I don’t buy cookbooks anymore.
Because I self-published one.
Just like my insecurity in human relationships (if you like me, then there’s something wrong with you) I no longer trust the system.
Joking, I never trusted the system, this just proved that the system is broken.
There’s another reason.
Kenji Lopez-Alt, The Modernist Cuisine Cookbook, Heston Blumenthal basically blew the billion-dollar cookbook industry away with their science.
They tested, experimented, and found the best way to cook whatever dish you have in mind.
Science is why I quit cookbooks.
Why do I need another book of fluff and stories and memories when I have the ultimate fail-proof recipe?
There’s just one problem.
Scientific people tend to behave like assholes.
Oh, your family likes to cook eggs this way? Let me prove to you how wrong you are with my way, backed by this thesis written by my other smarty pants friends who went to prestigious universities.
Let me prove how shitty your stir-fry is by showing you the bare minimum of BTU that is required to achieve wokhei, which you obviously do not have.
Olive oil in your pasta cooking water? Ridiculous. It does nothing. Your grandmother is wrong.
Your chips aren’t cooked, frozen, then triple-fried, and you’re wondering why it’s soggy?
You somehow proved me wrong? Well, this is an isolated case. The sample size isn’t reliable enough to determine that …..
Ohmegawd will you please. shut. up.
It’s their nature. You don’t get PhDs by being nice; you do it by fact-checking, doubting, researching, and spending A LOT of money for recognition. And as you get smarter, people around you become dumber, more ignorant, and in turn, happier.
Won’t you be a bitter asshole too?
Alright, alright, the real reason I don’t buy cookbooks is because I have access to Japanese cooking magazines.
I don’t know if you’ve seen any of it at the magazine stands - Dancyu, Elle Gourmet, Harumi Kurihara’s Seasonal Special, NHK’s ‘Today’s Cooking’ … Each magazine has enough recipes to last me a year. 900 yen ($10) per copy, beautiful production, I get to practise my reading comprehension, talk about value, right?
One of my favourites is Gekkan Senmon Ryori - the monthly magazine about fine dining and molecular gastronomy.
Yes, more science.
Most of the time it’s just eye candy, but then from time to time, I see gems like this.
But wait, after that, they took 500ml of the most balanced konbu dashi and added 15g of bonito flakes (katsuobushi) to make ichiban dashi. (Ichiban has a double meaning here, it could mean ‘first’ dashi, or also ‘best’ dashi.)
And surprise surprise, they find the 60°C at 15 minutes to be the most well-balanced again.
There is a conclusion, and I’ve translated it for you with the help of Google:
What a mess.
So all that, and we end without a conclusion.
In a way, I like that there’s no conclusion.
(But there was an obvious preference. They all voted for 60°C at 15 minutes, then 60°C at 15 minutes again.)
That they need to use their scientific gibberish, and their Japanese politeness to sugarcoat that ultimately, food is subjective.
And science has no power over food.
What if I don’t want balance? What if all I want is strong umami? What if I like watery dashi, sweet dashi, sour, or over-extracted dashi?
There is no one way to make dashi, and they know it.
Science, like research in marketing, is only useful if it brings benefit to the consumers or the cause.
My takeaway is, I need half an hour to make a so-called balanced dashi?
Just pass me the stock cube or instant pack, please.
Beautiful graphics. I enjoy the way you write. Informative, not pushy.
I am also J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s # 1 fan.🙃