Sunday, 03 April 2011 19:46
Written by Madelaine Bullwinkel

A SCIENTIST IN THE KITCHEN

There’s good news for anyone longing for complete, consistent success in the kitchen. Nathan Myhrvold’s new cookbook Modernist Cuisine holds the answer. The bad news is that this is a six volume forty-six pound guide to the science of cooking. What's more, Myhrvold believes that, once mastered, modernist cuisine will make you an artist, just as revolutionary as the French Impressionist painters were in the 19th century. Is this too much information? Not if your kitchen includes a water bath, vacuum sealer, centrifuge, pressure cooker, butane torch and Dewar flask full of liquid nitrogen.

GROCERY STORY DIARY PART 2

No sooner had I flashed my newly minted membership card at the door of the nearby Costco than I began to shrink. Everything before me was larger than life - including my double-wide shopping cart! The savings were big too: on enormous flat-screen monitors, the newest computers and digital cameras; even diamond jewelry. So what if I didn’t need any of it? Like Alice in Wonderland, I was overwhelmed by the super-sized world of Costco.

MARDI GRAS TIME

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I blame my Protestant family for sheltering me from all the rich, spicy flavors of Mardi Gras cooking. We were midwestern, corn-fed innocents: no Carnival parties; no Lenten fasts. But moderation has its limitations.

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