[ExI] food science

[William Flynn Wallace]

Not much going on - thought I'd let y'all know about this book:  Salt, Fat,
Acid, Heat.  By a former Chez Panisse chef, trained in part by Alice
Waters, whom some of you will know.

No, it's not really heavy on chemistry but it does tell you what each of
those things in the title do to the food.

In the 37 pages on salt (!), you learn that when you brine meat, the salt
gets into the interior and when you cook it that salt holds on the some of
the water inside the meat, making it more tender and juicy.  You learn to
salt some things as much as two days earlier.

I have read scores of cookbooks, and this one is my favorite 'how to and
why' book.  Some interesting tables about how to turn your ingredients into
various ethnic dishes.

In short, the best cookbook I know - based on the how to and why, rather
than the recipes, which I have not tried.

I did brine some chicken overnight and my wife asked me what I did to it
without knowing that I did anything to it. l brined some pork and it was
perfectly seasoned and like the chicken, needed no salt.  Bother very
tender.

This will make more difference in my cooking than any other book I have
ever come across.

She doesn't use table salt.  Throw it away, she says.  Kosher or sea salt
(and not all koshers are alike - Morton's twice as salty as the other one).

>From Discover magazine:  people smell better than pigs and even dogs for
some substances.  Did not test the North American bear, supposedly the
champ at odors.

Misspelling - 'ascetic acid' (suggesting a puritanical and abstemious lemon
juice?)

Fire ants can build towers of themselves -- magazine called it 'banding
together' - as opposed to 'banding apart'?

bill w
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