Wednesday, December 28, 2005


"Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee

Got this for christmas. This is more like a reference book - read bits from time to time, then put it aside for another session. The book is broken down into food ingredient types, for example: dairy, eggs, cereal grains, legumes, fruit, vegetables, meats, alcohol, sugars & confectionary etc.

I have started reading the first chapter about milk & dairy. It starts off talking about the evolution of milk in Mammals, then how and when humans started using milk (with archeaological evidence cited), and how selective breeding and herding started to take place and where (not just cows - buffalo, yak, camel, sheep and goat also). From there it discusses health benefits and shortfalls, lactose intolerance and dairy allergies. Then how the animal produces milk and its components, unfermented products, fermented produces (yoghurt etc) then finally, cheeses. You get the idea.

This is a very detailed book with info on the above type of stuff plus origins of food words from ancient languages and dialects. I have had a flip through the chapter on doughs and batters, and there is detail there on the gluten molecule, how it forms and how it gives rise to dough elasticity for example, and how cooking changes the chemistry and texture of a dough or batter. There is also discussion on how humans might have developed grinding and later milling to produce flour, and how flatbreads would have changed the way grains were eaten, and later evolved to all the other types of breads on the planet today. Haven't even got to noodles and pasta yet. I find this facinating, and suspect this book might stay on the coffee table for many years yet. There aren't any recipes that I can see (maybe a few basics such as custards), but reading it will make you more aware of how not to treat certain ingredients and how our customs for eating things evolved over the past thousands of years.

Good book to request/buy for foodies on that special birthday coming up.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Zorro - Comienza de la leyenda, Isabelle Allende

I'm only up to page 28 but just wanted to make a quick comment on trying to read in my (hopefully one day) second language. First up, its a giant pain in the arse. But of course, rewarding like most things that require effort. I bought a nice glossy print of the "South American" edition in a frenzied, over-ambitious attempt at immersion in Spanish. Also the shop attendant cornered me immediately after the very sexy poster had caught my eye in Buenos Aires' main shopping mall, and I had a limited repetoir of responses.

Anyway, I'm taking it super slow with of course a companion dictionary to hand. Luckily the edition has nice wide margins as the first 15 pages are covered in scrawled english translations. To begin with I managed 1.5 - 2 pages per night, with perfect quiet and a nice comfortable spot in our apartment. Its an interesting exercise that is a good reminder of what it must be like for kids to learn to read. At first its just a mass of jumbled data, and the effort to unscramble just one paragraph which turns out to be a description of some landscape and layout of a 18th Century mission hardly seems breaking into a sweat over. So I got very disheartened and left it for a month. Now I've tried again in our wintery mountain hostel, and have got to the point where I'm keen to find out the next twist of the story (Allende is good for that), so am encouraged to go again. Having put the pencil away and using a mix of guessing, looking up, asking Chris, and skiping the occaisonal hard sentence, I'm gradually getting faster.

And the most pleasant surprise, being the point of this post, is that the author's voice still rings lound and clear through the text, just like I know and love. Of course, Allende writes her original manuscript in Spanish. Having become familiar with her flights of imagination, her earthy, off-handed descriptions of the foibles of human personalities, rich sensuality often quickly followed by a sharp bit of sature, in English, I am now incredibly impressed with the act of translation in which brings all this through from the original. In this case, its the kind of book I could knock off in English in about a full day and a half of reading (with meals breaks), as it seems to have the rollicking pace of a cheeky adventure story. Also, in plodding along at a snails pace, the mechanics of the writing shows more than usual, because I've got to take the sentences apart to even work out what tense they are in, if they are someone's thoughts, a description, or part of the plot.

So as not to spoil the story.. so far the scene's been set in one of the more humanist missions in California, run by a Spanish monk, an attack by a coalition of the surrounding tribes, defended by the dashing Alejandro de la Vega, and an intruiging surprise.. ! Its exciting and I'm looking forward to the next few hundred pages. At this rate I've calcualted being finished by about August 2007.