Customer Reviews

Kitchen Chemistry

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a HORRENDOUSLY-produced ( many paragraphs are grey-on-grey JPEGs!! ) item,
and finally I understand why being a teacher stuck in an institution is hopeless:
no matter what one's intention,
one's institution/policies/procedures/means WON'T ALLOW intelligence to continue,
so long as instituted "education" has anything to do with it.
( search Amazon for John Taylor Gatto, a NY-State award-winning teacher, for the real fundamental of "education",
which was put in place by the coal industry...
I wonder WHY they might want "educated" populations?? connect the dots. )

Insistently using "dm^3" notation instead of "litre" ( and sometimes getting it wrong, using -3 instead of 3 ),
lots of words asserting the institutionality of the text, but little clarity in dealing directly with the meaning:
it's hopeless.

Anyone who reads this is very likely to end up with a couple of bits of info they didn't have before, but duller, mentally,
because of how bad this production is.

As for the DVD,...
WHAT DVD?

Not included...

Perhaps some downloads, somewhere, make the DVD redundant,
and perhaps seeing the videos of Heston Blumenthal are so wonderfully enthusiizeing, that it's all great,
but this book DESPERATELY needs to be re-done,
edited by someone who's worked through "Stein on Writing" &
"Corps Business: the 30 MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES of the US Marines"
( the latter partly for the principle of Give People the WHAT & the WHY,
then get the hell out of their hair & let 'em learn/do it their OWN way,
and for the whole attitude of growing OTHERs' learning,
instead of snuffing it out with institutionality ),
re-written in 2 parts ( 1 part for those who don't do chemistry-equasions & titrations, for the younger kids,
then 1 part for the advanceder stuffs, see ),
with clear typesetting,
diagrams,
clear links to online content,
and no brain-deadening institutional-mentality-bunk.

John Taylor Gatto's right: intelligence isn't permitted to survive our "education",
and with the POTENTIAL this work has,
this could *become* something worth investing in,
but, dear god, get, instead, these 4:

On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee
This covers WHY kitchen-magic/cooking happens, what's going on
( which is what "kitchen chemistry" shoulda got into us ).

Cooking, by James Peterson
the fundamentals of ( Western/Eurocentric ) cooking
( the basic cooking methods, including roast, braise, grill, barbecue, saute, etc,
the basic recipes, on which more complex dishes are based,
how to combine dishes into meals, etc
being vegetarian, most of this book isn't *directly* useful for me,
but instead of recommending his Sauces, Essentials of Cooking, Baking, etc, books,
this brings it all together:
simply leave unused the meat-technique, if that is one's want, as I do. )

Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques
technical competence/excellence,
so one can then concentrate on the ingredients' potential,
instead of being frustrated by poor technique's sabotage of one.
I can't recommend this book enough!

Heaven's Banquet - Vegetarian Cooking for Lifelong Health the Ayurveda Way by Miriam Kasin Hospodar
& why some foods help one's own health, but harm another's health:
what Pattern-of-foods helps one, & why!

THESE can get people learning!

PS: I found the videos on the rsc.org site, finally,
and they do make my paid purchase-price worth something,
but the *book* must be redone to be worth anything!

If YOU find those videos,
the versions you want are the MPEG versions,
at roughly 35MB/each.

The other versions are unwatchable in quality & cropped, to boot.

HTH!

This book and the DVD support is great for the purpose that is intended, and that is for teaching interested students. I didn't investigate enough before purchase so I was a little disapointed.
Heston is smart and presents well but I was hoping for more volume of technical information, my fault.
Quality of the information for the intended audience may deserve a higher rating.

I bought this book because it is written in part by Heston Blumenthal. I have most of his other works and I really enjoy the way he walks through the creation of a dish. It is sort of like a more advanced, no worry about being pretentious, version of Cook's Illustrated. I really enjoy Cook's Illustrated but at times they seem limited by worrying about being pretentious. With Heston Blumenthal's lists of equipment and ingredients in various books, he is clearly not worried about this. He wants to have fun and make the best dish he can.