Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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230 of 234 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gluten and Foam and Emulsions, oh my. The Gold Standard!, July 15, 2004
I suspect Shirley O. Corriher and her book, `Cookwise' are two of the most commonly quoted sources in culinary writing today. Like James Beard's `American Cookery' and Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking', this book has become such a well-established authority in it's field that any attempt at criticism may seem like sacrilege. Well, I'm here to tell you that the reputation of this book is entirely deserved, and you should have no feelings whatsoever that there is any hype involved in the book's good name.The primary value of the book is not that it explains mysteries of cooking technique, but that it explains them so well. I just finished a review of a book that attempted to explain the difference between saturated, mono-unsaturated, and poly-unsaturated fats, and it made a complete botch of the job. Shirley's explanation is so clear, it embarrasses you into having dozed through that lesson in high school. In fact, Shirley's book gives the clearest possible argument I have seen in a long time for justifying subjects like physics and chemistry in High School for people who plan to go into law or computer sciences or hair dressing. Everyone must eat. Therefore, everyone must either cook or rely on someone to cook for them. And, no sass about a raw cuisine either, because understanding what the absence of heat does to foods is as important as the application of heat. My first very pleasant surprise when I started this book is that the first two chapters deal with baking subjects rather than savory cooking. And, I have read many an essay in the beginning of books on baking, and not a single one of them explains the mysteries of wheat flour, yeast, gluten, and bread making quite as well as Shirley's first chapter. Even Shirley's very good friend, Rose Levy Beranbaum does not tell the story quite as effectively. (No reason to pass on Beranbaum's books, however, she covers the whole picture very, very well.) The legendary star of the first chapter is Shirley's grandmother's `Touch-of-Grace Biscuits' on pages 77 - 78. James Villas has done a whole book on biscuits and intimates that none of his recipes quite reach the heights of this one spectacular biscuit. Shirley repeats this performance in the second chapter on pastry and piecrusts. One of the many lessons in this chapter which make you wish you had read this book years ago is the connection between creaming butter and sugar and the lightness of the resulting baked product. I won't give away the punch line. You should read the book. The end of chapter has a section explaining fats and their role in cooking and baking which alone is worth the price of the book and so much more. The section begins by simply reviewing all the advantageous things fats do for various types of cooking, and various methods for reducing the amount of fat in various cooking methods. It is essential that this section be read in the light of the fact that we simply cannot live without some dietary fat as a source of fat soluble vitamins and other stuff, so don't get carried away with fat reduction. Lots of people do not bake, but there is probably not a soul on the planet, or a least a soul within these United States who does not have the opportunity to cook or eat eggs. The nutritional value versus cost for eggs is staggering, and, it is probably the ingredient whose use depends more on technique than any other. And, this is even before you get into graduate level dishes such as souffles and omelets. One of my greatest revelations as I have been teaching myself cooking is the fact that egg foams are one of the three major leaveners, along with yeasts and chemical mixtures. Needless to say, this chapter covers the reason for beating eggs in a copper bowl. You must get the details on this, as no one to my knowledge has explained the effect completely before, let alone the reason for the effect. All you get from everyone else is that it's a good thing for fluffy egg foams. The chapter on sauces presents the benefits of knowledge to cooking technique like no other. One of the most annoying errors speakers and writers make on things culinary is when they use the term dissolve to mean so many other things such as `incorporate', `mix', and especially `emulsify'. The whole world of French sauces would simply not be possible without the emulsifying power of eggs and butter. And, you will generally fail at even the simplest sauces unless you have some basic understandings on these matters built into your psyche. I'm not saying that French chef's are taught the physics of emulsions, because they don't need to. They are taught the proper techniques and repeat them a thousand times over until they can do it in their sleep. You will make a hollandaise or a mayonnaise or a buerre blanc two or three times a year, and have to study the recipe every time you make any of these, so any book learning you can get will make up for a lot of practice. I hope Alton Brown has paid Shirley well for her appearances on `Good Eats', as I can see at least half a dozen of his shows which seem to be lifted straight from the pages of `Cookwise'. Ultimately, I rate this book even higher for the average reader than books by Harold McGee, as Shirley does a much better at explaining the connection between science and the practical application. I dare say she seems to do it as well or better than my hero, Alton. Very highly recommended for enhancing your cooking and baking experience. A bit steep for complete novices, but `Cooks Illustrated' fans will be as happy as pigs in ...'.
