The Missing Ingredient: The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavor

An interesting angle on an old subject. She's talking about food in general, and looking at it in terms of the time involved in turning ingredients into food - it starts with seconds, discussing things like timing for eggs and seafood and caramels. Few foods actually cook in seconds, but (for instance) the difference between golden-brown caramel and burnt black caramel is a matter of seconds in the timing of removing it from the heat. She progresses through minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries - rapidly moving from cooking food to creating it (aging cheese, for instance) to preserving it (making true balsamic vinegar, or aging fine wine) and ending with more of concepts of cooking, and preserving a way of life. Part of this is show more maintaining traditional breeds of animals (and plants, though she focuses more on animals) in order to create unique foods from them - from a much leaner variety of pig, to cows that give rich milk but not as much as modern dairy breeds. There are no recipes as such in here, but there's detailed descriptions of how to make various foods (the aforementioned caramel, for instance) - you'll still need a recipe for amounts, but if you have one the information here might make it easier to get it right. I found it reasonably interesting - not fascinating, but definitely worth reading. show less

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