KitchenWise

When a biochemist and researcher has shared food notes with Julia Child, you listen. KitchenWise is the third in the Wise series by Shirley O. Corriher, with the first two, CookWise and BakeWise, bringing her acclaim and awards. Corriher’s story began when she began to meal plan and cook at a boys’ school canteen. When she struggled to get things right, she turned to advice from food and science technologists (including grain science experts, since you are asking) and culinary gurus from Le Cordon Bleu to La Varenne. KitchenWise can be approached as an accessible guide to apply food science to making nutritious food and save recipes that have fallen off the pan. Amateurs and seasoned cooks will find answers to why flavors became intense when vegetables lose water; how sugar works to enhance flavor in dishes as much as salt does; ripening of fruits opens their umami flavors; or the Indian way to add ginger to dal helps to gelatinize and make it creamier. She explains how cooking alchemy works and can even turn poisonous elements like cyanide in lima beans nutritious by simple cooking or ethylene gas found in apples can hasten ripening of fruits (throw a raw avocado with an apple in a paper bag to ripen it quickly). This is a great book to learn how a little science can make you creative in the kitchen.

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