Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work

Publishers Information

About Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work

Publisher Web Link: http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/clarksonpotter/index.php

Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa, husband-and-wife chefs and the forces behind the popular blog Ideas in Food, have made a living out of being inquisitive in the kitchen. Their book shares the knowledge they have gleaned from numerous cooking adventures, from why tapioca flour makes a silkier chocolate pudding than the traditional cornstarch or flour to how to cold smoke just about any ingredient you can think of to impart a new savory dimension to everyday dishes. Perfect for anyone who loves food, Ideas in Food is the ideal handbook for unleashing creativity, intensifying flavors, and pushing one’s cooking to new heights.
 
This guide, which includes 100 recipes, explores questions both simple and complex to find the best way to make food as delicious as possible. For home cooks, Aki and Alex look at everyday ingredients and techniques in new ways—from toasting dried pasta to lend a deeper, richer taste to a simple weeknight dinner to making quick “micro stocks” or even using water to intensify the flavor of soups instead of turning to long-simmered stocks. In the book’s second part, Aki and Alex explore topics, such as working with liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide—techniques that are geared towards professional cooks but interesting and instructive for passionate foodies as well. With primers and detailed usage guides for the pantry staples of molecular gastronomy, such as transglutaminase and hydrocolloids (from xanthan gum to gellan), Ideas in Food informs readers how these ingredients can transform food in miraculous ways when used properly.
 
Throughout, Aki and Alex show how to apply their findings in unique and appealing recipes such as Potato Chip Pasta, Root Beer-Braised Short Ribs, and Gingerbread Soufflé. With Ideas in Food, anyone curious about food will find revelatory information, surprising techniques, and helpful tools for cooking more cleverly and creatively at home. 

Author Information

About Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

Author Web Link: http://www.ideasinfood.com/

Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot are Ideas in Food, a blog, a book, and a culinary consulting business based in Levittown, PA. They met in the kitchen at Clio in Boston in 1997 and have been cooking together ever since. Aki and Alex specialize in sharing techniques for creativity with chefs, cooks, restaurants, food service companies, and home cooks using modern ingredients, equipment, and innovative approaches to food. They emphasize an understanding of ingredients and cooking techniques (both classic and modern) in order to increase skill levels and refine individual cooking styles. They specialize in helping other chefs express their own cuisine more clearly and efficiently. In addition to their work with individual chefs and restaurants, they have consulted with companies such as the Art Institutes, the Institute of Culinary Education, Marks & Spencer, and Unilever.

Their book, Ideas in Food, Great Recipes and Why They Work, is to be published in December of 2010 by Clarkson Potter. It is a handbook for cooks and chefs, teaching them how to unleash their creativity, intensify flavors, streamline techniques and have fun in the kitchen. It is a blend of stories, science and recipes based on their experience and experiments in the kitchen.

Aki and Alex began the blog Ideas in Food in December 2004. It began as a digital notebook to record their work in their restaurant kitchen. It has morphed into a clearinghouse for ideas gleaned from various mediums: restaurants, blogs, books, people and everyday life; all of it relating back to their kitchen. Over the past six years the website’s popularity has grown from a cult following of professional chefs into a benchmark for culinary blogs. It is a favorite for its combination of creative ideas and illustrative photography.

Aki and Alex also share their knowledge via the printed word. They have contributed an essay to the upcoming book The Kitchen as Laboratory, to be published by Columbia University Press in 2011. They are featured in an interview with recipes in the book, Cooking for Geeks, by Jeff Potter, published by O’Reilly in August 2010. They contributed an essay to the anthology Food and Philosophy, which was published by Wiley-Blackwell in November 2007. Alex and Aki wrote a column titled Kitchen Alchemy for Popular Science online based on scientific explorations in the kitchen. They wrote an article about garlic for Santé Magazine in March of 2009. In addition to this they have been featured in articles for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Food and Wine magazine, Saveur, Santé Magazine, were highlighted in an interview for Gourmet online and their work can occasionally be found on other blogs and websites around the Web.

Aki and Alex have been honored to speak and teach at professional conferences around the world: The World Pastry Forum, Star Chefs International Chefs Congress, International Association of Culinary Professionals, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, the Experimental Cuisine Collective,_ The Flemish Primitives and the _International Association of Culinary Professionals. They have been invited to speak at Harvard in November 2010 and participated in a culinary round table at Cornell University in 2008. They have appeared as guest chefs for four Holland America cruises, leading demonstrations and teaching classes for groups from 12-150 people. Aki and Alex are often invited to cook guest chef dinners at restaurants and events around the country, most recently a James Beard Dinner at Craigie on Main in Cambridge, MA and a Mangalista Pig dinner at Elements in Princeton, NJ.

Aki and Alex appear in two episodes of Foodography _on the _Cooking Channel in 2010. Their consulting business was featured on an episode of Friday Night Arts on their local PBS station, WHYY, in June 2010. In 2008 they appeared in an episode of The Food Detectives on the Food Network demonstrating the uses of liquid nitrogen. In May 2009, they discussed food science with Michael Colameco for his radio program Food Talk on WOR in New York City.

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Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work

by Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot