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  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Please join me in welcoming to Google New

  • York Nathan Myhrvold.

  • So Nathan, you wanted to start with a presentation about the

  • book and give an overview.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah, let me show some pictures, and then

  • we can talk.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Sounds good.

  • And then we'll open it up for Q&A at the end.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Great.

  • So I'm going to tell you a little bit about "Modernist

  • Cuisine At Home." In 2011, we released this book, "Modernist

  • Cuisine." This is what we call the big book, which was an

  • encyclopedic treatment of all aspects of cooking and the

  • science behind it.

  • So the really interesting question is,

  • what do we do next?

  • And one next thing after that that we could do, may still

  • do, would be pastry baking and dessert, because the first

  • book didn't cover that.

  • But as our next act, we decided, in fact, we would do

  • modernist cuisine at home instead.

  • And the idea was basically that modernist cuisine was

  • about sort of the no holds barred approach to cooking.

  • There are recipes that require a centrifuge, or a rotary

  • evaporator, or all kinds of things that most people--

  • I have them at home, but most people don't

  • have them at home.

  • So we decided we would do a book that would take the same

  • ideas as "Modernist Cuisine," but apply them in a way that

  • was a smaller, little bit less daunting book.

  • It's a little pamphlet, like 700 pages.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: It weighs more than my child, we were

  • deciding earlier.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: And try to do stuff that would address

  • things that people could do at home.

  • So every recipe in here, you can do at home.

  • It doesn't require unusual equipment.

  • And it doesn't require unusual ingredients.

  • And we also tried to really focus on practical techniques

  • and use lots of photography to make it really easy to see

  • what's going on.

  • One side of these shows our step by steps.

  • The other thing shows what we call a cutaway.

  • This is where we show you the magic

  • view inside your equipment.

  • The people at Viking gave us this Viking

  • stove to cook with.

  • We cooked with it for a while.

  • And then we cut it in half.

  • It's sort of like the 4H kid that gets a little calf, and

  • raises it up, and then, oops.

  • But we cut it in half so you can see what

  • it looks like inside.

  • Like the first book, we have a washable kitchen manual.

  • It's on washable waterproof paper.

  • That's so you can take it in the kitchen, get it dirty.

  • It's a little bit smaller format, too.

  • And it folds back on itself, because it's spiral bound.

  • And we kind of consider this the next part of "Modernist

  • Cuisine," yet it's focusing on home cooking.

  • And home cooking just means two things.

  • One is what I said earlier, that it's a set of stuff that

  • you can do at home from an equipment perspective.

  • But equally important is that it's a set of cooking recipes

  • that are less formal.

  • In the first book, we've got recipes from Ferran Adria, and

  • Thomas Keller, and Heston Blumenthal, and all the best

  • chefs in the world.

  • You don't typically cook that food at home all the time.

  • In the new book, we have a chapter on mac and cheese.

  • We have a chapter on chicken wings, and

  • other skewered snacks.

  • So it's a little bit less formal style, in addition to

  • being a little bit more accessible from an equipment

  • perspective.

  • So here's uncompromising physical quality.

  • I wish I could say that about myself, but by god, I can say

  • it about my book.

  • So we tried to make the physical aspect of the book

  • kind of cool.

  • It's big, it uses great paper.

  • This is sort of nerdy, but I figured I'm at Google, so that

  • should be OK.

  • But when you typically print a picture in a book, it uses

  • half tone screen, and this is what it looks like when you

  • blow it up.

  • It's 175 line.

  • An art book would use a 200 line screen.

  • But this whole idea of using a fixed screen is sort of an old

  • analog world concept.

  • It's still done.

  • We used something called stochastic screening, which

  • uses an error diffusion algorithm, and the dots are

  • now all created digitally.

  • And you can see, it just looks a lot better.

  • Here's another thing most people don't realize.

  • The gamut is the range of colors

  • that inks can represent.

  • And most inks have a hard time with really saturated colors.

  • So here's a picture from the book where the grey shows the

  • stuff you can't actually represent in the color gamut.

  • Well, if you buy something called Chroma Centric inks,

  • you can show it all.

  • And so people will ask us, how did you get all of that color

  • in those pictures?

  • Is that because you digitally processed it?

  • And we said, no, we actually sprung for the expensive ink.

  • Because it turns it you just can't represent some colors,

  • particularly highly saturated colors.

  • You'll see it's the tomato, for example, and some of the

  • greens in the apple, or the greens in that cauliflower.

  • Those are the things that don't come across, because

  • they're highly saturated.

  • Now, of course, a good question is, why the hell am I

  • doing a book at all?

  • Why is it physical?

  • And the original answer for "Modernist Cuisine" is that at

  • the time we started, there were no tablet computers,

  • except for the first version of Kindle, which was tiny and

  • black and white.

  • There was no iPad.

  • It hadn't come out.

  • And so we had to choose a platform, and we chose print.

  • But here's the other reason--

  • here's a picture from the original book, and here's what

  • it looks like on Kindle and on an iPad.

  • And once you decide you're going to do layout for a big,

  • big high resolution display that you're going to get this

  • close to, it's hard to just change it.

  • Of course you could do it.

  • But if you just literally took the PDFs from the book and

  • just said, I'm going to move them onto a tablet, it's not

  • very usable, because you're always scrolling one way and

  • scrolling another way.

  • It also, to me, is kind of boring.

  • Because if you just took the PDFs, you don't have any of

  • the things that's magical about an interactive platform.

  • So we're talking about one possible future project is to

  • make a really interactive version.

  • But then that actually starts getting to be real work,

  • because you have to animate, and you want to have a lot of

  • things live, and you have to have a little

  • different user interface.

  • So at some point, yeah.

  • For now, actually, print is a great way to deliver large,

  • high resolution pictures to people.

  • And particularly, if I target the people in this room or in

  • the tech industry, then tablets would be even more

  • appropriate.

