Ratio
Lowdown: Really liked it. What makes a cake a cake? Or a cookie a cookie? Or bread dough a bread dough? Ratio successfully distills cooking down to essential ingredients and techniques and gives you a great foundation for working magic in your kitchen. Just make sure you’ve got the time.
I’ve always enjoyed cooking. It comes part and parcel with being a pleaser. But being right-brained, I’ve always felt there was a formula, an algorithm, a chemistry to cooking, which I was never taught. How do people put together recipes? Do they spend weeks in the kitchen, randomly experimenting?
I picked up Ratio in the hopes that it would teach me these foundational secrets. It succeeds. Ruhlman covers doughs, batters, stocks, farçir, sauces, and custards. I’m most interested in doughs and batters.
Two big takeaways from this book. First, learning and knowing the ratios are only the beginning. The techniques used to cook are just as important as the ingredients. Fortunately, Ruhlman covers these basic techniques. Once you understand the basics, you have the freedom to improvise other ingredients and flavors and not take anything away from a food’s essence.
Second, I don’t have the time to try a lot of what’s in this book. Ruhlman does a good job explaining the ratio, and gives basic recipies with each one. A lot of them take at least an hour, if not half a day to a day. (Not of actual prep time, but start-to-finish time.) The only days of the week I have that kind of time are Saturday and Sunday, and I usually don’t want to spend it in a kitchen.
I’ve already tried out a couple of ratios. Biscuits (3 parts flour, to 1 part liquid, to 2 parts butter) and muffins (2 parts flour, 2 parts liquid, 1 part egg, and 1 part butter). Trying these taught my why white flour was invented: using whole wheat makes things denser, not as moist, and less tasty.
I still learned a lot and have a good foundation going forward. I need to purchase a copy. There is still a lot I lack, though, mostly in the area of spices and flavors. Up next is Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking. Hopefully it can fill in the gaps.
)Sunday, 10 January 2010
