This book takes the mystery out of creative cooking by requiring love, imagination, art -- and science from the cook. Hillman's years of experience render cooking conundrums comprehensible and transform the way we approach food.
I've been moving this book from house to house since before the Millennium. Finally read it. By this point in my life, 95% of the content was common sense. Still, highly recommended - especially for those only now learning how to cook.
I learned a lot from reading this, and it's safe to say that I was already a huge food-facts nerd! It really will help me bake and cook better because I understand more scientific principles. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys spending time in the kitchen. The format makes it extra easy to read - it's basically in FAQ form so it's easy to skip around to the topics you're interested in and skim where you feel like it. The author has a pretty interesting tone and matter-of-fact sense of humor that was refreshing.
Thanks to my friend Aaron for loaning me this one. I'll have to get my own copy; there was simply too much useful information in here for me to remember. As a novice cook, there are a lot of kitchen basics of which I am simply ignorant; this book was the perfect manual for all the simple things I never knew.
I'm not going to finish this, not because it isn't good, but because in 50+ pages, I haven't encountered anything new. Good book on the science of cooking, but Altan Brown already taught me this stuff.