The Chemistry of Cooking: An Unscientific Approach

A Wednesday in the kitchen can play out relatively uneventfully, unless you set out early to learn a whole new language. At 9:30am today, I am already up, fed, and sitting at a bar with several wine glasses in hand.

Just as she did a week ago for her tutorial on white wines, wine guru Cindy Wulf is walking us through a workshop on the best reds on our restaurant's menu. This is part of Geddes's initiative to get the waitstaff--and his chefs--to understand the ways our wine menu pairs with our dishes, and to appreciate and promote the consumption of those wines. Cindy's right there with him when she says that when she sees "people eating their foods without a bottle of wine, I just want to walk over to them  and ask, 'Are you even tasting your food?'" The bleary-eyed lot of us laugh, but she's got a valuable scientific lesson to teach us: that when we take a sip of wine, the acids and tannins interacting on tongues scrape our palates clean, preparing us to experience all the subtle nuances in our carefully prepared food. I take copious notes.

She takes us through eleven different bottles (thankfully spit buckets are on hand), passing us glasses of their essential scents and undertones (cups of fruits, spices, and special notes like chocolate, mushroom, and coffee beans) and asking us what we can detect in our little sips.

We poke our noses like hummingbirds into our glasses, take deep inhales, and swish around little mouthfuls to see whether the wine feels heavy or light, velvety or silky on our tongues. I learn that I prefer the Willamette Valley pinot noir's earthy, spicy flavors, which make it ideal for our charcuterie plate, and that I go nuts over the buttery finish of the merlot from Sonoma County.

Cindy also exposes the great nerdy in-joke behind the celebration and condemnation of pinots and merlots in Alexander Payne's great wine comedy Sideways--the character played by Paul Giamatti says he adores Pinot Noirs above all other wines, in part because they're very difficult and finicky to coax into existence, but that they produce flavors of unparalleled complexity and beauty. He also utterly condemns Merlots, railing against them before his major dinner date, saying "If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!" This did enormous damage to the Merlot market in the United States, but the great irony is that the character's favorite wine, the wine he resists opening until the end of the movie, is a 1961 Château Cheval Blanc, a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc. "The joke in this," Cindy explains, "is that Miles doesn't want to accept and appreciate his own qualities, because he's aspiring to be like this super-sensitive exclusively-available Pinot Noir...so it's basically a story about self-loathing, in the guise of a hugely nerdy wine joke."

The science of the wine tasting leaves me wildly excited about all the crazy things that can happen in the chemical interactions in the glass, on the plate, and in the mouth. Apparently a lower yield of grapes of the vine means a greater concentration of flavor in each grape; Cabernet Sauvignons are almost always blends with other varietals (because of their high tannins and acidity) except in the soil of the Napa Valley, and they taste more like citrus to women and more like vanilla and apple pie to men; Syrahs smell "like a pig on fire in a blackberry bush," carrying notes of bacon fat, berries, and spicy hot wood. One should never serve Cabernets with oysters, because the tannins of the wine will mix with the iodine salts of the seafood and make them taste metallic--apparently that rule about only serving white wine with seafood isn't just good behavior, it's also good chemical sense.

Good chemical sense becomes the modus operandi of the day. Our biggest project in the kitchen for tonight's dinner is to whip up two new batches of icy treats--a fresh batch of chocolate ice cream (to replace what we exhausted yesterday), and a new flavor of sorbet, kiwi, to replace the plum on our menu. Annie's recipe for chocolate ice cream will come with a few modifications--she wants to infuse the flavor of cardamom into the ice cream, and she strips the eggs from the recipe, to make it less of a custard. I've made ice cream before--in a tiny 2-person ice cream maker, with mixed to disappointing results--and I don't know what's been going wrong. But as Annie walks me through the process--first infusing the whole milk and sugar with the cardamom seeds and cocoa powder, and bringing the whole pot to a boil before pouring it over chunks of semisweet chocolate--I can see just what a difference it makes to know the interactions of temperature and texture when putting together a recipe.