  • But if I want to have influence with lots of

  • traditional chefs around the world and give them an ability

  • to step up, actually print is probably a better platform

  • from that perspective at the moment.

  • So here's some fun facts about the new book.

  • Two volumes, 9.9 pounds unpacked, 684 pages, 228 of

  • which are waterproof.

  • 23 chapters, 210,000 words, 405 recipes, 114 that have

  • step by step photos.

  • And we took about 86,000 pictures, of which 1,500 are

  • in the book.

  • So here's how we can sort of put it in perspective.

  • If you took "Modernist Cuisine At Home," and you put it all

  • in one line of text at the same type size, it would be

  • 1.4 miles long, and that would stretch from 14th Street up to

  • 42nd Street.

  • So several subway stops.

  • And of course we're here.

  • That's the you are here.

  • "Modernist Cuisine," the big one, that actually would go

  • from lower Manhattan all the way up to 116th Street.

  • So here's another comparison.

  • People will say, why is this book so expensive?

  • And we say, well, look.

  • The first book was $625.

  • List price, street price, maybe $460.

  • The new book is $140.

  • Currently the street price is $130.

  • I'd be surprised if that didn't go down.

  • I have no way to control street price, of course.

  • That's what retailers sell it at.

  • But it's only $0.41 per recipe, and $0.35 per recipe

  • in the new book.

  • It's $15.63 a pound for this, but only $14.00 a pound.

  • How does that compare?

  • Parmesan-Reggiano is $19 a pound.

  • We are cheaper than Parmesan cheese.

  • So if you love cheese, you should love this book.

  • It's cheaper.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: That's a good sales pitch.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah, I've been I'm trying to come out of

  • being a programmer and actually learn how to sell.

  • As I said before, we've got lots of step by step photos.

  • I don't think we have a single page that doesn't have a color

  • photo on it.

  • Here was another.

  • In "Modernist Cuisine," we decided we would have

  • everything with weights.

  • But our new motto is, now with teaspoons!

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: For the home cook.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Because home cooks--

  • now, when people ask, what's the first gadget they should

  • buy for their kitchen, I always say a digital

  • thermometer.

  • And then the second one is a digital scale.

  • And they're like $20.

  • This is not like any kind of expensive thing.

  • But once you get into it, weighing ingredients is faster

  • and more accurate than measuring them out.

  • And you don't have to worry about leveling it.

  • And you don't have to worry about is your sugar clumping a

  • different way, or some other things.

  • So I highly recommend the weight approach.

  • But now we have teaspoons, by god.

  • Whenever we do a recipe, we like to have lots of

  • variations on those recipes.

  • So here was something.

  • One spread shows pesto, and we started off making pesto.

  • And then we went, what the hell, let's make a whole bunch

  • of pesto-like sauces.

  • We started off with a chapter on chicken wings.

  • And then we said, let's make yakitori style chicken wings.

  • But then if you like yakitori, tsukune, these chicken

  • meatballs are really cool.

  • And then pretty soon we had saute, and

  • tons of other skewers.

  • So we love having variations.

  • And we want to encourage people to mess around and do

  • cool new things with cooking.

  • It's not about here's a recipe for one thing.

  • Lots of books will do that.

  • We try to say, here's a principle, and here's an

  • example, and now here's a couple other examples, and

  • then experiment yourself and go take it other places.

  • We have some tables.

  • We had a lot of tables in the big book.

  • We have fewer in the small book.

  • But here, if you're cooking meat, there isn't a right way

  • to cook it.

  • If you want it rare or medium rare or pink or medium,

  • there's different levels and different temperatures,

  • different times that you can use.

  • So we try to provide all that information.

  • We do have things on sous vide in the new book.

  • And sous vide is something that most people don't have

  • the equipment for, but increasingly they are.

  • So we decided it was fair to put that in the new book.

  • But we also have lots of alternatives that don't

  • require the equipment.

  • So we have a sous vide salmon recipe where you just cook it

  • in the sink.

  • Just run the hot water.

  • We have sous vide steaks for camping or tailgate parties,

  • where you fill a big cooler full of hot water, put your

  • steaks in Ziploc bags.

  • Just put them in there, no electric

  • device or anything else.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: No burgers at your house, are there?

  • Just, like, regular?

  • Do you eat just like a normal sandwich?

  • Never.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: If I'm making it, usually it's not normal.

  • But I mean, tonight, I'm giving a talk at the American

  • Museum of Natural History.

  • And so we're going to Shake Shack first.

  • Because it's the only pragmatic way to

  • get fed in a certain--

  • and they do good stuff.

  • The first book had lots of ingredients that are pretty

  • difficult to find.

  • In this new book, we use ingredients which

  • are all easy to find.

  • But they still might not be totally familiar.

  • And again, we thought that was OK.

  • So we have things that involve agar.

  • People say, isn't that some weird chemical?

  • And I say, well, actually, it's been used in Asia for

  • 1,000 years.

  • It's actually more traditional than gelatin by that standard.

  • It's been around for longer.

  • But between that and a whole variety of these other

  • things-- whey protein powder from the health food store, or

  • xanthin gum, which is in essentially every

  • grocery store now.

  • Because you can't make gluten free muffins without xanthin.

  • As a result, it's always there.

  • And we're just saying, hey, now you can use it for

  • something besides gluten free muffins.

  • You can thicken sauces with it.

  • We have a lot of science in this new book, not as much as

  • the previous book.

  • But we have a lot of things that we describe the science

  • of things, and then try to provide pointers off to

  • people, either in the web or other books, or the big book

  • that will explain things more.

  • Hell of a process making the book.

  • Here's a few of the photos.

  • Here's one of our fun toys.

  • This is an ultra high speed camera.

  • It shoots HD quality 720p video at

  • 6,200 frames per second.

  • So this lets us do things like this.

