Cooking For Engineers: Step by Step Recipes and Food for the Analytically Minded
cookingforengineers.com
cookingforengineers.com
http://www.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cooking/d...
I read it about 6 months ago. Still haven't found the kitchen scale I want, but I'm looking....
Also, his business card has the Cooking for Engineers Tiramisu recipe on the back. A good recipe and a unique touch.
(I'm the author...)
I loved the book, btw, one of the most interesting cooking books I've ever read!
If I ever do a second edition, I feel like I should add a bunch of recipes to the "cooking for one" section. There's a book out, something like "What we eat when we eat alone," that looks at just how different our diets our when eating solo.
Best metaphor I can give for easy, cooking-for-one meals: Flip books, as in those spiral-bound children's books where you can flip different sections of the page, you know, show this hair with those eyes and that nose and this mouth. Same thing for easy meals: a protein with a veggie with a grain/starch with some seasoning. Not all combos work, of course, but it's amazing at how much does.
Grains/starches take the longest to cook, so I've just taken to cooking an entire (small) bag of beans or lentils or whatever and storing it in a container in my fridge. This'll last half a week, easily. When it comes to cooking, I'll pan-cook a piece of fish, or maybe tofu; occasionally ground turkey or chicken, and when it's mostly done cooking, toss in a handful of beans/lentils to heat them up, along with a handful of pre-washed veggies (the bagged kind from Trader Joe's) and then some seasoning -- maybe cayenne pepper or curry powder or oregano.
Start to finish, it's ~5 to 10 minutes (I've had some practice, admittedly); during which time I wash any lingering dishes and clean up other stuff. You can cook a double or triple batch and stash the leftovers for taking to work for lunch.
Fast, easy, cheap, healthy... and delicious, too.
P.S. If you don't have a container of pre-cooked stuff, microwaves are great for yams/potatoes... ~4 to 5 minutes and you're good to go.
The important part of learning cooking is to know how each dish is similar and the definition that makes a dish different. You don't learn each dish, you learn the dependencies. Once you can do this, anything you taste in a restaurant can be successfully recreated in the home, equipment dependent.
For learning cooking, I always recommend watching the old Julia Child shows and actually cooking the food. The thing missing is an easy to hard sequence and learning a few extra sauces.
I have forkforkspoon.com parked to be used in a future food idea. I should have done something like this, since I am an engineer and a 'chef', but I feel like I am waiting for something too perfect....someday never comes.
It's a very easy recipe, and very practical if you live alone and need healthy foods that last for many days in the refrigerator. It can be eaten like smoked salmon is, for example in a sandwich with cream cheese, or with crackers.