Jeff Potter's Blog, page 7

French Toast with KRON's Henry Tenenbaum

Henry Tenenbaum from KRON Channel 4 and I had a lot of fun this past weekend in San Francisco making French Toast on their weekend morning show. Here's the recipe for those who've requested it.

The secret to great French Toast is to soak the bread long enough for your egg mixture to fully soak the middle of the bread. (And use real bread, folks—pre-sliced sandwich bread isn't thick enough to get that wonderful eggy custard.)

In a large bowl, measure out:

1 tablespoon cinnamon
2-4 tablespoons dark rum (I use Meyer's)

Mix the cinnamon into the rum, making sure to break up any clumps of cinnamon powder. The rum acts as a solvent, helping dissolve those compounds that aren't soluble in water but are in ethanol.

Add:

3 eggs
1/2 cup cream
2 cups whole milk

Whisk to combine. Slice French bread into pieces ~1″ thick and drop them into the bowl. Let them soak for at least a few minutes, then flip them over and soak for another few minutes.

In a pan over medium heat, melt a generous tablespoon (or two!) of butter. Transfer the French bread to the pan, and cook on each side 2 to 3 minutes, until dark brown. External temperature of the French bread needs to get up above 310°F for that nice dark brown rich outside (Maillard reactions); and the internal temperature needs to get to around 150°F for the egg mixture to set. Make sure not to overcook the middle—just like scrambled eggs, the goal here is to set the proteins in the eggs but not steam the moisture out.

Place on plate (I often cut the French Toast in half), dust with powdered sugar, and add whatever fruit you have that's in season. Serve with maple syrup…

Life on the Road

I'm exactly halfway through my DIY Book Tour for Cooking for Geeks—day 22 of 44—and life on the road has already been an amazing experience.

To date, I've given talks in Washington DC, Ft Lauderdale, Austin, Houston, Toronto, New York City, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. Visting so many places in such a short time span is a real study in the diversity of our country (and Canada). Food habits, culture, and attitudes definitely differ. Austin is a runner's town; Houston, decidedly not so. Food trucks in Austin are more than trendy, they're actually shockingly good; Chicago is still trying to overturn ordinances banning them. Washington DC was a pleasant surprise; the community has a great collegiate feel to is.

Across all these cities, one thing is constant: I'm amazed at just how incredibly kind people are everywhere. To my new friends in Austin, that evening with a great bottle of wine on the lake's edge was just amazing. To the guys in Houston, I had a great time (and sorry about the mess . Pittsburgh's Waffle Shop was a blast; I hope to get video of the interview posted here in the next week or so.



And to everyone who has come out to say hello or ask a question, thank you. It's been an amazing experience.

Tomorrow is one of my "off" days, then I'm off to the west coast for the second half of my tour. If you're in Seattle, Portland, Bay Area, or the LA area, check back on my blog in the next few days for my October tour schedule.

Here's to the next 22 days!

D.I.Y. Book Tour: September Schedule

T Minus 24 Hours until the start of my "Do It Yourself" Book Tour. First stop? Washington D.C. Then Florida, Texas, Toronto, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago… and then the western half of the country.

Here's the first half of my book tour. Live in one of these places or know somebody who does? Please help me get the word out! I'll be doing book talks, demos, Q&As, and exploring the local food scenes in each of these places. Snag a book—preferably one from me, but happy to sign any copy, of course!—and come meet me.

My october schedule will be out in a few weeks. Live in the LA Area, Seattle, Portland, or the Bay Area? Want to help out? Help me organize a talk.

Here's a list of the dates and venues where I'll be talking. In general, bring 35 in cash if there's a chance you might want to buy a signed copy of the book. (Buying a book at my talk supports my ability to give the talk—it's how I'm paying for hotel & travel.)

Washington DC:

Sept 8th, 7:30 PM: HacDC.org

Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood, Florida:

Sept 13th, 7:00 pm: VINO, 1910 Harrison St in Hollywood, FL. No tickets required; please bring $35 in cash to purchase a signed copy of the book.

Austin:

Sept 14th, 6 pm: conjunctured.com for a D.I.Y. sous vide demo – including how to assemble your own rig Sold out
Sept 15th, 6:30 PM at Whole Foods (525 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX‎) — no tickets required; please bring $35 cash if you'd like an autographed copy of the book

Houston:

Sept 18th, 11:15 am: Houston Area Apple Users Group.