  • Now, what I love about this is when I was a kid, I'd watch

  • these Roadrunner cartoons.

  • And the roadrunner would run off the edge of the cliff, and

  • so would the coyote.

  • But the coyote would only fall after he looked down.

  • So nobody told the water it was time to fall yet, so it

  • kind of sits there.

  • I'll run through a few of the spreads from the book, and

  • we'll talk a little bit about it, and then we can turn into

  • more of a conversation.

  • This is our chapter on stocking

  • the modernist kitchen.

  • It's about different kinds of equipment, basically--

  • countertop tools.

  • It turns out if you take a picture of a blender while

  • it's pureeing tomatoes, you make a hell of a mess.

  • But we had this great principle that it only has to

  • look good for a thousandth of a second.

  • After that, if it all goes to hell, that's our problem.

  • That's not the viewer's problem.

  • Here's what a whipping siphon looks like from the inside,

  • and we explain how you can use this for making whipped cream

  • or other kind of whipped foam things, but also for all kinds

  • of other stuff.

  • Again, this is not a piece of equipment

  • everybody finds at home.

  • But they're like $20.

  • And they're in every Williams Sonoma, so we

  • thought it was fair game.

  • Here's our pressure cooker.

  • We like pressure cookers.

  • There's a lot of pressure cooker recipes in the book.

  • Here's our Viking stove cut in half.

  • Microwave oven.

  • I was just on the Rachael Ray Show right before coming here

  • where I actually did two microwave things.

  • Watch closely, and we'll discuss it afterwards.

  • So that's popcorn.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Oh, amazing.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Now, the cool thing about this from a

  • science perspective is that when water flashes into steam,

  • it expands in volume by a factor of 1,600.

  • So right now, a tiny crack has formed.

  • This is a steam rocket, basically.

  • And it's coming up, and it's trying

  • to relieve the pressure.

  • And it's relieving the pressure a little bit by

  • leaking out, but that crack has also caused a fatal flaw

  • in the skin of the popcorn.

  • So you can watch it expand a little bit.

  • It's trying to relieve the pressure.

  • But ultimately it's not enough, and woosh.

  • Open it goes.

  • That's why the high speed camera is so much fun.

  • And here's what a microwave looks like on the inside,

  • including, we discuss what happens inside the cavity

  • magnetron, which is where the microwaves are actually made.

  • In the big book, we also have instructions for how you can

  • measure the speed of light with Velveeta and your

  • microwave oven.

  • Do try that at home.

  • Here's how we do those cutaways.

  • We have a machine shop.

  • Machine shop is part of our lab, and so I highly recommend

  • having a machine shop.

  • Well, actually, I originally had a machine shop at home.

  • But it's even nicer to have it in a place where people can

  • run it 24 hours a day and clean up for you.

  • As a programmer myself, I love that most of these machines

  • are also really programmable, so you can actually control

  • them all by writing programs.

  • Here's one of our cool machines.

  • This is called an EDM machine.

  • See that wire?

  • That wire has got a tremendous amount of electricity coming

  • through it.

  • Sparks jump off the electricity underwater.

  • And those sparks actually are able to cut

  • almost any form of metal.

  • So here, we're cutting a cast iron Dutch oven.

  • And we speeded this up a little bit, it's kind of slow.

  • We drain the water off, and voila!

  • We have cut it in half.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Amazing.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: And between the other pieces of equipment,

  • we can cut glass.

  • We can cut almost anything in half like that.

  • In fact, I like to say we have two halves of one of the best

  • kitchens in the world.

  • You can see a couple of those that have the red glue on it.

  • That's a high temperature silicone.

  • So we take a piece of Pyrex, we put a bead of the high

  • temperature silicon on them.

  • We glue the piece of Pyrex glass to the edge of the pan.

  • So we can actually cook in it.

  • Now, that gives us that red goopy look.

  • And so that's where we use the little digital technology.

  • When you cut a pan in half, you get two halves.

  • So we put the other half in the same position and take a

  • picture, and that gives us the image bit for

  • the edge of the pan.

  • And then we substitute that in for where that red goop is,

  • very much like the way in a Hollywood movie, Spider-Man

  • will fly through the air supported by wires, then you

  • digitally remove the wires, and he's flying without it.

  • Tons of other cool things in the book.

  • Here's two of them.

  • Most of the flavor of chargrilling

  • comes from fat flareups.

  • And one of the reasons when people grill zucchini, the

  • zucchini doesn't taste all that charbroiled is there's no

  • fat in zucchini to drip.

  • A steak, there's plenty of fat.

  • It renders out, it drips, you get a fat flareup.

  • That's what gives you the charbroiled flavor.

  • So what do you do if you want your zucchini

  • to taste this way?

  • You spritz olive oil on the fire.

  • Works great.

  • And if you really want to sear something, you want

  • the fire from hell?

  • You take a hair dryer and you stick it up the vent of your

  • Webber, and boy, oh boy.

  • You can actually get it going enough that if the coals are

  • against the side of the Webber, they'll go through.

  • So don't do that.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: So for that photograph, the one that you

  • were just showing us, is that where you put the glass on it?

  • And then you actually cooked to make that photograph?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Let me go back.

  • So the answer is no, because the coals are so hot they

  • would break the glass.

  • There's nothing in front of that.

  • Some people say, well, but wouldn't the coals fall?

  • And we say, of course they would fall.

  • That's why Johnny was underneath there

  • with a pair of tongs.

  • And every time they would fall, he'd put it back.

  • We made a hell of a mess so you could get a cool picture.

  • One of our guys lost his eyebrows twice in things

  • flaring up.

  • It's a real process.

  • So anyway, here's fat flareups.

  • This is what happens.

  • Here the fat is dropping down.

  • Initially, it spends most of the energy actually vaporizing

  • and heating up.

  • And then finally it catches.

