Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday CookingRatio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking
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- ISBN13: 9781416566113
- Condition: NEW
- Notes:
Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want -- chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.
RATIOS ARE THE STARTING POINT FROM WHICH A THOUSAND VARIATIONS BEGIN.
Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3 : 1 : 2 -- or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3 : 1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.
Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth ofcooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen -- water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs -- work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.
As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is -- and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.
- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; 2009-04-07
- Label: Scribner
- Studio: Scribner
- ISBN: 1416566112
- Average Customer Review: based on 69 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #1433
If you prefer getting complete, established recipes you may not like Ratio, because there aren't that many recipes spelled out (just an illustrative recipe or two for each category and suggestions for variations - but you need to have some experience to be able to use the suggestions). For me, this is exactly what I have needed to take my cooking to the next level. (The other book I enjoy and use extensively for similar reasons is Julia Childs' "The Way to Cook".)
The text is enlivened by a wealth of motivational practical tips and even commentary on some of the "religious" issues in cooking (butter - salted or unsalted?)
It is reminiscent of when I discovered Raymond Sokolov's SAUCIER'S APPRENTICE. Like that book, Ruhlman shows you a system of how it all fits together and gives you the Aha! Experience of viewing the whole playing field from above, not just the recipe in front of you.
I started off making pie dough with just the ratio for guidance (3:2:1 flour:fat:liquid), no recipe. Very easy to remember and very easy to do. 12 minutes tops.
The next day, looking for something to do with the pie dough, I made a ham and goat cheese quiche the size of a curling stone (RATIO, p. 201).
The quiche needed to mature in the fridge for a day, so for something to eat in the meantime I made an Idiot Chocolate Cake, which is really a gateau, from a link on Ruhlman's website. Easy and great. [...]
To go with the chocolate cake, I made some Creme Anglaise (4:1:1 milk/cream:egg yolk:sugar), also very tasty and very easy.
Then since I didn't want an exclusive cake and quiche diet, I made some bread dough (5:3 flour:liquid) with some sourdough starter I've been nursing back to health. I let it rise overnight in the fridge.
The following day, I baked the bread, which turned out great. I'm not buying any more bread as long as I can remember that 5:3 ratio. Homemade sourdough is the best .
Then, since the oven was already hot from baking the bread, and since I had some egg whites left over from the Chocolate Cake (which used only yolks), I made some Chocolate Meringue cookies which are like biting into little chocolate-flavored pieces of cloud. (I'm having one or two as I type.)
So, to recap, in a period of about 48 hours or so, I made:
4 lb. Quiche
2 lb. Sourdough Bread
1 Chocolate Gateau
2 cups Creme Anglaise
3 doz. Chocolate Meringue cookies
And, friends, I'm telling you it was effortless.
Today, whole pork loins went on sale at the grocery next door for $1.99 a pound, so over the weekend I'm going to make (cure) 8 1/2 pounds of Canadian Bacon (RATIO, p. 158). That stuff costs $12 a pound retail. I mean $95 of bacon for under $20? Who wouldn't?
I got some sausage casings the other day, and if I can just get my hands on some lard, I'll make sausages (4:1 meat:fat) in the next week or so.
Even as I write, I am searching for excuses to make creme patisserie (4:1:1 milk/cream:egg yolk:sugar, plus some cornstarch and butter), lemon curd (4:4:3:1 lemon juice:sugar:yolks:butter), or chocolate ganache (1:1 cream:chocolate). And wondering where I can find that lard for the sausages?
Can't recommend this book enough.
And check out his blog: [...]
The book is written in a very readable, and practical style. After getting the book I followed the recipe for pate choux and made gougeres. Worked perfectly.