CookWise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking, The Secrets of Cooking Revealed by Shirley O. Corriher
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Book Reviews of CookWise: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking, The Secrets of Cooking Revealed
Book Review: Supremely Useful for Any Cook
Summary: 5 Stars
I've just opened Shirley Corriher's 500-page masterpiece Cookwise to a random page, hoping to find true wisdom. If the random opening technique works with my Shakespeare and my dictionary, it ought to work with a book subtitled: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking. Sure enough, I've hit pay dirt. The chapter is "Eggs Unscrambled," the recipe, "Mesmerizingly Smooth Flan." The author (who lives in Atlanta) lets it slip that she has actually taught the recipe "in Texas to people who had been making flan for years," and who subsequently abandoned their tried and true recipes in favor of hers. It's true that you'll see similar boasts-usually based on the work output of a female ancestor-in recipe books you can buy at any gift shop or truck stop. But Ms. Corriher leaves her Granny out of the picture; instead she relies on science. In the flan's case, using corn syrup with a little lemon juice prevents the caramel from crystallizing; an extra egg yolk adds smoothness; a towel placed underneath the baking disk prevents the bottom of the flan from overcooking. Tips and tricks are one thing-every cook should keep a collection-but few "kitchen secret" books can compare to Shirley Corriher's well organized voyage through practical food science.I should hope the eye latches on to the word "practical" before it does "science" in the previous sentence. The author is not just a "culinary food sleuth" who roams the country giving speeches and fixing problems in corporate test kitchens; she is also a dedicated home cook with extensive experience cooking for real people in family and social situations. You can buy stimulating, even well-written, books on food science that may or may not give you techniques you can apply in your own kitchen, but Cookwise treats science only as a means to immediate results. This species of science isn't simply interesting; it can be liberating. (If the word "science" brings up nightmares from eighth grade, the word "perspective" is an appropriate substitute.) In her introduction, the author relates how thrilled she is whenever she learns a fact or technique that can be helpful in improving a dish. As an example, she'd never realized how important bubbles in fat were in cake-making. When you make a cake, the baking powder or soda you add doesn't create a single bubble, she reveals. These leavening agents only enlarge bubbles that are already in the mix. You, the cook, create the bubbles when you mix butter and sugar together as the first step in making your cake batter. The best cooks beat the butter and sugar together five minutes or more; the average cook combines the ingredients and little more. Your old recipe, or your granny, may have already told you to do this, but now that you know why, you're one step ahead. Technically, yes, this is science, but don't worry, there isn't going to be a surprise quiz.
You will find recipes in Cookwise-230 in fact-and many of them are as basic as Shirley's "beat-the-Texans-at-their-own-game" flan: homemade mayonnaise, sinfully easy fudge, lemon curd, pecan pie, sweet potato pudding, prime rib, seared scallops. They are sound recipes of course, but if that were all, Cookwise would be one of those volumes you'd have on your shelf for occasional use but little more. Instead, the recipes illustrate the many principles Corriher crams into this extensive book. Because only food fanatics like me read these kinds of books from cover to cover, Cookwise is structured to be an open-anywhere browser. An ideal place to start, perhaps, is with an individual recipe that appeals to you. Once you learn the principles behind the recipe and produce a successful dish, you cannot unlearn them, and will automatically apply them to dozens of recipes from sources far and wide.
I am now learning from these pages the useful fact that acids-with vinegar and citrus juices acting as the major culprits-also tend to discolor vegetables. Corriher gives me an immediate trick with the science: when you want a citrus flavor, say in a salad dressing, use the zest (grated peel) from citrus fruits like lemons and oranges instead of the juice. If I'm making a salad for an outdoor picnic, however, safety comes first; a high acid content based on either citrus juices or vinegar will help keep bacteria away.
I haven't yet read Cookwise from cover to cover as I have Alan Davidson's The Penguin (Oxford) Companion to Food (a thousand-page masterpiece) or James Trager's The Food Chronology (only slightly shorter), and there's a reason. I keep putting Cookwise down to cook real food for real people. Since I do read culinary reference works, I am aware that I may already have encountered many of the principles Corriher discusses, but I also recall "learning" about chlorophyll in eighth grade. It may have been useful if my eighth grade science teacher had lectured on broccoli rather than on the chlorophyll it can so easily lose if overcooked. It will suffice that Shirley Corriher (who, by the way, is a benevolent, cherubic presence who frequently pops up as a guest on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" television series) has pulled all the science together into a package I can use every day in my own kitchen.
Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com
Book Review: Its improved my baking
Summary: 5 Stars
Shirley Corriher's book Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed is truly a cookbook (instead of a recipe book) and is one of very few classic cook books which will never go out of style. Corriher's writing is very readable - unlike recipe books which simply list the ingredients and pretty picture - and is compelling reading because she explains how and why even the simplest recipe can go wrong, and how to make sure that it goes correctly the next time. The author does this by reducing core ingedients to their chemical make up (no need to panic) in plain English, and the explaining how ingredient react with each other and under certain circumstances.
Had Corriher been your chemistry teacher in high school, there would be a more chemists in the world today.
Corriher does provide recipes - but these are presented not only as expiriments, but as step by step examples of how her chemistry lessons do come to life in the kitchen.
I was an OK baker before I read this book - but since reading it, and using it as a reference source before each project, I have become an incredible baker. How so? Well,, for example, Corriher's explaination of how gluten is formed in the mixing stage has made me a master of scratch cake textures. She also taught me that the proper flour makes all the difference in the world, and the proper flour for the expected texture for the correct type of cake makes all the difference in the world.
If you want a recipe book full of studio photogrpahed foods to fawn over then look someplace else. However if you want a cook book that will help you become the type of cook that can make those same delights without fuss and on a consistent basis, this is most definatly the book for you.
Book Review: Understanding ingredients for delicious foods
Summary: 5 Stars
For an ordinary home cook like me who loves to putter around in the kitchen, this book is an essential kitchen resource to help understanding ingredients for delicious foods. It has been enjoyable reading and cooking by as well. The book contains by far more food science information than a standard cookbook although it does have hundreds of exquisite and delicious recipes. It helps the cook make sound judgements in the preparation of foods, like what ingredients to use and why, where you can make substitutions and how, and where not, and which measurements are critical to be highly acurate and which can be gauged approximately, and it explains why that is so as well. Shirley O Corriher explains in easy to understand language the chemical reactions that can happen when certain ingredients are combined, what causes these reactions and why you'd want it to be so. She also explains what could go wrong and why, and how to repair an item provided it can be corrected.
CookWise is a complete collection of the recipes for everyday food prepratition for a family including partys and other gatherings, from breakfast to lunch all the way to dinner and desert. While it can be read from cover to cover, it does allow the reader to skip around to those segments or recipes of interest without missing important detail, in other words, it's o.k. bake a cake without knowing about cabage. Additonally it provides information what can be prepared ahead and what must be done last minute to have a perfect meal.
It has only a few color photos of some of the prepared dishes. Yet, if I could only afford a few cookbooks, this is one I'd want. The other one is by Jaques Pepin.
Book Review: Must Read Before You Turn on the Oven!
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Need more like it
Summary: 5 Stars
Shirley is honestly one of my all time heroes. I am actually reading this book from front to back and I learn something new every time I pick the book up. I have been using it as a resource in the kitchen a great deal and have been finding greater ease with my recipes and things just come together a great deal better when I check to see what this book has to say on the subject.
The photographs in this book are gorgeous, I mean I want to blog them up, frame them in hang them in my house sorta gorgeous. The book itself is giant which makes sense with everything that is covered in it. Honestly, this book is just over all amazing. If you are someone who wants to know what is happening in food, how to prepare things better and how to understand recipes instead of just reading them..or if you are someone who is developing your own recipes I advise you to pick this book up.
I picked up a used copy which didn't come with the jacket with the gorgeous bird on the front and the product information said something about some writing on the inside. Well there is some small writing on the inside cover that is some sort of user name or something..which I thought was the writing, many weeks later while actually flipping through the first five pages, I found an actually signed section and a note to the women who owned the book from Shirley her self..because of my above review and then this..the book is never leaving my home..it may not be autographed to me..but it's still pretty cool.. One of the times i've been truly pumped to by a used copy of something over a new one