  • And it's that fat flareup that makes most of the

  • characteristic chargrilled flavor.

  • The difference between grilling and broiling is

  • broiling, the heat's on the top.

  • And so no fat can drip on it.

  • And so you don't get those flavors.

  • And that's really the difference.

  • Here's a close up of that same picture here.

  • Here's our hamburgers.

  • And there's nothing holding those in.

  • We've just sort of propped them right at the edge.

  • And they kept falling.

  • We have a big chapter on ingredients.

  • Ingredients, of course, really central to all of cooking.

  • Something on basics.

  • This is about making sauces and stocks.

  • A chapter on eggs, salads, and cold soups.

  • Turns out you need about two or three pounds of raspberries

  • dropped one or two at a time before you get the timing

  • right to get a photo like this.

  • You drop them, and there's a bunch of ways you can set up

  • light beams to trigger.

  • But there's variations enough that fundamentally, several

  • pounds of raspberries dropped.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: And Nathan, you took a lot of these

  • photographs yourself, correct?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: That's right.

  • Yeah, I originally was going to take all of them.

  • But I got a lot of other things to do.

  • But I took quite a few of them.

  • And then our photo team took the rest.

  • Here's salad making, pressure cooked vegetable soups.

  • We had a recipe in Modernist Cuisine for carrot soup that

  • was one of the most popular recipes.

  • So we took it and made a whole chapter out of it, tried lots

  • of other ingredients, managed to make it work with some--

  • the first version actually used a centrifuge.

  • So we weaned ourselves off the centrifuge.

  • And here's a bunch of those soups.

  • Steak.

  • We have a whole chapter on steak.

  • Carnitas.

  • Braised short ribs.

  • So if that doesn't make you hungry, well

  • then, you're a vegan.

  • But, see pressure cooked vegetable soups earlier.

  • Roast chicken.

  • So roast chicken is an interesting thing.

  • The ideal roast chicken is fundamentally a contradiction.

  • You're trying to get the interior flesh to be juicy and

  • the exterior to be crispy.

  • But they're right beside each other.

  • So by the time you've heated up the skin enough to be

  • crispy, you've overcooked and dried out the flesh.

  • So one thing people do is they brine it.

  • And if you dunk the whole chicken in salt water, the

  • action of the salt on the proteins--

  • the uncooked proteins of the meat-- actually makes them

  • absorb a lot more water.

  • And so there's a real physical chemical reason that salt will

  • make it juicier.

  • Trouble is, there's protein in the skin also.

  • And when you make the skin juicy, that's called rubbery.

  • So what do you do?

  • And the answer is, we used syringes to inject the brine

  • into the meat without getting any on the skin.

  • Now, you can say that's kind of a freaky thing to do, but

  • it turns out you can get syringes all over the place.

  • When I first started coming to New York, it was Union Square

  • Park you'd go to get syringes.

  • But in fact, there was another park in the city which was

  • informally called Needle Park.

  • But you can get syringes all over the place.

  • And if you really care about making the ultimate chicken,

  • this is how you do it.

  • Then the other thing is, we hang the chicken inside the

  • refrigerator like this.

  • That prevents the salt from accumulating on the skin.

  • And if you leave it uncovered in the fridge with a plate

  • underneath it, it lets the skin dry out.

  • And that makes it much easier to make it crispy.

  • And this is the result.

  • When you do it right, when you take the chicken out at the

  • end, and you hit it with a tongs or a spoon, the skin

  • will crack.

  • It's almost like glass.

  • And then here, we're serving it.

  • But we have another whole chapter on chicken wings.

  • And I understand in one of the Google cafeterias today, they

  • served a couple of our wings.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: I don't think they used hypodermic needles

  • there, but yes.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Generally for the wings, you

  • don't need to do.

  • We have another technique for the wings.

  • Now, chicken noodle soup, sort of the Jewish penicillin.

  • We thought we'd do a whole chapter on that.

  • Here's our salmon chapter.

  • Pizza.

  • Mac and cheese.

  • That's the mac and cheese sauce being made.

  • And boy, the interesting thing here is, normally you put a

  • lot of starch into a cheese sauce to keep the fat in the

  • cheese from separating.

  • Cheese is an emulsion.

  • And when you heat it up too hot to melt it,

  • it separates out.

  • You've probably seen pizzas where you get this layer of

  • grease on the top, and then the cheese is kind of stringy

  • and disgusting?

  • Well, in a sauce, that really doesn't work.

  • So the typical thing is, you put lots of starch in.

  • Well, that adds a lot of carbohydrates.

  • But the main thing is, it dulls the taste.

  • Because the starch molecules wind up coating everything, so

  • it doesn't taste anywhere near as cheesy as the cheese does.

  • It's cheese-ish sauce, not cheese sauce.

  • Turns out if you add a little bit of sodium citrate, which

  • is in every grocery store in New York, because it's also

  • called sour salt.

  • It's used in Passover.

  • It's also the solid form of citric acid.

  • Just a little bit of that keeps the emulsion, and so you

  • can make a cheese sauce that has no starch in it at all,

  • and it tastes amazingly cheesy.

  • And then if you cast it into sheets, you can use that to

  • make your own melty cheese to make melted cheese sandwiches.

  • And we find melted cheese sandwiches work so much better

  • when there's no gravity.

  • Recipes we developed for the International Space Station.

  • So anyway, that's some of the pictures.

  • And I thought we could--

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Have a chat?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah.

  • Talk about it.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you.

  • That's extraordinary.

  • You know, you call this "Modernist Cuisine at Home."

  • But I feel like your home kitchen is very different from

  • my home kitchen.

  • I think we've gathered that.

  • I don't have things cut in half and the like.

  • So what do you think I could make in my New York kitchen

  • from your book without hypodermic

  • needles and a blow torch?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Well, you know, there's a lot of New

  • York kitchens that have hypodermic needles.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Not in this audience, I'm hoping.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: And I love blow torches.

  • Blow torches are one of the coolest single tools.

  • They're $20 at Home Depot.

  • And when you need intense heat to touch up.

  • When you sear a steak, it's nice if you sear the

  • edges of the steak.

  • It just looks a whole lot nicer.

  • And you can do that by kind of holding it up with tongs and

  • trying to jam it into the bottom of the pan.

  • That works.

  • But it's even easier to put it on a pan.

  • And you just take the blow torch and you go around the

  • edge of the steak.

  • So don't dismiss blow torches.

  • But essentially all of the recipes in the book you can do

  • in your New York kitchen.

  • Some of them will be easier for you if you get some sous

  • vide equipment.

  • Some of them will turn out a little bit better if you get a

  • pressure cooker.

  • But sous vide is the most exotic we get.

  • But we thought it would be kind of a betrayal of our

  • roots if we didn't include sous vide in a home book,

  • especially now that every Williams Sonoma and Sur La

  • Table and comparable stores has them.

  • So it sort of qualifies.

  • But for people that don't have them yet, we say how you can

  • approximate it at home.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Right.

  • And what you said, running things under hot water.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah.

  • So the thing about sous vide is that you want an accurate

  • thermostat.

  • In a lot of traditional cooking, you are the human

  • thermostat, either by using a thermometer, or just by using

  • your intuition, you're supposed to sit there and

  • modulate the heat.

  • Well, digital technology makes much better thermostats then

  • we will ever, ever be.

  • And there's some people that say, well, if I use that,

  • you're taking the soul out of cooking.

  • And I say, bullshit.

  • I do not feel soulful playing the human thermostat.

  • Sorry.

  • That's something that technology can just

  • do better than me.

  • So we describe in the book how you can do sous vide either by

  • keeping a pot of water hot on the stove and playing human

  • thermostat.

  • Or if you have a large volume of water, in the case of the

  • salmon recipe, you run the water in the sink up to about

  • 120, 130 degrees, you check that.

  • The tap water will do in almost all cases.

  • Then you seal the salmon in plastic bags.

  • And you just put it in there.

  • And as long as you've got a reasonable size sink and not

  • too much in the way of salmon, there's enough heat capacity

  • in the water that you don't need to actually keep actively

  • heating it to keep it that temperature.

  • The temperature will drop a bit.

  • But that's OK.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, I mean, obviously technology is your

  • background.

  • And that's sort of where you come from.

  • And technology clearly plays a huge role in all of your work

  • on the Modernist series.

  • So can you talk a little bit about that, and how your

  • background in technology has sort of influenced the

  • evolution of this series to the point it's at now?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Well, I just gave you one of the examples

  • of I don't think it's really bad to use digital technology

  • to control the thermostat accurately so I can have this

  • exactly at the temperature that I want, or to use scales

  • or other sorts of things.

  • In the case of the first book, "Modernist Cuisine," I

  • actually wrote a lot of code in the process of making the

  • book, because we did things to predict the heat distribution

  • in a piece of food, or heat distribution in a pan.

  • Does it matter that you have the fancy copper pan?

  • And the answer is, it really doesn't matter.

  • Copper is a much better heat conductor.

  • So the idea is, well, you're going to get all this lateral

  • heat movement.

  • The thing is, the pan's this big around.

  • The thickness is this much.

  • So yeah, it's a good conductor.

  • But laterally, it would have to go 100 times as

  • far as it goes up.

  • So it doesn't spread that much unless you have a copper pan

  • with like, an inch thick block.

  • Oh, that would work great.

  • But then it'd be too heavy to lift and too expensive to buy.

  • And in fact, the real issue we discovered in doing this

  • modeling is you want to make sure your pan and your burner

  • are well matched.

  • You put a big pan on a little burner, and no amount of

  • fanciness in the pan is going to help you.

  • If you size them appropriately, and your plan

  • is not tissue paper thick, you'll be fine.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: I guess the answer is it

  • played a big role.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah.

  • Technology, well, it's the way I see the world is through the

  • lens of technology and science.

  • I had a reporter in the UK sort of give me a hard time

  • for the first book.

  • And they said, well, what makes you think you should

  • bring science into the kitchen?

  • I said, I'm sorry, science was always in the kitchen.

  • I'm just trying to take ignorance out.

  • Because the laws of nature are how things work.

  • And you wouldn't say, oh gee, it's such a shame that the

  • architect who built this building understood how

  • buildings stand up.

  • Gosh, isn't that terrible?

  • No, it's a great thing.

  • That means we're not going to come plummeting down.

  • And for the same reason, giving people insights as to

  • how the science actually works is both cool, if you're

  • curious, and it's useful.

  • And so I would like to say our books are for people who are

  • both passionate and curious about cooking.

  • If you're not passionate about it, you're not going to buy a

  • big fancy book like this.

  • You don't necessarily have to be a cook.

  • If you're curious enough, that'll do.

  • If you're not curious, there's all kinds of cookbooks you can

  • buy that'll say here's 30 minute meals, or cooking for

  • dummies, or something else.

  • And you follow those recipes exactly, and you'll

  • get what you get.

  • It's if you have a curiosity to say, well why does

  • it work that way?

  • And how do chefs at top restaurants do it?

  • And why is this is done?

  • That's where we really have a proposition for you.

  • And so the whole thing was written from a technologist's

  • or a scientist's or an engineer's point of view,

  • rather than from a

  • traditionalist's point of view.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: And so what was the initial inspiration

  • for writing the series?

  • As you mentioned, you obviously come from a

  • technology background.

  • So where did the interest in food come in?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: So I've been interested in

  • food since I was little.

  • When I was nine years old, I decided to cook

  • Thanksgiving dinner.

  • I told my mom she couldn't come in the kitchen.

  • I cooked it all by myself.

  • I would do a lot better job today.

  • And then for many, many years, I was a self-taught chef.

  • When I was working at Microsoft, actually, I decided

  • I would stop being self-taught.

  • And I decided I wanted to go to chef school in France.

  • So I convinced Bill to give me a leave of absence.

  • And I went to work.

  • Well, to get into the chef school, I had to have

  • professional experience.

  • So one night a week for two years, I worked in a French

  • restaurant in Seattle.

  • And then after that, the chef school would take me.

  • So I went and I went to this intensive program there.

  • And so I've been into it for a long time.

  • But then after leaving Microsoft, I started

  • cooking a lot more.

  • That was kind of part of the reason I left.

  • And I realized that there wasn't a big book that

  • explained cooking from the point of view I had.

  • Now, there's two ways to make a product.

  • One is to say, I'm going to do market research and find out

  • what they want.

  • And they is some funny set of folks that we interview them

  • and run focus groups and surveys.

  • And it's a fine way of making a product for some things.

  • But that's not how we did the books.

  • We did the books the completely other way, which is

  • to say, we were going to make the book we wanted.

  • It's our damn thing.

  • And then we just pray that there's other people that

  • agree with us.

  • And the difference is that all of the best things in the

  • world, in my view, are made this second way-- by making

  • what you want.

  • Now, unfortunately, some of the worst things are made that

  • way, too, or some of the great disasters.

  • Because it turns out you make what you want, and nobody else

  • does want it.

  • But I decided we'd take the risk.

  • And so, it was through that.

  • And then the internet played a huge role in it.

  • There's a forum site called eGullet, and I started posting

  • on eGullet about sous vide and other

  • aspects of modern cuisine.

  • And it was people on eGullet that gave me the suggestion I

  • write the book.

  • But it was more than that.

  • It was the community of people on eGullet spanned home cooks

  • to some of the top professional

  • chefs in the world.

  • And everyone was eager to get this kind of information.

  • And so that convinced me that it wasn't only going to be me

  • that I was making this for.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: So what was your favorite discovery in the

  • process of writing the book?

  • Because there's obviously some really cool things

  • that came out of it.

  • But what was the best that you found?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Well, my favorite single one is a

  • little hard to explain.

  • But in traditional barbecue cooking-- this is in the

  • southeastern US, when you make barbecue.

  • There's something called the stall--

  • S-T-A-L-L. And if you're cooking a brisket or a pork

  • shoulder or some other big honking piece of meat, then

  • people notice that the temperature would rise and

  • rise and rise and rise.

  • And then it would hit this point where it would stop

  • rising, and it would stall for hours.

  • And then it would eventually come up again.

  • Well, there are thousands and thousands--

  • do a Google search on barbecue stall, and

  • you will see thousands.

  • You could get a few things for somebody's barbecue stall like

  • in a farmer's market.

  • But you filter those out, and there's still thousands of

  • people saying, what the hell is the barbecue stall?

  • What causes this?

  • And they have lots of theories.

  • And we discovered they were all wrong.

  • And we found out what really causes the barbecue stall.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Tell us.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: OK.

  • It works for the same reason we sweat.

  • People sweat because when water evaporates, it takes a

  • lot of heat with it.

  • And sweating is our body's way of using evaporative cooling.

  • We'll spend some water to get a lot of cooling.

  • Well, meat is about 75% water.

  • So you put it in a hot barbecue and hot air, it's

  • going to start evaporating.

  • And that cools things down.

  • And what happens is that stall period is the period when no

  • matter how much heat you put in, more heat is leaving

  • because of evaporation.

  • Now, the funny thing is, one of the traditional remedies

  • for this is to slather more sauce on it, which is exactly

  • like trying to heat the thing up by putting a hose on it.

  • You will never get it hot if you keep slathering it on.

  • But people do for a while.

  • And there's various things about it.

  • And so to test this, we took some briskets

  • and cut them in half.

  • And then we would either wrap one in foil or seal it in a

  • sous vide bag, all instrumented with lots of

  • temperature probes.

  • And right beside it, one that was open.

  • And the one that was sealed had no stall at all.

  • And the one that was open had exactly the stall that you

  • would predict.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: That's so interesting.

  • So what is your favorite cookbook?

  • Apart from your own.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah, it's a really good question.

  • Historically, the one that was hugely inspirational to me,

  • but also very difficult, because I first got it when I

  • was nine, was "Escoffier."

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: You were a very precocious

  • child, weren't you?

  • I was reading Ramona the Pest when I was nine.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Pain in the ass for Mom.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: The difference between me and you, I think.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: So "Escoffier" was an inspiration

  • to me, both positively and negatively.

  • The positive aspect is that Escoffier was incredibly

  • influential to basically chefs all over the world.

  • The book came out in 1903.

  • And it really sealed the deal for French food being

  • synonymous with high-end food for the next century or so.

  • It just was incredibly influential.

  • The negative inspiration is that it also had a variety of

  • things that I definitely didn't want to do.

  • So a typical Escoffier recipe will say, prepare this, put it

  • in a hot oven, and cook until done.

  • Now, in Escoffier's time, he was writing for people that

  • were apprentices.

  • They would've apprenticed to a master chef, and they didn't

  • have any technology.

  • Even though they had thermometers, it wasn't common

  • in a turn of the previous century kitchen.

  • So hot oven, what the hell was that?

  • Cook until done?

  • What the hell is that?

  • We wanted to make sure that we had stuff that had this more

  • technological perspective of saying, now, we're going to

  • tell you how to do it so you can get a good result, even if

  • you've never done it before.

  • And we're going to do that by telling you, cook it to this

  • temperature.

  • Cook it in an oven of that temperature.

  • And here's how you tell if it's done.

  • And here's how you tell if it isn't done.

  • And try to make the things as objective as possible.

  • So it was sort of an inspiration for me in a couple

  • different ways, positively and negatively.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Interesting.