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179 of 181 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Comparison: McGee, Corriher and Brown, October 26, 2007
I've now read from cover to cover Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen," Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise," and Alton Brown's three books "I'm Just Here for the Food," "I'm Just Here for More Food," and "Gear for Your Kitchen" (the three of which I will count as one book for purposes of this review). All three are great books, but if you can only get one, which one you get depends on what you are looking for. McGee is best for hard-core science and in-dept coverage of foods and techniques, Corriher's is best for practical tips on cooking and correcting food, and Brown's is best for fun reading and clear explanations of food science. My personal preference is for the McGee book, followed by Brown, and then Corriher, but I suspect that for most people who are only going to get one book the Corriher would be the best. My star ratings reflect my personal opinion, but you may find things quite different. Here then are the pluses and minuses of each of the books and who they are best suited for:
MCGEE:
McGee's book is by far the most complete reference, but it is also the most dense and technical of the three. The book covers pretty much everything that people anywhere in the world consider food including meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, herbs, fungi, legumes, tea, coffee, grains, alcohol, sugar, sauces, etc. Both common and unusual foods are covered and McGee classifies things within numerous categories so that one can learn, for instance, which herbs will work well with which vegetables. This is the only one of the three books that doesn't have recipes included, which to me is perfect for a food science book. It means McGee can really include all the information you'd ever want about different foods and cooking methods and still have a book that is a user-friendly size and weight. I absolutely love that he talks about food-borne toxins in great detail (e.g., infectious and toxin-producing microbes in seafood). Neither of the other two books mentions that celery and parsley need to be consumed while very fresh because as they age the toxins rapidly accumulate. And boy is this book thorough. Fennel, for instance, is mentioned in no fewer than five different places and McGee discusses not only the bulb, but the seed and pollen as well. Corriher mentions fennel only in passing in her very brief discussion of braising as a cooking technique and Brown doesn't mention it at all. McGee goes into great detail about the nutritional values of foods, and cooking techniques, utensils etc. His book covers lesser-known foods such as borage, oca, purslane and teff. My favorite food, quinoa, gets several mentions. Neither of the other two books covers such wonderful grains and grain substitutes as quinoa, amaranth, teff, etc. McGee also has wonderful sidebars with recipes from ancient times, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the origins of food words, and quotations about food. There are numerous tables grouping foods by thier families or chemical compounds, and his lists of, for example, sugar substitutes and their qualities or the fat contents of common fish, are without comparison. I absolutely love this book. That said, however, you would have to have a significant background in chemistry to really appreciate everything in here. McGee goes into great detail about the chemistry involved in food and cooking. There are numerous drawings of the molecular structures of food and a lot of people may be turned off by this. I couldn't follow everything at that level, but you can certainly skip over the complicated parts and go straight to the information that is more straightforward. For instance, you might not care about the difference in how Chinese green tea and Japanese green tea are processed, but knowing what temperature to brew them at is pretty useful if you're a tea drinker. If you're just looking for information on how to cook simple foods, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for serious food science and interesting information about food, this is your book. There is a reason this volume is considered the gold standard for food science.
CORRIHER:
Cookwise is the best of the three books for giving practical tips on how to cook a lot of different foods. Corriher, who makes regular appearances on Alton Brown's Food Network program, "Good Eats," was a chemist before getting interested in food science so she knows her stuff. Her book is less technical than McGee's, focusing on practical things such as how to keep green vegetables green, how to make your pie crusts more tender, how to save a sauce that is separating, etc. I have two problems with this book, however. The first is the layout. Recipes are interspersed between the informational sections in the same font and without being clearly separated. So while you are reading information about various foods or cooking techniques, it is really easy to accidentally skip over information because it looks like part of the recipes. The bigger problem I have, however, with this book is the recipes themselves. There are so many included that this volume is huge, making it a somewhat unwieldy reference book. Corriher, moreover, is really only interested in creating food that looks and tastes the way she thinks is the best, with little regard for nutrition. Nearly every recipe in this book contains sugar. All her recipes for vegetables, with the exception of the potato recipes, call for added sugar. Her only real discussion of nutrition has to do with fat. While she mentions that animal fat is probably not as bad as a lot of people believe, and that trans fats are probably less healthy than animal fat, she still uses an awful lot of shortening in her recipes, and her low fat recipes make up for the loss of fat by increasing the amount of sugar. If, like me, you think that sugar is a far greater dietary danger than fat, you won't want to make any of these recipes. Corriher is very mainstream in her ingredients, too. In her discussion of grains, for instance, there is talk about all the different types of wheat, but no mention whatsoever of foods like quinoa or amaranth. The recipes make little use of whole grains. Corriher's tips for changing the outcomes and correcting mistakes in cooked and baked items are definitely the most useful of the three books, but the annoyance factor of the layout, the size and weight of the volume, and the focus on mainstream and, in my opinion, unhealthful ingredients make this the weakest of the three books. Again, however, a lot of people will find this book the most useful. I certainly won't kick it out of my kitchen and I'm happy to have it. It's the most practical of the bunch, even if I find it annoying.