Toronto / Ontario:


Sept 19th, 7 pm: Mulberry St Coffeehouse (193 James St North, Hamilton)

Sept 20th, 1 pm: LyricFind (2510 Yonge Street Suite 327 (north of Eglington))
Sept 20th, 7 pm: Hacklab (170a Baldwin Street)
Sept 21st, 2 pm: Linux Caffe (326 Harbord Street)
Sept 21st, 7 pm: Camaraderie (102 Adelaide St E 2nd Floor): Reserve your seat
Sept 22nd, 6 pm: University of Waterloo, room MC 4045

NYC:

Sept 25th, 10 AM to 6 PM: Maker Faire at The New York Hall of Science. Buy MakerFaire tickets
Sept 26th, 10 AM to 6 PM: Maker Faire at The New York Hall of Science. Buy MakerFaire tickets

Pittsburgh: [4x16 books ordered]

Sept 27th, 5 PM: Talk at Carnegie Mellon. (Inquiries? Call 412.268.8525)
Sept 27th, 7 PM: Waffle Shop. Reserve seats

Chicago: [1x16 books ordered]

Sept 28th, 8:30 PM at Pumping Station: One. Reserve seats
Sept 29th, 5:30 PM: Dinner at Alinea. No, this isn't a talk, but just thought the world should know.
Sept 30th: TBD

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Here's the October schedule, which is still being worked on. Cities & Dates probably won't change though, so check back for details…

Santa Barbara: [books ordered; need PR]

Oct 2nd, 2 PM at Tucker's Grove Park – Area 4 — Reserve seats

Book Review in The Atlantic

The Atlantic ran a fantastic review of my book, Recipes of the Nerds.

Clear, fact-packed, and engaging … Cooking for Geeks offers an improbable victory of text over the standard food porn.

For me, the book is hard to put down. Its overall clarity and organization, as well as its success, may point to a sequel (or a 2.0 version) of sorts. It seems to me that this is a real phenomena. In the past two weeks, Google matches and Twitter mentions on this particular title have risen exponentially, to a level normally reached only by books from well-known chefs and personalities—and after a much longer time period. It's evidence of a lot of creativity and brainpower connecting to the cooking world through books, TV, and above all, the Internet. It will be interesting to see what the nerds cook up next.

One interesting experience of reading reviews about your work: you get someone else's perspective of your work (duh), which is like seeing yourself in a mirror—but where the mirror is warped and instead shows you how other people see you (not so obvious).

Here's one example of this. Ike DeLorenzo, the author of The Atlantic review of my book, has an amazingly nice way of summing up something about the way I feel that I'd never been able to pinpoint before: "On the whole, Cooking for Geeks offers an improbable victory of text over the standard food porn."

I love this quote. It says so much about me, about society, and, well, about me and society. When it comes to food porn, I'm tired of seeing amazingly perfect steamed veggies, amazingly perfect tomato basil mozzarella salads, and amazingly perfect pizzas. Food and cooking should be about community, about nurturing, and about having fun. (I'm so not a competitive cook–see pages 8 & 9 in the book for details.)

This is a significant moment in food history. Think about it: Domino's Pizza of all places is pointing out that we've jumped the shark with the level of attention given to making food photographs look impossibly perfect. (I also find it funny that it's Domino's of all places that has picked it up first. True; it's in their interest to reset expectations; but their point is valid.)

I don't think I'm alone. I'm too young to have "grown up" with Julia Child, but I miss even the idea of seeing a TV Chef drop a chicken and pick it up and carry on. I'll leave you with one more video, just to drill home the point of how far off food porn is from reality by contrasting it with what we do to images of people: Click to watch Dove Evolution on YouTube.com. (Embedding is disabled. Hello, Dove? Fail.)

Just how far should we tolerate the truth being stretched?

The D.I.Y. Book Tour — Where should I go??

THIS POST IS OLD. See http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/blog/posts/diy-book-tour-september-schedule/.

Dear Internet,

I'm organizing a book tour and need your help. Where should I go?

Here's the deal:

JetBlue is selling "All You Can Jet" passes. I bought one. So, I can go ANYWHERE JetBlue flies between Sept 7th and October 6th. Woohoo!!!

This is a low-budget production. I love my publisher, but they don't send authors on book tours. In fact, most publishers don't do this anymore, 'cause the Internet makes it moot. But I want to get out of Cambridge, "see the world" (or at least the American portion), and meet people! But "real" book tours—you know, in bookstores—are set up many many months in advance. My local two indys, who I love, both told me "we're booked until December." So…

Why not do a book tour like musicians do house concerts? Find a space—your house, a community center, a nice park (++ for w/ grill)—and I'll come sign books, give a talk, and hang out. You'd be the organizer, just like a house concert. I'll provide the entertainment. =-) Oh, and I'd list the event on my website, tweet, and fb post; but you'd need to do some publicity in your city, too. (Bonus points for getting local journalists and bloggers to come.)

But what about… well, the books? Yeah, that's a problem. Bookstores normally take care of that for author signings. And I'm not going to haul inventory around with me, never mind the headache that would be collecting cash, dealing with taxes, etc. But…

You'd need to buy a BOX of books—20 copies. My publisher can drop-ship them to me to you in your city. You'd then be responsible for splitting up the copies between whoever attends the talk and collecting cash from them. Selling the books this way also covers my costs—trust me, I'm not making a profit, but if I sell them directly, as opposed to doing it through a bookstore, I get the difference between wholesale and retail, which can just barely cover food, car rentals, and crash space.