  • I'm going to do a couple of finish this

  • sentences with you.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: OK.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Ask you to finish this sentence, and then

  • we're going to open up for questions.

  • So I'll ask whoever has a question.

  • There's two mics in the room.

  • And if you can use one of the mics, because we are recording

  • this for YouTube, that would be great.

  • So you can start lining up and we'll get going.

  • Modernist cooking is?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Great.

  • Modernist cooking is cooking to make stuff taste great

  • without regard to feeling you have to

  • slavishly follow tradition.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: I am challenged by?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Keeping clean?

  • I make a hell of a mess when I cook.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Because you're cutting

  • everything in half, I think.

  • That might be part of the problem.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: It turns out cooking well--

  • we found out why most people don't cook with

  • a wok cut in half.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: I probably could've told you that.

  • A food trend I hate is?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: So a food trend I hate, which has got

  • multiple different forms, is when a buzz word gets

  • perverted to a use it didn't originally have.

  • And so a good example of that, or bad example, depending on

  • your perspective, is organic.

  • Organic, once upon a time, meant it was this stuff grown

  • by this hippie couple sort of at the edge of town.

  • And it kind of was ugly.

  • But it tasted really good, because it was picked in all

  • these ways.

  • Today, because people will pay a premium for organic, organic

  • has been largely eviscerated by folks that have read all of

  • the rules, lobbied the government

  • to change the rules.

  • And the food they have is effectively the same.

  • Local is another one of these things.

  • It's nice that something's local.

  • But I promise you, as local starts getting a market edge,

  • people will find ways to cheat on it.

  • One of the examples we have in "Modernist Cuisine" is honey

  • is essentially fructose.

  • It's 90some percent fructose.

  • But high fructose corn syrup, a lot of folks

  • think that is bad.

  • And there's some reasons to believe that it is.

  • But the hypocrisy of the following thing

  • just drove us crazy.

  • We found there's a bunch of commercial honey places that

  • basically fed bees with artificial flowers with high

  • fructose corn syrup.

  • So it was fructose laundering.

  • You feed it to the bees, the bees loved it, because they

  • didn't have to do much work.

  • They suck up the fructose here, squirt it into the

  • honeycomb, and just hugely productive.

  • So they can sell people natural honey.

  • Here's another one.

  • The reason that you've got a red color and some of the

  • flavors in cured meat like bacon is because of nitrates.

  • And there is some legitimate concern about whether nitrates

  • are all that good for you, and so forth.

  • But if you go to Whole Foods, you'll find nice, rosy red

  • bacon that's nitrate free.

  • How did they do that?

  • They take concentrated celery juice, which has got the same

  • nitrate concentrate as the original brine.

  • But it happens but there's a lot of nitrates in celery.

  • Now is that nitrate free?

  • No.

  • But in a ruling with the Federal Trade Commission, in

  • fact, because it started off as celery juice, the fact it

  • has the identical quantity--

  • and if it didn't have the same quantity, it would not turn

  • the meat red.

  • And that's why if you really cared about nitrate free

  • bacon, it better be gray.

  • Because otherwise it's nitrate by another name.

  • So anyway, I hate using hypocrisy to try to fool

  • people in some way.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: OK, so that was a very

  • long finish the sentence.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Sorry.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: So we're only going to do one more so that

  • we make sure.

  • I'm trying to think-- three things that are always in my

  • fridge are?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Fish sauce, sesame oil, and some

  • rendered duck fat.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: I was expecting a much more bizarre

  • answer, so that's all right.

  • You surprised me.

  • OK, can we start over there?

  • AUDIENCE: First of all, thanks for coming.

  • The book is fantastic.

  • And I'm very much so looking forward to using it.

  • My question is actually in regard to something you made

  • reference to right when you first stepped up.

  • And that's in regard to baking.

  • So I don't know whether you've explored this as a

  • potential next step.

  • But I'm curious as to your thoughts around--

  • baking, to me, seems to be much more exact, much more

  • scientific.

  • So I'm wondering what your thoughts are about how maybe

  • you see that as potentially an easier world to explore, as

  • opposed to traditional cooking?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: So you're absolutely right that from a

  • cultural perspective, baking and pastry is more precise.

  • Nobody adds baking powder to taste.

  • First of all, it tastes terrible.

  • Second of all, you can't judge by taste what's the right

  • amount to make your muffins rise.

  • And you'd better measure it pretty precisely, otherwise

  • your muffins are going to over-rise, or they're going to

  • be like hockey pucks.

  • So pastry chefs bought off on a lot of these

  • things earlier on.

  • One funny example is in the book, we use percentages in

  • addition to grams.

  • Because if you want to scale it up, it's handy to do that.

  • And the system we use is called baker's percentages.

  • Why?

  • Because every baking book has it, but no

  • non-baking books have it.

  • And it was funny, the number of even professional chefs

  • who'd say what's their percentage crap?

  • And their pastry chef would say, uh, chef, I'll

  • explain it to you.

  • We've used it for 100 years in pastry.

  • So that's one thing that's different.

  • Another thing that's different is that there are pastry books

  • that take you much closer to the state of the art than

  • savory books did.

  • So if you read a pastry book by Pierre Herme, for example,

  • Paco Toro Blanco, and I could list all kinds of them, they

  • probably would have more recipes and more techniques

  • that were close to the state of the art than if you tried

  • to find the same kind of thing for cooking meat, for example,

  • where the state of the art was 50 years ago, in terms of what

  • you find in books.

  • That said, the world of baking and pastry chefs are very

  • receptive to all of these things.

  • Here's actually one other point.

  • At a lot of restaurants in New York, the modern techniques in

  • the kitchen, all pioneered by the pastry chefs.

  • So at Jean-Georges, Johnny Iuzzini, the first sous-vide

  • cooked in Jean-Georges was by Johnny for pastry.