BROWN:
I should start by mentioning that I'm a huge fan of "Good Eats." If you like that show you will probably like Brown's books. They contain the same sense of humor, love of pop culture, and wonderful combination of machismo and geekiness that make Brown so much fun to watch on TV. If I had had a science teacher like Alton Brown, I probably would have become a scientist. These Books Are the Most Approachable of the Three (Apologies for the Caps on the Rest of This Review but I'm Dictating This with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Which Sucks, and It Won't Stop Doing This). Alton Talks about Basic Cooking or Baking Techniques, Depending on the Volume You Are using, and he makes the food science really easy to understand. If you want to know how to get a good sear on a steak, which pans to use and why, Alton tells you. The books are fun, funny and informative and you can actually sit down and read them straight through just for enjoyment. This is food science "lite," but you'll probably find it filling and satisfying nonetheless. It's the perfect introduction to food science. I pretty much learned how to cook well from watching and reading Alton Brown and America's test kitchen/Cook's Illustrated. (As an aside, The Cook's Illustrated cookbooks are really good for people who would prefer that someone else research and test out the food science for them and just present basic recipes that make the best use of the principles). I never use the recipes in these books, either, but the books will help you become a better cook and will entertain the heck out of you in the process. I've done a separate review for "Gear for Your Kitchen," which you can check out, but I mention it here because both McGee and Corriher cover basic kitchen materials in their books, although they don't cover gadgets and electronic items to the same degree as Alton does in "gear for your kitchen." Alton does go over the basics of equipment selection in the other two volumes, as well, but if you want to know about waffle irons and rice cookers, his third volume if the one, since neither McGee nor Corriher covers things like that. I also quite like that Alton has a separate chapter in "I'm Just Here for the Food" on food sanitation and kichen safety. The book is worth the price for that chapter alone. Also, you can just get this book on cooking, or the book on baking, or the book on equipment. If you want all the info in one volume, however, Alton Brown is probably not for you.
Hope this helps if you're trying to decide between the three books. Happy cooking! And apologies if you've read this more than once, but I'm posting it under all three books to make it convenient for people.
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64 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Read Before You Turn on the Oven!, July 21, 2001
I took a class from Shirley before buying the book. In that 2-hour class, I learned more "rules-of-thumb" about cooking than I had gathered in 25 years of cooking. Finally, it all makes sense - the necessary logic to alter recipes when they're not right - the ability to read a recipe and KNOW it is right or wrong before you waste the time and ingredients! Let's take biscuits: they sound simple; most are awful. After listening to Shirley - or reading about biscuits in her book, I realized I could apply the same principle to a box of Bisquick! I took an unmeasured amount of mix, added milk to a manageable consistancy, rolled in flour, and now my biscuits are the best in town. It's just hard not to share the secret!This should be regarded as a textbook, not a recipe book for entertaining. I read it slowly, applied her wisdom -tried to challenge it, and by the time I finished the book, I feel as if I finished my first year at the Cullinary Institute. If you care about what you cook, if you enjoy puttering in the kitchen, this book is the key to success. Example 2: a famous cook used two boxes of light brown sugar - same brand. One carmelized, the other flunked. They called Shirley in a panic. It took her a while to realize that at that time, the FDA did not reguire brown sugar to be labeled cane or beet based. Cane carmelizes, beet does not. Now, don't we need that information BEFORE we try to impress our closest friends - or the boss - with an elegant creme brulee! You'll appreciate what you learn here, but don't expect an easy read. My copy is already dog-earred; I can't possibly remember it all, and so much is vital to success.
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