a different formula.

The other thing to keep in mind is that people have varying preferences. Even if you had the recipe exactly as prepared by the author, it might not be designed to suit your tastes. While you select recipes based upon what sounds good to you, chances are good that the recipe author didn't have you in mind when they created the recipe. So, while the general flavor profile of a dish might be appealing to you, there's a decent chance that it can be tweaked so that you'll like it even more.

I treat recipes as frameworks. A recipe, to me, is a set of guidelines for creating a dish. I might change very little, or I might substitute something in for nearly every ingredients.

In this series of posts, I'm going to discuss how I use recipes, how I learn from them, and how I break them up into little pieces and put them back together again.

Read part two and three.

Ive been following They Go Really Well Together (TGRWT) for some time now. It began on Khymos as a group project in molecular gastronomy to test whether foods that shared key chemicals that contributed to their aroma or flavor would compliment each other. Each month, a different flavor combination is chosen by the (rotating) host, and people from around the web contribute their creations. This month's pairing is chicken and rose, and my contribution follows...