  • At Le Bernardin, it was Michael Laiskonis.

  • And both of them, and lots of other pastry chefs like them,

  • drag the rest of their kitchen into the at least 20th

  • century, and maybe into the 21st.

  • But for the same reasons, they're also very

  • receptive to it.

  • And there's an awful lot of really

  • interesting creative things.

  • So watch this space.

  • AUDIENCE: Thanks.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: So I enjoy smoking meats at home.

  • And I find one of the great things about it is if you're

  • patient, and you can control the temperature, then a

  • brisket or ribs or a pork shoulder will just tend to be

  • delicious no matter what you do.

  • So what do you recommend to sort of take it up a level?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: OK.

  • So we're really big on barbecue.

  • And what I'm about to say tastes great.

  • But this is total anathema to traditional barbecue folks.

  • So you're totally right that low and slow is the way to go.

  • Only we like to go lower and slower.

  • So for pork ribs, I'd cook them at 140 degrees for 48

  • hours, sous vide.

  • So this is not like, hi, honey!

  • Let's have ribs tonight!

  • [INTERPOSING VOICES]

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Then you smoke them

  • for a couple of hours.

  • Again, you don't want to exceed maybe 140 degree air

  • temperature.

  • Turns out you can smoke them either before or after you

  • hook them sous vide.

  • And for a pork shoulder, I would do the same thing.

  • I might actually take the temperature up a little bit,

  • to, say, 145 degrees, but for 48 hours.

  • For short ribs, we typically do 145 degrees for 72 hours.

  • So this is truly patience oriented.

  • But oh my god, the results you get are just unbelievable.

  • Now, there's a guy named Steven Raichlen who's

  • considered one of the world's foremost

  • authorities on barbecue.

  • He's literally sold millions of his barbecue books.

  • He came to our lab.

  • And we made these short ribs for him.

  • And he wrote on his blog that they were the best ribs of any

  • kind he'd ever had in his life, which was more than we

  • could possibly hope for.

  • So try that.

  • Get sous vide.

  • But hey, if you already have a smoker, you're already at the

  • bleeding edge of craziness.

  • AUDIENCE: You can keep it outside, though.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: That's fine.

  • But you can do your sous vide cooking inside.

  • You can do it ahead of time, right?

  • In fact, you can also freeze it or keep it in the fridge

  • after you've cooked it sous vide that way.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Take a couple days off work.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah.

  • We find you only smoke it for an hour or two.

  • Depends on how heavy of a smoke flavor you want.

  • But smoking for a really long period of time doesn't do that

  • much good, because the penetration depth that you get

  • was smoking drops off exponentially.

  • And so smoking it for six hours isn't that useful.

  • Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: So this idea that we can replace a lot of the sort

  • of technique and skill that used to be was required to

  • cook right with technology is really neat.

  • And I'm just wondering if I, as a home cook, go and do

  • that, if I buy your book and buy my digital thermometer and

  • so forth, and so I don't have to know when my food is done

  • by looking and smelling, I now have a lot of free time.

  • So what skills should I develop?

  • What's my highest marginal return to time I can develop

  • in the kitchen?

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Come back to work?

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: I was gonna say, you work at Google!

  • You don't know what to do with free time?

  • What's free time?

  • But here's a different way.

  • Here's sort of an answer, which is, there's a tremendous

  • amount of cooking that is aesthetic at its essence.

  • And there isn't a technological

  • solution for that.

  • So what combinations of flavors do you put in?

  • What combination of textures do you do?

  • If the dinner party got so simple, well,

  • add a couple of courses.

  • There's always an axis that you can move in where there's

  • an unbounded amount of stuff, and where technology isn't

  • going to help you.

  • So while you've automated some things so that you'll never

  • overcook it, you'll never undercook it.

  • It's all perfect, it's done great.

  • Well, then, use that time to experiment.

  • Do some more cool stuff.

  • Add a couple dishes, add garnish.

  • AUDIENCE: Thanks.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: OK, this is our last question.

  • AUDIENCE: Thanks again.

  • You mentioned that the thermometer would be the first

  • thing that you purchase, or you would

  • recommend as a purchase.

  • I remember the first Thanksgiving where I took over

  • the kitchen.

  • It wasn't at 9.

  • Probably 19.

  • But I put in the probe thermometer, and the

  • convection oven was going.

  • And a few hours later, it reached

  • temperature, started beeping.

  • And I'm like, all right!

  • It's done.

  • And mom's like, no way.

  • And we cut in, and sure enough, it was raw.

  • And so I wonder, like, do you cover basically the fact that

  • meat is not equal all throughout?

  • Like, the proper way of measuring temperature--

  • because that's really important.

  • Not just having the tool.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Yeah.

  • So we do discuss that.

  • The really cool thing I have in this ovens that I have at

  • home, which are sort of commercial grade ovens.

  • You probably have them somewhere in one of your

  • cafeterias.

  • They have the coolest thing.

  • They have a temperature probe that's got five separate

  • probes in it.

  • And so not only does it pick the coldest one, but it also

  • looks at the gradient.

  • And so then you could tell how it's heating up or cooling

  • down, and by doing that, you can figure all the way.

  • But in general, what you want to do is you want to pick the

  • thickest part of something.

  • In the case of poultry, the traditional thing is to put it

  • down near the hip joint.

  • That's not really because that's the thickest part.

  • The thickest part is still going to be the

  • breast for a turkey.

  • But that's the part that probably you're most concerned

  • about undercooking.

  • So, yeah.

  • We definitely cover that in the book.

  • And it's true, you need to make sure your temperature is

  • representative, otherwise you're going to fool yourself.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: Thanks.

  • That's all we have time for.

  • Thank you so much for being here.

  • NATHAN MYHRVOLD: Well, thank you.

  • FEMALE SPEAKER: It was really great.

  • Thanks.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Please join me in welcoming to Google New

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