"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.
3 comments:
Hey sounds like a great read. Anything about the 'new world' foods like tomatoe and capsicum, chilli and chocolate? Fascinated by how recently all this stuff entered European cooking and how quickly it became synonymous with it. Maybe there (relatively) recent arrival in the diets of anglos accounts for the heightened sensitivity to the chemicals in those foods that some people have? Funny to think of how different Italian food, for eg, must have been before the martie!
Oops, just wrote there not their. And on a site about books. Shame.;)
Looked up the Nightshade family (tomatoes, chillis, capsicums, eggplants and spuds), but no mention of intolerance beyond the hottness (capsiacins) of some capsicums/chillis. I guess intolerance to these is less diagnosable than say gluten or lactose intolerance, and less is known about it. Intolerances to the nightshades can be due to a number of things (capsiacins, salycilates), and effects could range from rashes to behavioural "complaints" to irritable bowels....
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