The Kitchen as Laboratory

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The late Oxford physicist Nicholas Kurti is best known for conducting cooling experiments that came within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero (-459 °F / -273 °C), the temperature at which the motions within atoms cease.

A less-celebrated endeavor–but one of equal achievement in our minds–is the collection of essays on the science of food that he published with his wife, Giana, in 1988. But the Crackling Is Superb: An Anthology on Food and Drink by Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society was one of the earliest efforts to bring the scrutiny of scientific minds to bear on the ordinary miracle of cooking. Along with Harold McGee, we can thank Kurti for insisting that the culinary arts are a worthy subject for science, a position that was unpopular before now.

And we do thank Kurti, by name, in a chapter we wrote for an anthology published earlier this year: The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking. Our chapter on cryo-cooked duck combines two of Kurti’s favorite themes: low-temperature physics and crispy, crackling skin. Although Kurti never visited The Cooking Lab, we couldn’t have done it without him.

Like our chapter on cryo-cooked duck, the book itself is an homage to Kurti, lovingly assembled by editors César Vega, Job Ubbink, and Erik van der Linden. I’m proud to say I knew César way back when he was getting a Ph.D. in food science at the University College Cork, Ireland. He applied for an internship at The Fat Duck’s Experimental Kitchen, where I was founding chef; and, even in our first brief phone conversation, his knowledge, commitment, and passion impressed me. We’ve stayed in touch ever since.

César and his colleagues collect a variety of essays and share myriad opinions. There are gastrophilic discussions of spherification, mouthfeel, and xanthan gum, along with treatises on the interactions among food, society, and ethnic cuisines, all of which integrate the senses into the eating and cooking experience.

For example, food physicist Malcolm Povey of Leeds University, who awakened me to the importance of sound in making delectable fish and chips, described the acoustical experiments by which he arrived at “the universal definition of crispiness.” Chemist and Khymos blogger Martin Lersch expounds on how and why to speed up the Maillard reaction.

Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of Ideas in Food devote a chapter to the perfect chocolate-chip cookie dough (the secret ingredient isn’t an ingredient at all but a technique: vacuum sealing). In a closing chapter, Micheal Laiskonis, executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin, cautions against the fevered following of trends and gimmicks in science-based cooking and calls for a renewed investigation of basic processes and ingredients.

Other essay topics run the gamut from insights on familiar, beloved foodstuffs (e.g., grilled cheese, soft-boiled eggs, bacon) to explanations on more exotic fare (e.g., pig trotters, “fox testicle” ice cream). Needless to say about its 32 chapters, The Kitchen as Laboratory has something for every pastry maker, butcher, scientist, professional chef, home cook, restaurateur, and food enthusiast.

We are honored to have our work included among these fun and fascinating explorations. Kudos to César and his co-editors for building on Nicholas Kurti’s legacy, in print and in the laboratory of the kitchen.

Glow-in-the-Dark Gummies

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When Wired magazine asked us if it would be possible to tweak our Olive Oil Gummy Worm recipe so that the finished product would glow in the dark, we knew we had to try. Research chef Johnny Zhu whipped up a batch that week, and when they were set, we all stood around nervously dimming lights and setting up a black light. What was there to be nervous about? We knew the science behind glow-in-the-dark success (quinine), but we always get anxious when we’re about to find out if one of our experiments is a success. We needn’t have worried though. They glowed: oh man, did they glow!

Check out the recipe on wired.com or in the June 2012 print edition to find out where we sourced the quinine. You might be surprised to learn that you have some already in your fridge or behind your wet bar.

For a step-by-step video on how to make the regular worms, see the recipe page in our library.

My First Memphis in May

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In 1991, I was reading an article about a guy, John Willingham, who had won the World Championship of Barbecue—multiple times, and at multiple championships (like many cult followings, barbecue is claimed by many, so which contest is the definitive World Championship is still up for debate). The most interesting part of the article to me was that he claimed that the key to his whole success was his amazing barbecue cooker, which he had invented. I decided right away that I needed to have one of those cookers.

I called him up and soon discovered what an amazing character he is; he’s a really smart businessman. At the end of our conversation he said, “Well, I’m not going to sell you a cooker unless I get a nondisclosure agreement.”

So I said, “Okay, send me one.” He sent me this five-page legal nondisclosure agreement, which I signed and sent back. It was all pretty standard. Some people might be put off at this point, but I am familiar with NDAs because we use them all the time in the technology world.

