
Cooking For Engineers: Step by Step Recipes and Food for the Analytically Minded - Mafana0
http://www.cookingforengineers.com
======
tptacek
If you find this appealing, you'll probably fall in love with _Ratio_:

[http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-
Cooking/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-
Cooking/dp/1416566112)

~~~
Cyranix
I gave this as a Christmas gift to my mom and myself/fiancee. It's so useful,
but I wish Ruhlman went into more depth!

~~~
NaOH
Ruhlman's book is great, as is Harold McGees's _On Food & Cooking_. [1] As a
trained chef with a focus in baking and pastry, especially bread making, I'll
offer any wisdom I have for anyone who is interested.

[1] <http://amzn.to/nzYwo8>

~~~
tptacek
_On Food & Cooking_ is the _Computation Structures_ of food. You should
probably own it even if you don't cook.

------
Cyranix
I was eating at one of the better known food trailers in Austin, TX (Odd Duck)
and the guy sitting across from me had a Cooking for Engineers shirt on; I had
known about the site previously, so I asked him about it... and found out that
he was the site's creator. I'll vouch for him being incredibly passionate
about food and science -- the following hour was one of the best chance-
encounter dinner conversations I've ever had.

Also, his business card has the Cooking for Engineers Tiramisu recipe on the
back. A good recipe and a unique touch.

~~~
jpp
Michael is an awesome guy -- I'll poke him and see if he wants to hop on here
and answer any Qs.

~~~
cookingengineer
Sure, if anyone has questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

------
JonnieCache
The table diagrams at the bottom of each recipe are brilliant. I always
thought cookbooks needed dependency charts.

------
yan
I'm currently reading Cooking for Geeks[1] enjoying it a lot. Check it out if
you're "analytically minded."

[1] <http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/>

~~~
jpp
Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions.

(I'm the author...)

~~~
bermanoid
I'd love to know what your go-to dishes are when you cook for yourself,
especially when you're feeling lazy - I suspect a lot of us could really stand
to add a couple of super simple but delicious dishes to our repertoire.

I loved the book, btw, one of the most interesting cooking books I've ever
read!

~~~
jpp
Thanks!

If I ever do a second edition, I feel like I should add a bunch of recipes to
the "cooking for one" section. There's a book out, something like "What we eat
when we eat alone," that looks at just how different our diets our when eating
solo.

Best metaphor I can give for easy, cooking-for-one meals: Flip books, as in
those spiral-bound children's books where you can flip different sections of
the page, you know, show this hair with those eyes and that nose and this
mouth. Same thing for easy meals: a protein with a veggie with a grain/starch
with some seasoning. Not all combos work, of course, but it's amazing at how
much does.

Grains/starches take the longest to cook, so I've just taken to cooking an
entire (small) bag of beans or lentils or whatever and storing it in a
container in my fridge. This'll last half a week, easily. When it comes to
cooking, I'll pan-cook a piece of fish, or maybe tofu; occasionally ground
turkey or chicken, and when it's mostly done cooking, toss in a handful of
beans/lentils to heat them up, along with a handful of pre-washed veggies (the
bagged kind from Trader Joe's) and then some seasoning -- maybe cayenne pepper
or curry powder or oregano.

Start to finish, it's ~5 to 10 minutes (I've had some practice, admittedly);
during which time I wash any lingering dishes and clean up other stuff. You
can cook a double or triple batch and stash the leftovers for taking to work
for lunch.

Fast, easy, cheap, healthy... and delicious, too.

P.S. If you don't have a container of pre-cooked stuff, microwaves are great
for yams/potatoes... ~4 to 5 minutes and you're good to go.

------
Lost_BiomedE
Cool site. This is great for learning a few meals and techniques, as well as
building confidence. If you build a sequential set of recipes to follow, you
can do something like the below:

The important part of learning cooking is to know how each dish is similar and
the definition that makes a dish different. You don't learn each dish, you
learn the dependencies. Once you can do this, anything you taste in a
restaurant can be successfully recreated in the home, equipment dependent.

For learning cooking, I always recommend watching the old Julia Child shows
and actually cooking the food. The thing missing is an easy to hard sequence
and learning a few extra sauces.

I have forkforkspoon.com parked to be used in a future food idea. I should
have done something like this, since I am an engineer and a 'chef', but I feel
like I am waiting for something too perfect....someday never comes.

~~~
xbryanx
For great sequential recipes, also check out French Cooking in Ten Minutes
(1930) -
[http://books.google.com/books?id=ZAOcOO_wru0C&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=ZAOcOO_wru0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)

------
MartinCron
I feel compelled to recommend Cooks Illustrated to any culinary-minded
engineers. It's not just good recipes, it's some of the best science writing
done in any periodical.

------
gte910h
Isn't that 99% of why Alton Brown is so popular among techies?

~~~
ntownsend
Alton Brown is the reason I started caring about food preparation. Good Eats
is unlike most food shows in that its primary motivation is teaching the
audience about food and the hows and whys of its preparation. I find that most
food shows are about demonstrating individual, usually either uninteresting or
impractical, recipes, or stroking the ego of the presenter. Throwdown With
Bobby Flay, I'm looking at you.

~~~
gte910h
The books are exceptionally good 'technique' work, especially the baking book.

------
xbryanx
Number one tip for analytically minded home chefs. Buy a scale.
[http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Stainless-Pull-Out-
Display/d...](http://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Stainless-Pull-Out-
Display/dp/B000WJMTNA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310232377&sr=8-1)

~~~
jpp
I'd definitely agree, especially if you're going to be doing much baking.
Cooking and baking are all about physics and chemistry, and like any science,
good measurements are crucial. (Baking's error tolerances are tighter, so
that's why scales are especially useful there.)

------
JohnLBevan
Looks like an awesome book (along with the others recommended on this site).
Unusual for scientificly minded cookbooks to be affordable - the only other
ones I know of are way out of my price range: <http://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-
Fat-Duck-Cookbook/dp/0747583692> [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modernist-Cuisine-
Art-Science-Cookin...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-
Cooking/dp/0982761007) (I notice the author of this book, Nathan Myhrvold's
also mentioned in cooking for geeks)

------
pvarangot
That's the site that got me into making my own Gravlax
(<http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/132/Gravlax>). It's a Scandinavian
recipe to cure raw salmon.

It's a very easy recipe, and very practical if you live alone and need healthy
foods that last for many days in the refrigerator. It can be eaten like smoked
salmon is, for example in a sandwich with cream cheese, or with crackers.

------
roundsquare
What am I missing? I don't see this as much different from a regular cook
book...

------
ignifero
I thought it would contain instructions how to make your own personal arduino-
based cooking robot.

