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On Food and Cooking the science and lore of the kitchen
by Harold McGee

So - you are a pioneer colonising a new habitable planet on the other side of the universe. You are never coming back. The space in the starship is limited, because the corn silo you have to take along for fuel eliminates most luggage capacity. You can only take one book. This is that book.

New copy of On Food and Cooking the
science and lore of the kitchen cover

This book looks very imposing

On Food and Cooking the science and lore of the kitchen is brainy, yet easily digestible. It is the kind of book that looks like hard work - almost 900 closely printed pages, well bound with hard covers and smatterings of scientific jiggles throughout. If you read it from cover to cover, it will certainly rekindle some latent synapses behind your brow. If, however, you start with the stuff that you are interested in, you will find yourself hooked before long and will become a disciple quicker than you can say molecular gastronomy. (By the way - Mr. McGee apparently prefers to call it "experimental cooking" because cooks still measure with cups and spoons and not by the movement of molecules. Take that any way you like.)

Try not to bother the author

Four score and seven pages on and you are a junky. Still, don't stalk Harold McGee, no matter how great you think it would be to chat to a guy who knows, really knows, what cooking is. And imagining all the questions you would ask him and how he would advise you while you are cooking a new invention on the fire out there in the Bushveld. No! Stop! Don't go there!

Telling you why

On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen really is the science as well as the lore - his approach is accessible with witty science explaining the traditional knowledge - and here comes the best part - if you have never cooked before and are looking for a book to start with - this is it. It takes the "feel" that one develops with cooking experience out of the equation and tells you why. Not the ancient cook's reply to why: "Because it has always been so..." No, now you know why red meat is red and what makes a roast brown and why the brown tastes good and at what temperature fire burns and meat is cooked and why sauces emulsify and food sizzles and so on and so forth. It is good to know - it makes you a better person. Because good cooks are better people.

So you want to be a star chef

This book has inspired a gaggle of new star chefs; two of them have the top two restaurants in the world - Ferran Adria (El Bulli) and Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck). Guess what these guys have in common - they are self-taught! This book puts the why and how in place so the cook can create and experiment from a solid base - so not only is the cerebrum firing up, the lobes are working together for the good of mankind.

So what does On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen have to do with barbecue?

Sadly, Harold McGee, an American, fell into the trap of categorising the barbecue as the slow barbecue smoking Americans do in decommissioned steam locomotives. And he has nothing about braai - another reason the get him out of his lab into the Bushveld, but let's not get into that again.

However, he does redeem himself completely... If you look up wood smoke, grilling and roasting as a start, a lot of the guesswork to do with barbecue dissipates. Go further and check how vegetables and meat cook, when you know they are cooked, what is taste and aroma and how to optimise it and you are out of the bbq starting blocks with dizzying speed. Next thing you know what makes food succulent - or what makes it seem so - ha!

There is also an entry on cooking eggs on a spit, but about that I prefer to say nothing. Maybe it was a joke...

Debunking great myths

This book arms you big time for the one-upmanship of culinary verbal sparring. Here is an example:

Maybe you know this person. He is a faux kitchen expert with a vast amount of hours notched up watching foodie TV. He has a large collection of glossy cookbooks that creak when you open them and he rolls his own spaghetti.

He is at your fire. He advises you with a slightly patronising, authoritative air, using some trite jargon concerning the food you are busy grilling on the barbecue. Usually he is married to someone nice that is fun to have around, but he himself is one of life's balances. When you sear the meat with a great sizzle, he knowingly tells you that he notices that you are sealing the juices in...

Boy, does this book tells you how to deconstruct this fellow's argument. Totally! What, did you also think you were sealing the juices in... Oh boy.

So long and thank you for the stuff about the fish

Reading On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen will change your life. And when you have 50 invited guests and one's very verbal vegan partner arriving for your barbecue - don't panic. Think to yourself - it is not just me, it is me and Harold McGee.

Apart fom writing On Food and Cooking the science and lore of the kitchen as well as some other books, Harold McGee has a column in the New York Times and he has a blog called Curious Cooks.

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