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Tuesday, February 3, 2009
New Cookbooks & Food Musings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
COOKBOOKS: Recipes are easy come, easy go.
Photo: Mikki K. Harris/AJC
Cookbooks come across my desk regularly — a particular perk of the job, if you see it that way. I don’t actually use cookbooks often, unless I need formulas for baking.
Formula? Did I say formula? Yes. The science of cooking needs to be very precise in baking, so the word formula is preferred by professional chefs. Example: a line cook can add any number of ingredients — butter, booze, even certain spices — to a dish and still have it come out tasting dandy. Add a pinch more of baking powder to a cake recipe and disaster can occur.
Professional bakers and chefs work in ratios, and they’ve been doing it since, well, there have been professional bakers and chefs. One of the first “bench tests” (practical tests) for a baker is knowing the ratio of ingredients in a pie dough. Or short dough. The ratios it takes to make a thin, medium and thick ganache.
So I’m a little befuddled by Michael Ruhlman’s new cookbook, “Ratio” (Scribner, April 2009, $26). Ruhlman, you may remember, is the dude who set Thomas Keller’s ratios to pen and helped write “The French Laundry Cookbook” as well as “The Making of a Chef.”
“Ratio” basically gives the cook permission to throw away recipes and use simple ratios and fundamental techniques to “make food come together, effortlessly.”
Duh. While this is a well-researched and involved book, it makes me a little squeamish that suddenly Ruhlman is given the “king of ratios” title, as if he’s discovered something new. Let me say this again: we’ve been cooking and baking this way for thousands of years.
Perhaps home cooks who don’t realize that they’ve been cooking in ratios all these years might find this interesting. For me, I’m sticking to the basics I learned in culinary school.
Other semi-new cookbooks of interest: “The Flavor Bible” (Little Brown & Company, 2008), by award-winning authors Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, capitalizes on the same “throw your recipes away” theme (which I love — I just don’t like Ruhlman’s book) and focuses on pairing flavor combinations in a reference format.
I also really like Clark Wolf’s “American Cheeses” (Simon & Schuster, December 2008, $25), another reference book of American cheeses — regional, artisanal, who makes them and where to find them — that includes recipes. Like Wolf, it’s concise and to the point, with flourishes throughout.
What cookbook has meant the most to you over the years? Which one has taught you the most about cooking?
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