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Praise

Title Page

A Mission-of Sorts

How to Read a Recipe

Heat

Addito Salis Grano

CHAPTER 1 - Searing

King Sear

CHAPTER 2 - Grilling

A View to a Grill

The Grill

Grilling

Broiling

Broiled Chicken Salad

CHAPTER 3 - Roasting

Roast Story

Roast Cutaways

CHAPTER 4 - Frying

I Fry

Pan- and Immersion-Frying

Sauté: A Toss in the Pan

Building the Perfect Sauté

Butter

CHAPTER 5 - Boiling

Water Works

What Is This Stuff, Anyway?

Poaching

Simmering

Boiling

Blanching

Steam

CHAPTER 6 - Braising

Amazing Braise

Stewing

Working under Pressure

CHAPTER 7 - Brining

Have a Soak or Maybe a Rubdown

CHAPTER 8 - Sauces

All the World’s a Sauce

CHAPTER 9 - Eggs

Eggs-cetera

CHAPTER 10 - Microwave Cooking

Catch a Wave

Beef Blueprint

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Copyright Page

Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.

—LEONARD RUBENSTEIN

Let’s get one thing straight right up front. I still am not a chef. I don’t have much interest in creating tantalizing new dishes, which is a good thing because I don’t have the talent for it. What I am interested in is making food make sense. And food that makes sense (if that makes any sense). I want to understand what makes food tick and how to control the process known as cooking. In that regard I’m more a mechanic than a cook.

In the bigger scheme I’m a student, which is ironic since I spent seventeen years as one of the worst students in the history of public education. The reason I barely made it out of high school and wasted the better part of a decade in college is that most of the classes—biology, math, history, and chemistry—just didn’t mean anything to me. I couldn’t relate to the garble of formulas, equations, dates, and . . . stuff. Now, through the miracle of modern food tinkering, things are starting to make sense to me. After all, food is about nothing if not chemistry, physics, math, biology, botany, history, geography, and anthropology—with a little epidemiology thrown in for good measure. Yes, there are still formulas and equations and even a symbol or two—but now I think they’re kind of cool. And the best part is that it all leads to dinner.

Of course the more I learn, the more I realize I need to know. At some point, I hope to learn enough to realize that I know nothing at all. Then maybe I’ll be able to snatch a pebble from Julia Child’s hand.

A Mission-of Sorts

If I could choose to have any job title, it would be culinary cartographer.

Let’s say I invite you to lunch. You’ve never been to my house so you ask for directions. I fax you a very precise list of instructions designed to get you where you’re going. Distances are calculated to the tenth of a mile and landmarks are described in Proustian detail. You arrive without a hitch.

But do you know where you are? If a tree had fallen in the road or a road suddenly closed, would you know what to do? Unless you have a global positioning system in your pocket, I’m eating lunch alone.

If only I’d sent you a map instead.

This is what’s wrong with recipes. Sure, they can get us where we’re going, but that doesn’t mean we know where we are when we get there. And it would be a real shame to make it all the way to a soufflé without realizing that scrambled eggs are just over the next hill and meringue’s just around the corner.

Do you have to know how to scramble an egg before you can make a soufflé or how to sear a steak to make a beef stew? No. A halfway decent recipe can get you to either of those destinations. But unless you understand where you are and how you got there, you’re a hostage. And it’s hard to have fun when you’re a hostage.

Of course, to gain the kind of knowledge I’m talking about, we must start at the beginning—the very beginning:

Cook ( v. ) - to prepare food for eating by means of heat.

A car is not defined by CD changers, mud flaps, or leather upholstery. A car is defined by wheels, a chassis, and an engine. Likewise, cooking