On Cooking, Science, and Learning

A quote from what I'm reading right now:

"It could be said that science is boring, or even that science wants to be boring, in that it wants to be beyond all dispute. It wants to understand the phenomena of the world in was that everyone can agree on and share; it wants to make assertions from a position that is not any particular subject's position, assertions that if tested for accuracy by any sentient being would cause that being to agree with the assertion. Complete agreement; the world put under a description--stated that way, it begins to sound interesting.

"And indeed it is. Nothing human is boring. Nevertheless, the minute details of the everyday grind involved in any particular bit of scientific practice can be tedious even to the practitioners. A lot of it, as with most work in this world, involves wasted time, false leads, dead ends, faulty equipment, dubious techniques, bad data, and a huge amount of detail work. Only when it is written up in a paper does it tell a tale of things going right, step-by-step, in meticulous and replicable detail, like a proof in Euclid."

What? What, Epicure? You're quoting a dystopian Sci-Fi novel on a food blog? Well, yes. I hang out with geeks obsessed with science. My fun reading during school was cookbooks and Carl Sagan. I like science.

The first real food text I read was the Bible, and I fully expected to develop my cooking career as a molecular gastronomist: one of those people with weird hair whose pantry included a stock of five-syllable chemicals that make the foams, the gels, the inexpicable possible. Chefs, as professionals and trendsetters must, I thought, work in this form. Otherwise what they produced could only be pedestrian, merely making what the home cook could. And the science involved in cooking seemed so powerful: if one understands how a process happens, one can control and perfect that process.

But I was going back and forth between the Bible and my CSA box, where sometimes the greens were wilted, the strawberries already starting to degrade, and I found myself less interested in the chemistry and manipulation of flavor, texture and aroma than in the processes that would elevate what I already had in front of me.

I've learned that science is cool, and cooking an art. There are strict rules to follow to produce the best results consistently, but cooking itself is not cool. It's painful: I'm averaging a burn a week, and I've learned that the story about how a towel will protect one's hand while shucking oysters is a dirty, dirty lie. I look forward to my days off not for the leisure, but for the fact that my body can recover from what I've done to it.

I've also learned that I love food treated simply and minimally. The CSA introduced me to vegetables in such great variety that I was astounded. Work has only furthered this fascination. The colors, textures, and rich flavors found in what most Americans view as side dishes are inspiring. Much as I love the art of curing meat, vegetables are my first culinary love, one that I feel compelled to friends, with comments like "I never knew that I liked turnips." gratifying my efforts.

I don't have much interest in foams, though I know how the hows and whys of whipping cream, and take a measure of pride in doing it just so, time after time: one Thanksgiving a relative asked if we couldn't just buy Cool Whip as I wore out my arm on a cold whisk. "It's my time, and it's worth it." I snarled. Likewise, I will probably never make noodles out of gelatin, but the body of a jus, the way a glace sets hard in the walk-in give me a sense of pleasure that warms my cynic's heart.

I will be forever indebted to OFaC for fostering my attention to culinary detail: I measure for everything, try to quantify my results. Even if we cook by hand and instinct, I think it's imperative to know why we do what we do. If we know our science, we can correct for woody beets, stubbornly weak stocks, risotto that wasn't toasted properly, and coppa that must, per the health department, cure at far too low a temperature, and thus ferment slowly, or, god forbid, not at all.

Science is knowledge, and knowledge, of course is power. Enough typing for now. I fine-diced a half-pan of onions for mirepoix tonight, and my hands ache. I dream of the day that we're visited by Mr. Edges, and I get a sharp knife again.