Cookery Investigation

1) The first book that I assessed was titled The Spice Cookbook. This book sticks to its theme like no other. When you first open it, a colorful map of spices and their typical locations invitingly greet the eye. The book first describes each spice and then gives a brief cultural background for it. It also explains how spices can be used in each category of food and gives simple recipes for ease of reading. I found this book very effective because it keeps the reader's attention with pictures, gives the detailed history behind spices, and also is very practical when it comes to its actual recipes.

2) The second book was Oriental Cooking: The Fast Wok Way. Apparently, the Wok is a traditional "all-purpose" utensil for cooking in China. Although the book does manage to stay on theme for the most part, it often lost my attention. This could be partly due to the total absence of color and personality in my opinion. The organization is also difficult to follow because its recipes seem to run together. In a more positive light, the book does provide very detailed recipes. Overall, this book is less effective than the first because it does not create enough interest.

Cooking with Helen McCully beside you(Book review 2)

I chose this book mainly because of its name. Its seemed quite different the other cookbooks i saw on the shelf. Its very different from the other cookbook i reviewed. It has a much personal tone to it and flipping through the first pages itself you understand its mainly for housewives around the world or even workmoms who want want to whip up a fancy, easy and a fast dish.

It has quite easy and simple to follow directions which even a first timer could cope with. However its look is quite dull and easily looses attention; doesn't look like it was made for the commercial markets. With its dull green cover and crude drawings it lacks visual appeal.

The one thing that I found good was that it was very well organised with "cooking schedules" given which told how to prepare for a meal 2 days in advance so that everything goes smoothly in the end. It was It had this feel to it that the author has actually tried out each and every dish in the kitchen and tried to make it as simple as possible for her readers. Book - From the Georgia Tech Library -Cooking with Helen McCully beside you by Hellen McCully [TX.715.MI362]

Classic French Cooking

After my long search of trying to find cook books in the library and getting help from the help desk i finally found an aisle a very small one that had a few cookbooks in it. Out of all i selected this one about classic french cooking. Flipping through its pages i understood it wasn't for the general public. With exquisite french cuisine which i think can only be made by fancy chefs, this seemed to be a delight for the eyes.

The intended audiences seemed to be french food lovers ofcourse, cooking historians and those interested in rich cuisine.

The author has very effectively portrayed his content with beautiful pictures with a very coherent theme. The things that's different about this cookbook is that its divided into various chapters and each chapter talks about the history of France and how as events took place the cuisine evolved automatically and then afterwards the author writes about all the dishes that evolved during that period. This actually shows the immense knowledge of the authors as cooks as well as historians. There's a particular chapter where the authors have linked

cooking and cuisine with architecture. It tells how the set up of food on the table can have an immense impact on the eaters. Its only con is that for the ones who just want the recipes, it can be a daunting task to go through all the pages filled with history. It seems to be the book for patient cooks who want to learn a lot more than just how to cook.

Book taken from - Georgia Tech Library - Classic French cooking by Craig Clairborne, Pierre Franney [TX 719.C46]

Beer and Beard

Austrian Cooking & Baking is by Greter Beer and was published by Andre Deutsch in 1954. This cook book seems quite useful to me. It has a variety of Austrian recipes in English with a picture of Austria on the front. Not only are the recipes in English, but the book contains a metric conversion table in the front. It is also easy to find a recipe because the table of contents tells one everything one needs to know about the recipe. The only part that would need to be improved would be the table of contents because it is difficult to find a recipe.

James Beard did a fairly good job writing Beard on Bread. The reasoning is that the book contains only bread recipes. Besides that one flaw, the book has vivid instructions, an index divided by ingredients and recipes, and beautiful hand drawn pictures to go along with the recipes. He even includes personal notes on each recipe. The hand drawn pictures amazed me because they were detailed drawings of how to knead the dough. Beard on Bread was published in 1973 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Cookbook review 1 (Hanyu Zhang)

Cookbook 1 (The cooking of Vienna's Empire)

As I was swimming through the mountain of books in the library, one book immediately caught my attention. It had a beautiful picture of a very delicious looking cake on the front cover and I wanted to flip the pages and see what other great food recipes it contained.

On opening the book, I was surprised by the heading right away. It was called The cooking of Vienna's Empire. It had an impact on me because I would most usually relate an empire to country and war, not food.

The introductory pages of the book contained a short story about the significance and difference of food in Austria and Hungary. I think that this helped the writer establish authority because they seemed to know a great deal of knowledge of food and its history.

As I began reading this cook book, I noticed that there are a lot of pictures showing culture and people. Many of the pictures were those of the Austrian province where food was one of their highlights. There were also numerous pictures of tasty looking ice-creams, pastries and soups.