This idea is just crazy enough that it might actually work. But I need help: specifically, I need organizers in each place to get the ball rolling. So: want me to come do an event with you?

THIS POST IS OLD NOW. See http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/blog/posts/diy-book-tour-september-schedule/.

Tim O'Reilly's Jam and Scones

Tim shows his method for drying apple rings in the hot California sun.

Re-blogged from answers.oreilly.com… -J

For his recently released book, Cooking for Geeks, author Jeff Potter interviewed prominent researchers, food scientists, knife experts, chefs, writers, and more, including author Harold McGee, TV personality Adam Savage, and chemist Hervé This. Some provided recipes, others offered tips and tricks, and each brought his or her own geeky insights into the space where science and cooking meet. In one case, the contribution was a comic (by Randall Munroe of xkcd). As you can imagine, while preparing the book, Jeff had access to a geek whose name is eponymous with the company that published his book. The excerpt from Cooking for Geeks that follows includes part of their conversation, along with the recipe for Tim's now-famous homemade scones.

Jeff: You say you don't consider yourself a foodie at all?

Tim: No. In fact, I kind of make a small number of things that I make repetitively. A lot of what I do is driven by the fact that I hate to waste things. So hence jam because there's all this great fruit. [Tim has numerous fruit trees.] Right now I'm doing dried apples. But let me put these scones in. [Tim had been making scones as we started.] This is something that I figured out a long time ago. I make this big batch and it's too much for two people so I made a batch and then I was like, oh wait, I can just freeze it.

Jeff: How did the thought of freezing it come to you?

Tim: Oh, I don't know, it was just sort of like duh. It's sort of like so obvious. You just make it and freeze it and then I have it and I can throw in a bunch. When somebody visits it literally just takes me a few minutes. The raspberry jam—I have raspberries, but I don't have enough to make jam all at once, but I'll go out and pick them every day and now you can see what I've now got… [Tim holds up a bag of frozen raspberries.] By the time I get two of these bags I'll have enough to make raspberry jam. You don't have to do it all at once.

Jeff: What's your favorite kitchen tool?

Tim: I like things that seem magical. When you see this particular apple peeler-corer-slicer, you'll go, "Oh! That's so cool! It's magical." It just does a fantastic job.

Tim O'Reilly's Jam-Making Tips

Tim says there are two secrets for making jam:

Use a low-methoxyl pectin, such as Pomona's Universal Pectin. Unlike standard pectin, which requires sugar to create a gel, Pomona's is activated by calcium. This basically takes one variable out of the picture, in the sense that you don't have to add sugar for both taste and stability, but just for taste.
Throw some spoons in the freezer before you start. When making the jam, drip the hot jam onto the cold spoon to let it cool, and then you can tell whether it has a good gel or not.

With these two points in mind, you're totally free to experiment with flavor, because that's the only variable left to optimize.

Tim O'Reilly's Scone Recipe

In a bowl, measure out:

2 1/2 to 3 cups (350–400g) flour (experiment to see how much you prefer)
1/2 cup (115g) butter, chilled

Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut the butter into the flour. When done, the butter and flour should look like small pebbles or peas.

Add and whisk to combine:

3 tablespoons (36g) sugar
4 teaspoons (20g) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon (3g) salt

(At this point, you can freeze the dough for later use.)

In the center of the dough, make a "well" and add:

1/2 to 1 cup (50–100g) currants (or raisins, if you prefer)
1/2 to 1 cup (130–260g) milk (or soy milk; goat milk is also great)

Stir with a knife until you get just shy of a gooey consistency. Start with only ½ cup (130g) of milk, adding more as necessary until the dough begins to hang together. If it gets very sticky, you've put in a bit too much milk. You could add more flour if you've gone in with less flour to begin with. It's better to bake them sticky than to add more than a total of three cups of flour: the stickiness is just a problem for shaping them, since it sticks too much to your fingers; too much flour, and they can become tough. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper or a Silpat (nonstick silicone baking mat). If you don't have either, lightly grease a baking sheet. (You can just rub it with the paper from the stick of butter.) Using your hands, shape the dough into small lumps spaced evenly on the baking sheet.

Bake at 425°F / 220°C until the tops are browned, about 10 to 12 minutes.

Serve with jam, and, if you're feeling piggy, with Devonshire cream (whipped cream works, too, from one of those aerosol cans, so you can just put a spot of it on).

Notes
You can use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the flour. Chill the butter for a few minutes so it's easier to handle.
Tim freezes the partially mixed dough, adding the milk and currants to the dough after it's pulled out from the freezer. (The frozen dough has an almost sand-like consistency, so you can pull out as much or as little as you want.) The benefit of the frozen dough is that you can bake scones a few at a time, adding just enough milk to bring the cold dough to a sticky consistency. This makes for a great quick treat, especially if you are the type that has unexpected guests occasionally. It's also in the spirit of learning to cook like a pro: nothing goes to waste this way, and it's efficient!

P.S. Instead of trying to cut the scone in half to butter and jam it, just flip it over and use the bottom!