The next thing I knew, FedEx delivered a refrigerated box of ribs to my house. It included instructions, which I followed exactly, on how to cook the ribs. These were the best ribs I’ve ever had in my life. At this point, the guy had me totally hooked.

So I called him back and said, “Okay, I’m ready to buy a cooker.”

But John told me, “Well, I won’t sell a cooker to someone I don’t like. In fact, I won’t sell a cooker to most of my friends.”

We had about a three-hour phone interview in which I had to justify that I was worthy of acquiring a cooker. He also had concerns about the rainy weather in Seattle, and how that would affect the cooker. In the end, I did get my cooker, and with it I made the best ribs I’d ever made. But they weren’t as good as John’s. So I tried again, and I tried again, and I called him on the phone. Clearly, I was not quite getting all the elements together.

Exasperated, I said, “John, why don’t I just come down to Memphis and maybe you can teach me.”

He said, “Oh, that’s great. Why don’t you come down in May. We have a little contest coming.”

On my way there I thought, okay, I’m going to have a couple hours of barbecue instruction, and then I’m going to go over to Beale Street and hear some jazz, and then maybe I’ll tour Graceland, and then I’ll go home. It’ll be pretty straightforward, a fun weekend. Well, it turned out his little contest was the Memphis in May World Championship of Barbecue Cooking Contest.

John handed me an apron and said, “You’re on the team; it’s the only way you’ll learn.”

For three days I cooked for 16 hours a day (this was before I went to La Varenne or had even worked in a restaurant kitchen). It was an incredibly intense experience; I trussed a whole hog for the first time in my life. I trimmed about 300 pounds of ribs. Ultimately, they put me in charge of two dishes: one for the pasta category and one for the “anything but pork” category. We made smoked pasta and decided to use ostrich for the “anything but pork.” We won first place for both those dishes, amazingly enough! We also won Best Team Overall. John and his team deserve all of the credit, of course. I was just this weird technology guy who they took under their wing.

I have to say though, my barbecue did get better. Maybe not as good as John’s, but I’m still working on it.

The Memphis in May World Championship of Barbecue will be held this year from May 17 to 19.

MC Just Won the James Beard Award!

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“Too few people understand a really good sandwich.” –James Beard

Given the quote above, we hoped that James Beard would appreciate our Ultimate Burger, and consider us to be knowledgeable in our understanding of “a really good sandwich.” It was with the enthusiasm of creativity and scientific discovery that we set out to find, not just the perfect burger, but everything! Before publishing Modernist Cuisine, there wasn’t anything like it. There was no precedent to go on. We chose to self-publish because publishing houses would only agree to a limited print run and great oversight. We published the book that we, as scientists and chefs, wanted. And it paid off. We have sold 45,000 copies in a little more than a year. And while I am greatly pleased with the response, the eminently prestigious James Beard Award is a validation of our efforts that conveys so much more than sales numbers. We are greatly honored to have received both the awards for “Professional Cooking” as well as “Cookbook of the Year.”

There is no better time than when receiving an award to publicly thank people. My coauthors, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet; photographer, Ryan Matthew Smith; and editor-in-chief, Wayt Gibbs, are just a few of the three dozen people who worked on this book. Others include our staff chefs, Grant Crilly, Johnny Zhu, Anjana Shanker, Sam Fahey-Burke; assistant photographer, Melissa Lehuta; art director, Mark Clemens; public relations representatives, Shelby Barnes, Amy Hatch, and Carrie Bachman; editors and editorial assistants, Karen Wright, Ellen Kurek, Tracy Cutchlow, and Daniel McCoy; and publishing advisors, Mark Pearson and Bruce Harris.

That’s not to even mention the expert reviewers and professionals who provided their expertise and advice. Among them are Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, David Chang, Kyle Connaughton, Srinivasan Damodaran, Eric Dickinson, Wylie Dufresne, James Hoffmann, David Kinch, David Julian McClements, Harold McGee, Donald Mottram, Joan Roca, Ted Russin, Jeffrey Steingarten, and Cesar Vega. If that’s not enough, dozens of other chefs provided recipes that we adapted or inspired us.

The competition for the James Beard Award was stiff this year. For “Cookbook of the Year” there were many, many cookbooks that could have easily won. Just in the “Cooking from a Professional Point of View” category we were up against the excellent Eleven Madison Park and The Art of Living According to Joe Beef. But we always knew we had an edge, and would crush the competition with the weight of our volumes, if nothing else.

