Podcast Companion: Culinary Boot Camp! Subject: Lateral Thinking

 Hi everyone!

Culinary Boot Camp is back!  This time, Jesse had a bit of an epiphany when reading a ramen cookbook, and decided to go on a long tirade at Nate (and you, the audience) about thinking about food as a formula.  It's the kind of lateral, modular thinking that allows a learning cook to begin to get away from recipes.  Instead, we ask you to think about food as a formula.

Here's a basic breakdown: Think about a salad, for instance, a Caesar salad.  Romaine lettuce + croutons, garlic-anchovy dressing + parmesan cheese = Caesar salad.  To put in more basic terms, it's greens + textural garnish + salad dressing + flavorful garnish = salad.  A + B + C + D = X.  You can then apply this formula again and again, playing with various ingredients.  Mesclum (A) + walnuts (B) + vinaigrette (C) + raspberries (D) = a nice bistro-style field greens salad.  Bibb lettuce (A) + croutons (B) + ranch (C) + cheddar & cherry tomatoes (D) = a midwestern side salad.  It's all about manipulating the formula.

So, like, 38 minutes of that.

Time Stamps:

1:07 On Following Recipes

2:22 Jesse’s Rant on Formula

3:00 The Formula of Vinaigrette

5:27 The Formula of Ramen

7:12 The Formula of Grilled Cheese

11:53 A Shout-Out to Jordan, and a Funny Jordan Story

18:30 Nate’s Roman Pasta Formula

19:30 Jesse’s Soda Jerk Formula

20:38 Spitballing on the Omelet Formula

23:08 The Relation Between Formula and Ratio

23:55 Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio Book

26:10 The Guys Wax Philosophical

32:30 The Music Analogy

Link: 

Nate and Jesse recommend (again) Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, a book that makes a great companion to this kind of thinking.