Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food Read Free Page A

in a pan; it’s about health and well-being, community and giving. Why do you want to cook? Watching your waist or your wallet? Health and finances are common considerations. Building community? Potlucks, shared meals, and barbeques can be fun social activities and even spur friendly competition. Expressing love? Cooking can be an act of giving, both in the literal sense of sustenance and in the spiritual sense of sharing time and breaking bread together.
    Cooking also allows you to try new things — there are plenty of foods that you can’t order in a restaurant. Perhaps you want to get closer to your source of food, in which case learning how simple it can be to put together many common dishes will bring you at least one step closer. And then there’s getting yet another step closer: I happen to eat meat, but what I buy at the store is so far removed from a living, breathing animal that I find it hard to identify with the life of the critter. (The English language doesn’t help. We eat beef , but it’s a cow. We eat pork , but it’s a pig. Chickens don’t seem to be smart enough to merit a clear separation.) To properly respect an animal’s life, to understand where my food comes from and to be mindful of not wasting it, I feel that at some point I should have to butcher an animal myself. (You could try lobster, but I’ve yet to get teary-eyed over one.) For me, cooking is also as much about escaping from work as it is about satisfying hunger, not to mention having fun trying new things with friends and knowing that what I’m putting in my body is healthy.
    Regardless of your reason for wanting to cook, realize that there’s more to cooking than just following a recipe. When looking at the end goal, think beyond the cooking stage. If your reason for cooking is to express affection, you should consider the sensations that your food brings your guests and the perceptions and reactions they have to it as much as the cooking itself. On the other side, if you’re cooking primarily for health or financial reasons, the quality and price of ingredients will be much more important.
    If your goals are social, the end state isn’t the food on the plate; it’s the perceptions that are brought about by the experience of eating. If you’re making a meal for a romantic interest, give thought not just to the work done in cooking, but also the experience at the table. While you can’t control your guest’s perceptions, you do have control over the inputs, cooking, and sensations, all of which inform and shape those perceptions. Even something as simple as preheating your plates so that hot food remains hot can make an impact. (Cold sautéed fish and vegetables? Yuck.) For some, the extra effort of setting the table with nice flatware or festive plates can be a powerful signal of attention and affection.
    The solution to Duncker’s Candle Problem, at least according to Duncker, is to use the box holding the nails as a makeshift shelf to hold the candle.
    Here’s a way of thinking about this visually:
    Stages and reasons for cooking.
    We’ll cover the first column of the stages and reasons for cooking diagram, Inputs , in Chapter 3 and give Cooking its due respect in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 . Some elements from the final two columns, Sensations and Perceptions , are covered indirectly in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 , since playing with textures and presentations is a great way to evoke memories. But the essence of sensations and perceptions is much more in the personal domain. If your reasons for cooking include being social, giving, and romantic, consider how to draw upon these aspects as you try things from this book.
    Finally, for those who say presentation doesn’t matter, think about dining-hall food, and then check out Fancy Fast Food ( http://www.fancyfastfood.com ). How we approach food, from a food psychology and consumer behavior perspective, impacts our experience much more than we are typically willing to