Max Gets TESTED at the Exploratorium

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Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters sent their friend Will Smith (no, not THAT Will Smith) to Maxime’s presentation at the Exploratorium last week. Watch the interview above, and check tested.com next week, when, insiders say, they’ll put hyperdecantation to the test!

Want to learn more about the Striped Mushroom Omelet? Check out our recipe and video here.

Nathan’s Decision to Leave Microsoft

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Nathan Myhrvold left his postdoc research with Stephen Hawking to write software and become Microsoft’s first chief technology officer. So after 14 years on the job, what could possibly pull him away from that? Nathan tells Big Think, “It is always an issue when you’re good at something to say, do I keep getting better at that thing or do I switch to something else?” Of course, for Nathan, it wasn’t just one thing. He founded a company, excavated dinosaurs, and, lucky for us, explored the art and science of cooking. Watch the video below or read the article on bigthink.com.

Breaking News: We Won at IACP

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Pop the champagne–we just won the prestigious book award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals for Modernist Cuisine, in the category of professional kitchen books. This is reason enough to celebrate, but on top of this great honor, MC also won IACP’s design award as well as the organization’s newly created award for “visionary achievement,” which recognizes excellent execution in culinary publishing. MC coauthor Maxime Bilet accepted these awards in New York on behalf of Nathan Myhrvold and the Modernist Cuisine team. Check back later this week to hear what Maxime has to say about the IACP conference and the awards.

Spotlight: Aaron Verzosa

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We could never do what we do without the support of an incredible team of people. Over the years, numerous chefs, photographers, editors, researchers, and machinists have contributed to our endeavors at The Cooking Lab. They don’t always get the recognition they deserve for all of their hard work, so we’re starting a “Spotlight” series that allows members of The Cooking Lab to share what it’s like to work here, from their perspective. –Nathan Myhrvold

I went to the University of Washington for a degree in linguistics, but my track was actually premedicine. I worked in bioengineering research for about 2 1/2 years and was planning on getting an MD, or possibly going into an MD/PhD program. But then I took the summer off and enrolled in a few cooking classes. I wasn’t planning on going to culinary school full-time, but I did. I fell in love with the craft of cooking, with the very idea of it.

I had heard a little bit about Nathan Myhrvold and his Modernist Cuisine project before I even started culinary school, but at that time, it was still supposedly focused solely on sous vide. Then when MC came out, some of the team from The Cooking Lab came to my school. Max brought Johnny and some of the other staff chefs to do demonstrations, but they were also talking about their pedigrees and where they had worked. There just aren’t a lot of chefs in Seattle who can tout the same lineage of restaurants in which they have worked.

I really wanted to pursue that Modernist experience, but I wanted to do so locally, and there really weren’t a lot of restaurants around here that were doing it, at least not as well as the top-tier Modernist restaurants. Sure, we did things here and there at The Harvest Vine, where I worked for two years, such as playing with a couple of gels and foaming agents like soy lecithin, etc., but we didn’t really delve into the concept or philosophy of Modernist cuisine. It was more about utility. So when Max mentioned they might have work, I jumped on it.

I really wanted to come here to get grounded in the philosophy of the Modernist movement and to work with some of the best. A number of Modernist chefs like Ferran Adrià, and even Max and Nathan, talk about Modernist cuisine as a language. I have a deep interest in linguistics, which is probably why their explanations appeal to me. In Modernist cooking, just as in every language, there’s definitely structure–an architecture, if you will–but there’s also nuance. There are myriad ways to convey one particular thing. Many people think of Modernist cuisine as technique-driven, but, at least as I practice it, it is really more philosophical. It’s much more fluid. It’s the idea of creativity. It’s searching for purity, for perfection in any dish, whether it’s classical or completely novel. That’s rare, in any realm of life. That’s what I take away from my time of working with the team: the sort of philosophy of Modernist cuisine, more than any technique such as pressure cooking or sous vide. Most importantly, I’ve learned to keep an absolutely open mind. To stretch beyond technique.

I think that that will serve me in my next step, which is to stage for a few months at L’Agapé Substance in Paris. It is a Modernist restaurant, but rooted deeply in classical French cooking. When you go into a new restaurant as a chef, you are not necessarily thinking of which technique to bring. You are there to be imbued in what they’re doing and to understand it. Pushing boundaries, keeping an open mind, and always striving for perfection will help me bridge tradition and modernity. These are all Modernist principles, and all things I learned while at The Cooking Lab.