On the recipe pages, the cooking instructions are given on the right or left side of the page. This helped divide the book into two columns and I found this a very interesting and effective way of organizing the book. The instructions were very easy to read and follow and every step was broken down to minute detail so that even a beginner at cooking could do it.

I observed that after every few recipes, the author would write a little more of the history of food in Austria-Hungary. I believe that this is done to bring variety and keep the reader interested.

Blog Post 1: Food Brings People Together

Food is by far the thing that truly brings people together. Whether it’s with friends’, family, or strangers, the best way to get to know people is while eating a meal with them. For me, every aspect of eating affected my life. The five W’s could be applied to food. Who, what, where, when and why. Each one can be applied to how food affected my life forever. Whether it was with my family on thanks giving, with friends on the wrestling team, or even midnight runs to some fast food place with buddies. I love eating with people at any time, and rarely do I find myself eating alone.

Food played an important role in my wrestling career, causing me to interact with my friends on the team differently from others. There were many unwritten laws with food among the wrestlers. These laws were always to benefit the people losing the weight. One law was to NEVER eat in front of a wrestler losing weight. When a person has gone a number of days with little or no nutrition, seeing food, especially people eating food, makes the yearning for it insane. Usually people losing weight would stay in the wrestling room. No food or drinks were allowed in the wrestling room, thus it was a good place for those of us losing weight to hang out and talk. The absence of food during those times is what brought us together. Often we would talk about what we were going to bring to eat the next day. Sometimes we would make elaborate things to eat and drink. Making our mothers cook our favorite dishes and packing it all up into a cooler, almost unable to withstand the desire to eat it right there. Other times we were so hungry even the mention of food caused pains in our stomach.

Wrestlers aren’t always losing weight though. My team would eat together quite often actually. Since we would weigh in the order of weight class, we would slowly begin to gather to where our coolers were. Sometimes we would have to make a trek out to the tuck parked way outside. Sometimes we would eat in inside the gym, filling one section of the bleachers from top to bottom. As we all slowly began to eat, we would unveil all kinds of foods. Sometimes one of us would bring fresh fruit to slice up and share with everyone. Anything from pineapples, watermelons, homemade food, or packaged foods would be passed around between us. We would always share what we brought with each other, not only to be nice but because we wanted to eat all kinds of food. After starving ourselves for so long we would want a little bit of everything. Once, my friend Alex gave me some orange juice that he squeezed just that morning from oranges from the trees in his yard. It’s not every day a friend gives you some freshly squeezed orange juice. Those memories of eating with my teammates will last forever.

Thanks giving dinners are very important in my family. Each year is like a family reunion. For many of my family members this is the only time we see each other all year. Almost the entire day is spent with people talking and catching up on the news of the past year. Slowly, more and more people show up, all bringing their own foods made from their own recipes. My mom always makes a dish that I don’t particularly like while my grandmother always makes the most zesty turkey. Every year she lets the turkey cook for hours, always starting it early to sure it’s ready. Some years her and I break the wishbone, and usually I forget to make a wish. But the thing I will never forget is what I eat every year. The plate I get for myself is very bland but my favorite. My first plate of the day will always be turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, all topped with gravy. Simple yet delicious.

I love to eat with friends. Especially when it’s late at night. All kinds of crazy things happen when you go out to eat at night. No matter who I go with, my midnight runs to places to eat always turn out to be an epic adventure of driving around different places. I have eaten everywhere from Taco Bell to Waffle House. And even Taco Bell at Waffle House. Whether we eat out or take the food home, we always have fun. Once, we had two cars in the drive through. We were constantly going from car to car while waiting in line for our orders. Another time we couldn’t find a place that was open. We had a fun time driving and looking for a place to eat, but everything was closed because it was so late. We always talk about what happens throughout the night. Usually if I have many friends spend the night we may even stay up all night. It’s great to have something to talk about and random times, especially something that happened just a short while ago. Even if the drive isn’t so exciting, I always love at least getting to talk to my friends for the short drive there and back.

Its obvious how food plays a very strong role in my life, other than just to keep me alive. Food truly does follow the five W’s. With each thing I mentioned the W’s can easily be found. Who: The food I ate with the wrestling team brought us all together. What: Going out for fast food late at night with friends just for a midnight snack. Where: The places we drive to late at night. Steak ‘N Shake at 3am. When: Eating behind the truck outside right after weighing in. Finally getting the thing we craved for days all together. Why: To get the whole family together for at least once a year for one big feast. Food truly does bring people together.

