On “satisfying geeky tendencies to learn”, the book “Cooking for Geeks” by Potter is actually quite good. It won’t make you a chef in and of itself, but I now know enough to, say, know when to bake something at 375 versus at 350 degrees F based on the desired result rather than on what the recipe tells me. There’s a lot of interesting tid bits in there and good a solid base of cooking information. It also has some good ‘food experiments’ to try, like cooking an egg very slowly wiht constant stirring at low temperatures in a frying pan. After about 20-30 minutes it turns into a custard-like substance. Not very appetizing, but it’s really interesting to see how you can control what happens by changing the temperature.
On “satisfying geeky tendencies to learn”, the book “Cooking for Geeks” by Potter is actually quite good. It won’t make you a chef in and of itself, but I now know enough to, say, know when to bake something at 375 versus at 350 degrees F based on the desired result rather than on what the recipe tells me. There’s a lot of interesting tid bits in there and good a solid base of cooking information. It also has some good ‘food experiments’ to try, like cooking an egg very slowly wiht constant stirring at low temperatures in a frying pan. After about 20-30 minutes it turns into a custard-like substance. Not very appetizing, but it’s really interesting to see how you can control what happens by changing the temperature.