Food & Cooking

Hervé This (pronounced "Teess") is an internationally renowned chemist, a popular French television personality, a bestselling cookbook author, a longtime collaborator with the famed French chef Pierre Gagnaire, and the only person to hold a doctorate in molecular gastronomy, a cutting-edge field he pioneered. Bringing the instruments and experimental techniques of the laboratory into the kitchen, This uses recent research in the chemistry, physics, and biology of food to challenge traditional ideas about cooking and eating. What he discovers will entertain, instruct, and intrigue cooks, gourmets, and scientists alike. Molecular Gastronomy, This's first work to appear in English, is filled with practical tips, provocative suggestions, and penetrating insights. This begins by reexamining and debunking a variety of time-honored rules and dictums about cooking and presents new and improved ways of preparing a variety of dishes from quiches and quenelles to steak and hard-boiled eggs. He goes on to discuss the physiology of flavor and explores how the brain perceives tastes, how chewing affects food, and how the tongue reacts to various stimuli. Examining the molecular properties of bread, ham, foie gras, and champagne, the book analyzes what happens as they are baked, cured, cooked, and chilled. Looking to the future, Hervé This imagines new cooking methods and proposes novel dishes. A chocolate mousse without eggs? A flourless chocolate cake baked in the microwave? Molecular Gastronomy explains how to make them. This also shows us how to cook perfect French fries, why a soufflé rises and falls, how long to cool champagne, when to season a steak, the right way to cook pasta, how the shape of a wine glass affects the taste of wine, why chocolate turns white, and how salt modifies tastes.

This book explores food from a philosophical perspective, bringing together sixteen leading philosophers to consider the most basic questions about food: What is it exactly? What should we eat? How do we know it is safe? How should food be distributed? What is good food? David M. Kaplan’s erudite and informative introduction grounds the discussion, showing how philosophers since Plato have taken up questions about food, diet, agriculture, and animals. However, until recently, few have considered food a standard subject for serious philosophical debate. Each of the essays in this book brings in-depth analysis to many contemporary debates in food studies--Slow Food, sustainability, food safety, and politics--and addresses such issues as "happy meat,” aquaculture, veganism, and table manners.

Breaks new ground by introducing philosophy via an activity central to life: eating. Building on the original meaning of philosophy as love of wisdom, it explains how the search for wisdom can best succeed by addressing not just the mind, but the entire human being. Eating, an activity that integrates physiological, social, religious, cultural, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions, offers an opportunity to re-think fundamental questions. The result: surprising and novel ways to approach art, religion, knowledge, ethics, and even democracy. The book outlines a new philosophy for our time. As such, it will be of interest to people curious about the topic of food, to those interested in learning about philosophy, and to those who seek new ideas as guides for living meaningful lives in an intelligible world.

Renaissance Italy s art, literature, and culture continue to fascinate. The domestic life has been examined more in recent years, and this book reveals the preparation, eating, and the sociability of dining in Renaissance Italy. It takes readers behind the scenes to the Renaissance kitchen and dining room, where everyday meals as well as lavish banquets were prepared and consumed. Katherine McIver considers the design, equipment, and location of the kitchen and food prep and storage rooms in both middle-class homes and grand country estates. The diner s room, the orchestration of dining, and the theatrical experience of dining are detailed as well, all in the context of the renowned food and architectural scholars of the day."