I've never been much of a science geek. (Even now, I can picture Nick laughing at home, chemist that he is, saying "That's an understatement.) Any argument you can make to me about why technology is, or why a process has to go in a certain order, will be followed up by a bleary-eyed "Why?" and an argument about the need for highly specific rules. But cooking is the only kind of chemistry I've ever totally embraced--maybe it's because the results are so much more fun to observe, or maybe because I'm just that much more motivated to get the formulas right. (If only I'd graduated a year later from high school, there would've been a course called "Chemistry of Cooking" that could've filled my science requirement and set me on my culinary path much earlier.) Lately I've been pouring over the pages of Herve This's Kitchen Mysteries, a book Nick gave me as a Christmas present, for clues that will not just help me cook better, but also help me understand when things go wrong. I'm still perplexed when my cobbler biscuits puff up unevenly (with layers flaking and puffing up more on the right than the left), but learning that's a sign that butter hasn't been incorporated consistently through the dough (when baked, chunks of butter will produce pockets of air and moisture--great when you're making croissants, not so good when you're making pie or tart dough). When you squeeze lemon juice over a sliced avocado, the citric acid slows the breakdown of the enzyme that causes the fruit to turn brown. When you blend butter into the final minutes of a sauce, knowing as "mounting the sauce", you make sure that the presence of the glossy, shiny flavors of the fat and salt remain of the sauce's smell, taste, and mouthfeel.

Just as we have to combine bleach with cold water, rather than hot, to keep it as a sterilizing cleaning agent, so too do you need to structure your cooking process in the right way to keep it effective. Annie has to add the cardamom into the heating milk, rather than at the end of the process when she stirs in the cold cream, because the flavor will more easily infuse into a hot liquid than cold, and bind to the fat in the hot milk in a more pronounced way. And when she pours the prepared liquid into the ice cream machine, she has to be careful to watch both the icing and mixing functions, alternating "so it doesn't get too icy, and doesn't get too much air-whipped into it." If she lets the container get too cold, it may start to incorporate ice crystals; if she lets it whip too long, it may start to get chunky, like butter. It's all about keeping the liquid at the perfect temperature and aeration until it reaches a smooth, creamy consistency.

The same thing is true when we have to whip up the kiwi sorbet--instead of blending the sugar and water into a simple syrup (as people often do when making sorbets), she has Wally puree the fresh fruit, add sugar, and then slowly pour in water until it reaches the ideal level of sweetness. This, she says, "is to keep it from getting too sweet, so that what you taste is the freshness of the fruit, not the sugar." She also has him add just a touch of vodka to the mix, so that it doesn't produce too many ice crystals in the churning process--a genius touch, when you think about how many times your perfect container of sorbet might have huge chunks of ice crystals (i.e. the "protective ice") growing on top. (Annie also notes that this is a perfect way to make sure that frozen baked desserts don't freeze completely. For example, if you're slipping a piece of cake into the freezer that you'd like to enjoy later without defrosting, you can gently paint it with a water-and-vodka mixture. The vodka will keep it from freezing to the core.)

As we're cleaning up later in the night, I see Angela place an enormous pot of veal stock on the stove. This, she explains, will bubble all night, just barely simmering, so it can reduce to a demi-glace, a spoon-coating sauce infused with the thick, rich flavors of the veal but with the liquid content reduced by half. I imagine that there is a technical term for how high the heat needs to be to maintain this balance over the next 14 hours, i.e. a slow boil or a gentle simmer. "Just barely bubbling--farts in a bathtub," Angela says. I wonder if it was a master chef that coined this term, but when I take a look into the pot I see that, yes, this is exactly what she was describing.

Through the last three weeks I've been attempting to steep myself in a lifetime of cooking education: I'm trying to understand the physics of sawing a knife down the curves of a grapefruit, the reasons for tearing rather than slicing salad greens, and the difference that a soil based in clay versus limestone can make on the flavor of a fine wine. But even with all the chemical interactions in play, sometimes even the most sophisticated cooking methods can be described with bodily humor. No matter what the terms may be, understanding the reasoning behind the steps of a recipe are doing a lot more than just making me a better cookbook editor--they're making me a better, more deliberate, and far more informed cook.

As I sip my end-of-day glass of Chris's wine of the night--an excellent Côtes du Rhône from an area just near Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the best place for the wine in the Rhône wine region--I'm finding nuances in the flavor I never have before. I can detect the blackberry and the currants, the tangy acidity washing up the sides of my tongue, and the corduroy softness of the liquid on my palate. I'm also savoring it as a complement to my family meal salad, tangy with a few chunks of roasted hazelnuts and blue cheese. There's complexity here at the molecular level, and I can't decide whether I'm supposed to analyze it, articulate it, or just enjoy it.


P.S. One of the main ingredients of a great recipe is the diners, and those diners who rave about the meal afterwards are the best customers you could hope for. It's only though a community of supporters and readers that you can get as far as you have with telling a story...so not only do I have to thank you, the readers who are sticking with these reports from the front of the line, but also to @TKReviews, @mrsfridaynext, @FaithBlackGirl, @wathiranganga, and @fignaz for tweeting out links to this blog. Every day you entertain and enlighten me with your Tweets, and by sharing my stuff, you give me a chance to help out all of your super-enlightened followers as well. I'm lucky to have your support...