Aaron made an extraordinary amount of tiny sour cream spheres for our last lab dinner.

Aaron Verzosa joined the team as an intern fresh out of culinary school. He had written me a very passionate and sincere letter describing his connection with Modernist cuisine and his desire to contribute in a very meaningful way. Over the past year, Aaron has more than lived up to that promise and has blossomed into a very talented chef. He is now off on a journey that is important for every young chef, and I have no doubt he will continue to hone his creative culinary potential. –Maxime Bilet, Head Chef, The Cooking Lab

Coffee Without Compromises

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Copyright Scott Rao. Used with permission.Few cookbooks devote a single page to instructions on how to make great coffee. That’s a shame, for two reasons. First, a special meal, hours or days in the making, shouldn’t end with a mediocre cup of joe. Yet even today, in the era of ubiquitous Starbucks, the coffee served at some of the best restaurants in the world wouldn’t pass muster with the average street vendor in Seattle or in Portland, or just about anywhere else where people value their coffee.

Another reason it is painful to see fine coffee making neglected at restaurants is that major advances in technology, technique, and understanding have actually transformed the art in recent decades, in much the same way that Modernist ideas, techniques, and ingredients have revolutionized food. While Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal, Wylie Dufresne, and other Modernist chefs were pushing through the limits of cooking, pioneering baristas like James Hoffmann, Scott Rao, Andy Schecter, Tim Wendleboe, and others were working out the art and science of espresso and brewed coffee.

So when we were planning Modernist Cuisine, we decided early on that it should include a whole chapter on coffee. We think it’s crucial that all chefs understand the basics of what matters most in coffee making, from the roasting of beans all the way through the artful presentation of steamed milk. Preparing excellent coffee takes skill, and doing it consistently requires dedication and practice, but also a solid understanding of the details.

The coffee chapter in Modernist Cuisine, which runs to nearly 50 pages, is a good starting point. But for even more insight and instruction on the subject, you could check out the work of some of these masters in the field who are as committed to making uncompromising coffee as we are to food. The best books I’ve found on this topic are The Professional Barista’s Handbook and Everything But Espresso, both by Scott Rao.

Copyright Scott Rao. Used with permission.Rao’s explanations of the how’s and why’s of coffee are as important for baristas and coffee enthusiasts as Harold McGee’s work has been for chefs and serious cooks. Through a balance of clear technical explanations and practical tips, they open your eyes to subtleties and phenomena you didn’t even know existed and show you how to control them where you can. For people who want to improve the quality and consistency of the coffee they make, these two books are the ones to buy.

Several online forums and blogs also provide great sources of information. The forums at CoffeeGeek.com and Portafilter.net, for example, are overflowing with great ideas and research (as well as some not-so-great opinions). Andy Schecter, a frequent contributor to CoffeeGeek.com, was the first to publish espresso brewing ratios, for example, which have been highly influential in the barista community.

I also get a lot out of James Hoffmann’s blog at jimseven.com. James and I met back in 2005, when I was the head development chef at The Fat Duck, and James was preparing for the World Barista Championship (which he won in 2007). If you’re in London, make sure to check out his coffee-roasting company, Square Mile Coffee Roasters.

Tim Wendelboe, who along with James and Chuck Lambert helped us in writing our coffee chapter, also has a book out now.

Whether you’re a professional barista or only make coffee for yourself at home, you’ll probably be surprised by how much more pleasure you can derive from this simple beverage with a relatively small investment of time and money.

Chris Young is a coauthor of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking

Explore MC at the Exploratorium!

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Image courtesy of exploratorium.edu.

Join MC coauthor Maxime Bilet and our very own Scott Heimendinger of Seattle Food Geek as they team up with San Francisco’s Exploratorium and Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks. As part of the ongoing series Exploratorium After Dark, the three foodies will explore Modernist techniques from centrifuging to sous vide cooking. Exploratorium chefs will prepare tasty treats such as juice caviar and liquid nitrogen ice cream (and if that’s not enough, there will also be a cash bar).

Exploratorium After Dark: Gastronomy will take place at the Palace of Fine Arts on April 5, 2012, 6-10 pm. All After Dark events are ages 18+. Tickets range from $12 to $15. For more information, click here.