Sources:
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http://static.open.salon.com/files/fast-food-logos1231520602.gif

8 Years of Kung Pao Chicken

I was nine years old when my culinary adventure began. I had been a very picky eater my whole life and my parents decided that it was time to broaden my horizon. Our first trip in this endeavor was to a local Chinese restaurant, Jasmine. As I walked into the restaurant, I was assaulted by new sights and smells. I can still remember how I felt when that pungent, rich smell first hit my nose. I put my pessimism towards the coming meal to the side, and replaced it with tentative excitement.
My parents chose Kung Pao Chicken for me, because they knew I would love it. Ten minutes later, the waitress placed my plate in front of me. On it was an alien-looking mix of things that I knew, but together looked completely foreign to me.
“Are these peanuts? With chicken?” I said, not wanting to try it.
“You’ll like it. If you don’t want to eat it you can go hungry,” my father stated quite seriously.
Realizing that I had no other choice, I picked up a piece of chicken with a stray peanut clinging to it, along with a glob of white rice, with my shaky chopsticks and brought it to my mouth. The flavor exploded like nothing I had ever tasted before. The complex flavor of the sauce seemed to have absorbed the flavors of everything in the dish while adding new tastes of its own. The contrasting textures of the tender chicken, crunchy peanuts, and fluffy rice was something that I had never experienced in my time eating simple American foods. I tore into the rest of the plate, eating as fast as my elementary chopstick skills would allow. Before long, I had finished the whole plate, not paying any attention to my parents’ smug looks and “I told you so”’s. (image taken from Anne’s Food annesfood.blogspot.com)

When we got home, I was still raving about the meal, asking my parents when we could go back. Seeing my excitement, my dad, a dedicated cook, told me, “We don’t have to go back to Jasmine. We can make it ourselves.”
So a week later, I sat next to my dad as he looked up a recipe for Kung Pao on the computer. We printed it out and started cooking. At this young age, I wasn’t yet trusted with real knives, so I was relegated to rudimentary tasks such as measuring out peanuts or peeling garlic. I stood to the side, handing ingredients to my dad to put into the pan, but what happened in the pan was a total mystery to me.
When the steaming pan came off of the stove and onto the table, I was literally jumping with excitement. I piled several spoonfuls of chicken, peppers, and peanuts in thick, rich sauce onto a pile of fluffy white rice.
While in reality it may not have been as good as the first dish I had eaten at Jasmine, to me it was the best food I had ever tasted. It was a good meal, yes, but it was the feeling of accomplishment that really excited me.
My father and I kept cooking the dish, making it at least once every two weeks. Over the years, I got more responsibility. After convincing my dad that I wouldn’t cut my fingers off, I was granted access to the chef’s knife, enabling me to chop vegetables and chicken. I could now do everything up to the actual cooking of the food myself.
When I was 13, we cooked Kung Pao for my aunt who was visitng us. Seeing my excitement about cooking. She took me out the next day and bought me my own wok. As we walked out of the store, she told me, “This is yours, not your fathers. You’ll learn to cook in this pan, not just watch.”
The next time I cooked Kung Pao, I convinced my dad to let me be in charge. I was nervous, but I had my dad there to be my training wheels, righting me whenever I started to go wrong, and everything turned out fine.
But just like real training wheels, having my dad there was nice when I was first getting started, but he started to get in the way once I knew what I was doing. One day, when I had just started cooking, he came over and adjusted the flame by a miniscule amount. Angrily, I told him that I no longer needed his help. I told him to sit on the other side of the counter, far enough that he couldn’t touch anything. He was a little angry at first, but eventually obliged, giving me total control over the meal, and it turned out perfectly.
As I got older, my parents cared less about supervising me in the kitchen. My dad was happy to leave me alone to go watch the Met game or get some work done. Without my parents watchful eyes on me, I felt more freedom to experiment and deviate from the original recipe. I started substituting a homemade teriaki sauce instead of a plain soy sauce marinade for the chicken, adding depth, giving the chicken more character, allowing it to stand out against the powerful flavors in the dish. I tweaked ratios in the sauce, upping the vinegar content to balance the richness of the heavy sauce. I even added my own homemade chili paste to bring the spiciness of the dish into the forefront while adding even more flavor.
The dish I first “made” while watching my dad cook was good, but rather plain and straightforward as far as Chinese food goes. The one I make today is not nearly the same. It’s much more complex, more grown up. It has layers of flavor, not fighting each other, but working together in perfect balance. Eating it now gives me the same feeling I got that first time at Jasmine, and I can confidently say that my dish tastes even better.
After eight years, and hundreds of trials, I have finally achieved my goal of recreating that dish, and I have learned a lot along the way. I started by learning from and emulating my father, doing whatever he told me, before revolting against him to develop my own ideas, and succeeding without his supervision.