Stats for nerds
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4mentions
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2018–2025years
75% recommend25% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- To add: The Physics of Filter Coffee: https://www.scottrao.com/products/physics-of-filter-coffee-j..., 2021 ISBN 978-0578246086
Far as I can tell, Jonathan Gagné doesn't have a dedicated page on his website, it's hosted by Scott Rao. His blog does have a lot of interesting experimental work on the physics which led to the book. As I mentioned, I think this is an interesting academic piece which is at least supplemented by some genuine research. In practice, I feel like getting better pourover is 90% about finding beans that you like, buying a quality grinder and using them while fresh.
For confectionery, Chocolates and Confections (Greweling, Culinary Institute of America), 2013, ISBN 978-1-118-76467-1 is a fun book. It's quite pricey but you can pick up used copies now and again. It's a technical book and requires a lot of equipment that the average home cook doesn't have, but I would consider it fairly authoritative for looking up how chocolate things are made (and even discusses considerations for setting up a business). Most CIA books are pretty good on the practical side and they tend to be very exact with ingredients (almost always by weight).
https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Chocolates+and+Confections%3A+Fo...
- Chocolates & Confections by Peter P. Greweling. It's full of recipes, but more importantly there are large sections of information about how the cooking process actually works, how each ingredient effects the end result, why things like excess humidity can cause things to not set, etc.
- I'd also recommend The science of good cooking by Guy Crosby. I found it to be a more enjoyable read than McGee's. Not as technical which was a boon for me since as a home cook there's a lot more information that can be readily skipped.
For learning to cook: The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America is a great book to learn from. All the recipes will need to be scaled down for home usage which is a bit of a nuisance though. For the home cook, Essentials Of Cooking, The Elements Of Cooking, or How To Cook Everything: The Basics, are all excellent too. I couldn't decide which was the best, so I listed them all!
For Flavours: The Flavor Bible gives an easy way to look up an ingredient, and see what else would go well with it. Great for creating your own dishes!
The Flavor Thesaurus gives in-depth information about combinations of ingredients, why they work, and how best to use them. Also recommend the Field guide to herbs and spices which gives more general information about each spice/herb than the Thesaurus. They pair well together.
The Magic Of Spice Blends is a great recipe book of various spice blends, and information about them, along with showing you how to formulate your own concoctions.
Pastries and baking: The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry by Bo Friesberg or Baking And Pastry: Mastering The Art And Craft from The Culinary Institute of America. Either or.
Confections: Chocolates and Confections by Peter Greweling.
Bread: Either Jeffrey Hamelman Bread: A Baker's book of techniques and recipes or Peter Reinhart The Bread Baker's Apprentice.
Reference: Dictionary Of Flavors. Literally a Dictionary of anything culinary related. Useful on those rare occasions.
- Really interesting read which very eloquently describes the experience I had when searching for an Iranian cookbook. We ended up settling on the Batmanglij, which really is as much a textbook as it is a cookbook. It reminds me of something like Chocolates and Confections (Greweling & Culinary Institute of America), which focuses on fundamentals in addition to recipes.
I found that Batmanglij exhaustively covered the meals we had as a first-generation immigrant family (my brother and I were the second generation). There were some notable differences in her recipes - she adds rosewater to many dishes whereas my family did not. I assume that's partly due to regional differences, and partly just family tradition, akin to how different American families might cook something like lasagna. She also sometimes recommends different meats, but this is something I'd already come to expect when meals were cooked by different family members.
I also really appreciated her ingredient glossary because some of the ingredients that I remember by Farsi name aren't really available in the west, or have more generic names. For example, we always used chives in place of 'tareh', which it turns out is actually a Persian leek. But it's nothing like the leeks you find in western supermarkets.
Persiana was a little disappointing, as I imagine most of the more Anglophone cookbooks would be if you're looking for Iranian home style cooking instead of elevated, somewhat generic Middle Eastern cuisine. But to be fair, it does have some delicious recipes nonetheless.
The author's comments about the lack of southern cuisine are interesting. I suspect part of that is simply due to the fact that the north of Iran is far more populated, but I'd be interested in seeing more recipes because of the different cultural and culinary influences in the south.