Prep Cook, Day One: Self-Starting, Sidelined

Tuesday afternoon, round 1:00, I slip into my sneakers, pin my hair back, and walk into the kitchen to receive my working orders. I haven't felt this nervous since my first days at Random House, where the question "Can you send this priority FedEx?" would send me into a sweaty panic. I had all Monday off to write, read, and do a bit of practice cooking, and though the salsa-based gazpacho was tasty, I'm feeling suddenly far out of my depth.

Luckily Annie's there to walk me through the details of the kitchen. She introduces me to the walk-in refrigerator, where we keep all the fruits and veggies, meats and seafood, and dairy, as well as the pantry. I get a tutorial on the baking station, the entrée stations, and the procedures involved (where to grab my apron, where to put dirty dishes, where and when to wipe down my station—constantly, and with a towel soaked in bleach water.)

The cold station, where we make desserts and salads and where I’ll be learning tonight, is what customers can look into as they’re entering the restaurant, so it’s vital that we keep our station clean and our behavior immaculate (i.e. no eating, no drinking, no picking noses) while we’re standing there. As I set up the prep station—unloading tubs of fruit, herbs, and salad dressings into the refrigerated bins—I can feel the sun beating down on my neck and small of my back. It’s a hot day, and we’ll be standing in the kitchen until the sun goes down.

Annie sets me to work making cobbler dough and cutting out biscuits—the rhubarb cobbler is the most popular dish in the restaurant, so we don’t want to run out. I cut about 12 rounds before black residue from the cutter starts working its way into the dough. (I also realize that I’ve neglected to ask if they care about using different measuring cups for wet and dry ingredients, and whether ingredients need to be leveled off before adding. For such a relaxed kitchen, it’s easy to forget that there are preferences and rules to be followed.) Annie sweeps the dough away and sets me to work chopping rhubarb for the cobbler. I nearly cut myself twice, once slicing off the tip of a long fingernail. Though they might save me from losing fingers, I can’t risk a customer finding my nails in the food, so I quickly run home and trim them short. Once the rhubarb is diced, I throw it into a pot with lots of sugar and heat it until it becomes so soft the fruit melts in your mouth. “If you’re not sure you’ve done something right,” Annie says, “Grab a spoon and taste it. Taste everything until you’re happy with how it’s come out.”

Once the rhubarb is stewed and put away, we break for family meal. Every day a different chef uses the kitchen leftovers to prepare a group meal prior to the dinner rush. Today it’s a kind of Mexican chicken and spinach casserole, which we top with housemade chicharónnes (crispy bits of duck meat) and lots of hot sauce. It’s a good stick-to-your-ribs protein-filled dish, which will hold until we close the kitchen round 10pm. I gobble it up.

After lunch, Annie sends me to the garden to collect borage flowers, which we use for decorating various desserts and salads. (Each chocolate truffle ordered comes in a tiny ramekin adored with a blue borage blossom.) She mentions that she wants to show me where to get mint, but she doesn’t know that I’ve been exploring the garden on my own, so I collect extra mint for her from the garden as well. But when she sees me, she says, “No, I have a special place I want to show you for the mint.” I can see in her eyes that she’s readying herself to deliver some criticism. “I know you’re eager to help, and a self-starter, and that’s a good thing! But…”

“…It’s not so useful here,” I say. I knew I should’ve waited for my orders.

She laughs. “No, it’ s not so useful here. It’s OK, let me show you where the good mint is…”

She walks me out of the kitchen and to a little garden hidden near the dining room. She shows me how to pick the tiny clusters of mint leaves that are ideal for garnish—they should be small, but with just enough stem to tuck under a slice of cake or into a cluster of ice cream. We gather up a new batch of mint (we’ll use the old one for making simple syrup for the bar), and fill the cold station with fresh herbs and flowers for garnish, leaving them floating in bins of cool water.

There’s more dessert prep to do—mincing strawberries with a super-sharp Japanese knife for fruit sauces, spreading chocolate into delicate rounds for tuiles, and pulling dishes out of the cold room and arranging them on the speed rack, just below our convection oven. As the night goes on, this is where we’ll be reaching for our various desserts, instead of constantly running to the walk-in. Annie shows me how to use a blow torch to close the cracked surface of the chocolate cashew tart, so that each slice looks perfectly glossy and smooth.

All at once, we start to hear the whir and splutter of the receipt machine—tickets are coming in, for salads and oysters, for special appetizers. Wally, who’s manning the salad station, hands me a bucket of fava beans to shuck, and then he walks me through the basics of salad preparation. Some ingredients and dishes we have to wait for--for a charcuterie plate, we can plate everything except the tiny quail egg, which Chris has to fish out of the sous vide machine for us. He showed me the little eggs at his station--they look like marbles, and when cooked, they provide a little burst of extra buttery fat on the plate.

