Cooking for Geeks Book Review

I was originally sent a review copy of Jeff Potter's Cooking for Geeks by a publicist who thought I might want to write a Father's Day piece about it – in June, of course. I was instantly attracted to the book by its pre-ripped and pre-stained cover, and started to read it right away. Four months later I am only now posting about it because I swiftly realized I wanted to read every single word of every one of its 400-odd pages. And they are odd.

Here is Jeff. If you've been to Toronto's Colborne Lane or any other temple of molecular gastronomy, you'll already know that you can make instant ice cream with liquid nitrogen. But how many people do you know who are geeky enough to try this at home, folks?

Some of the other potentially unsafe (i.e. life-threatening) kitchen tricks that Jeff gets up to include turning a home oven into a fearsomely hot pizza oven by disabling the automatic lock that engages during the self-cleaning cycle, and cooking a hot dog (or making it light up a bunch of LEDs) by connecting it to a suicide cable. But Cooking for Geeks is not really about applying for the Darwin Awards. It's actually the most complete and interesting manual of kitchen science that I've ever had the pleasure of poring over for hours on end.

In this book, which I will from now on consider to be an indispensable reference book, fit to stand on my cookbook shelf right next to the Joy of Cooking, Potter explains in delightful detail what a Maillard reaction is, and all about how it works. (If you don't already know, that's the change that makes certain cooked foods like steak delicious for their browned, slightly crunchy exterior.)

He provides all kinds of simple, useful tables and lists where you can easily check things like the ideal interior temperature of rare beef, how much alcohol will remain in a liquid that's been boiled, and how hot an egg must be to have a solid white and a liquid yolk. The book is also a bible of food safety information. It tells you in detail what the risks of foodborne illness are and how to avoid them.

Cooking for Geeks assumes no prior cooking experience, and tells you how to set up your kitchen in the most efficient way (with top-labelled spice jars in a drawer, for instance). And yes, there are plenty of recipes for the absolute beginner; the first three are for hot chocolate, pancakes... and duck confit. It has a thorough description of sous-vide cooking – including an inexpensive hack with store-bought, vacuum-packed salmon.

Potter also explains, in an easy and engaging way, with plenty of pictures, the science behind "fancy" cooking techniques like the preparation of mousses, stocks, roux and various leavened breads. When he runs to the end of his own (astonishing) expertise, he includes interviews with other extremely cool people in the cooking and tech worlds, as well as a wealth of links to their websites.

Cooking for Geeks is my new favourite culinary guide. I think every curious home cook needs a copy.  How could I not love a book that explains how I can count my own tastebuds to find out whether I am a Super Taster, mill my own flour, or cook brownies in an orange? Cooking for Geeks is exuberant, charming, funny, good looking and intellectually stimulating. And what more could one possibly ask in a kitchen companion?