 For the blue greens salad, we toss a combination of greens (checking each one for any renegade bugs or brown spots), fresh Maytag blue cheese, roasted hazelnuts, salt, pepper, and red wine vinaigrette. The last ingredient before tossing is a dash of mixed herbs—fennel fronts, chopped chives, minced tarragon, and torn chive blossoms and nasturtium flowers. Every bit of garnish and color in these salads is edible and there for a reason.

I toss the salad in a bowl, then pile the leaves, crisscrossing them like I was playing Jenga, until they make a little tower of salad. A final sprinkling of chive blossoms, and the salad is ready to go out. I have to make myself shout the server’s name as I put the salad and its accompanying ticket up on the counter. I’m quieter than I think I am, and suddenly my summer of waitressing makes itself useful once again. I remember how important it was when my ticket was called, so I could run the food out as quickly as possible.

A few orders for oysters come in, and Annie walks me through the basics of holding the oyster in a towel against the table as I jam my knife in and twist until it pops open. It takes me quite a few tries to get the hang of it, but Annie’s patient. All night she’s been correcting little things I’m doing—helping me stand up straight as I chop, rather than hunching over the cutting board; bringing ingredients to my station before I start any process. As I start whipping together egg whites and sugar for meringues, she corrects how I hold the whisk so it puts less strain on my wrist. It’s so precise, and she spots it so soon after I started, that I start to laugh.

“How on earth did you learn this stuff?” I ask, stirring the egg whites with my arm now, rather than my wrist.

“Well, years of practice,” she said, “and other people showing me how to do it.” I appreciate her candor when it comes to showing me the right way to do things—there’s so much room for error here, I’d rather confess to knowing nothing than assuming everything and doing everything wrong. I need to learn how to shout as I’m coming around corners, especially if I’m carrying something hot. I have to remember that, if an order contains both oysters and a salad, I need to make the salad first so I don’t risk cross-contamination. I need to be sure to keep the ice cream in the mini-freezer as long as possible before I have to scoop it, and then to return it immediately so it can harden up again. All of these things are logical steps, and unlike so aspects of my day job, there’s nothing I’m doing that seems to be merely procedural. Everything has to be clean, has to be accessible, and the system that the chefs have developed in this tiny kitchen makes it possible for things to run smoothly.

By the end of the night, I’m fielding tickets on my own. I know how to prep the cobblers—a biscuit and its cobbler go into the convection oven while I prepare a plate. The cobbler comes out, gets a sprinkling of powdered sugar, candied ginger, and a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream, and once a spring of mint is in place, it goes out. Wally, my station buddy, picks up whatever I can’t—he first started cooking at a casino, so he knows what a rush night looks like, and while this is far from it, I think he’s happy to get the extra help. Annie is schooling him even more than me, reminding him about folding his clean towels so anyone who’s looking in can see a neat station. “Wally’s great,” she says, “But I’m reminding him to remember the little stuff, since he’s covering this space on my nights out. I need to know that he remembers everything I do.”

Nate emerges from the dining room to take our drink requests—the dining room is closing up, and we’ve all earned a drink to go with our dinners. I order a glass of white wine, gratefully, and prepare my last cobbler of the night. Over family dinner (roasted chicken thighs, leftover polenta and potatoes, salad), Annie walks us through the cleaning steps—moving dishes to the “low-boy” fridges beneath our station, clearing out those last ingredients we can’t use. She’s taking her lemon semifreddo off the menu—customers don’t seem to be going for it, so she offers it up to everyone in the kitchen. I steal a forkful—it’s light and fluffy, the airiest ice cream I can imagine, but I can see why customers would be going for the cobbler instead. It’s still too cold out to want a full-on ice cream dessert. She whips up a sample of its replacement on the menu—a lemon angel food cake, served with a lemon ice cream and topped with candied rosemary and a rosemary-olive oil reduction. (Since we’ll need to consult this sample for presentation purposes, she scoops out lard instead of ice cream to demonstrate the plating. It’s a good thing she tells us this, because I would’ve gone in for a big taste.)

She draws a little diagram of the plating and ingredients for us to consult tomorrow and Thursday, her nights’ off. I’m immensely relieved, as I stumble to my bed, that I’ve had such a patient and thorough teacher tonight. It’s been a massive education over the last few hours, and I can’t help but feel a little proud that I’ve emerged without any demerits. I collapse into bed, dreaming of plating, aprons, and tomorrow’s set-up.