Product Description

Can you tell whether a recipe will work before you cook it? You can if you really know what's cooking.

In the long-awaited CookWise, food sleuth Shirley Corriher tells you how and why things happen in cooking. When you know how to estimate the right amount of baking powder, you can tell by looking at the recipe that the cake is overleavened and may fall. When you know that too little liquid for the amount of chocolate in a recipe can cause the chocolate to seize and become a solid grainy mass, you can spot chocolate truffle recipes that will be a disaster. And, in both cases, you know exactly how to "fix" the recipe. Knowing how ingredients work, individually and in combination, will not only make you more aware of the cooking process, but transform you into a confident and exceptional cook -- a cook who is in control.

CookWise is a different kind of cookbook. There are over 230 outstanding recipes -- from Snapper Fingers with Smoked Pepper Tartar Sauce to Chocolate Stonehenge Slabs with Cappuccino Mousse -- but here each recipe serves not only to please the palate but to demonstrate the roles of ingredients and techniques. A What This Recipe Shows section summarizes the special cooking points being demonstrated in each recipe. This little bit of science in everyday language indicates which steps or ingredients are vital and cannot be omitted without consequences.

Among the recipes you'll also find some surprises. Don't be afraid of a vinaigrette prepared without vinegar or a high-egg-white, crisp pâte â choux. Many of the concepts used here are Shirley's own. Try her method of sprinkling croissant or puff pastry dough with ice water before folding to keep it soft and easy to roll.

CookWise covers everything from the rise and fall of cakes, through unscrambling the powers of eggs and why red cabbage turns blue during cooking but red peppers don't, to the essential role of crystals in making fudge. Want to learn about what makes a crust flaky? Try the Big-Chunk Fresh Apple Pie in Flaky cheese Crust. Discover for yourself what brining does to poultry in Juicy Roast Chicken.

No matter what your cooking level, you'll find CookWise a revelation. Different people will use CookWise in different ways:

• Home cooks will value CookWise as a collection of extraordinarily good recipes.
• The busy chef can use CookWise as a reference book to look up and solve problems. Major headings are shown in the Contents and 42 At-a-Glance summary charts make problem solving quick and easy
• Beginning cooks can use CookWise as a howto book with easy-to-follow recipes that produce dishes looking and tasting like the work of an experienced chef.
• Food writers and test-kitchen chefs who are developing recipes can find the formulas and tips for successful recipes,
• Anyone who wants to improve a recipe can use CookWise as a guide. Here is how to make cakes moister, a pate A choux drier and crisper, a dish lighter or darker in color; how to make muffins peak better, cookies spread less, or a roast chicken juicier.
• Everyone who cooks needs to be able to spot bad recipes and save the time, money, and frustration that they cause. Many of the At-a-Glance charts point out specific problems.

CookWise is not only informative, it's engrossing, and many sections react like a mystery story. The knowledge you gain from its pages will transform you, too, into a food sleuth, an informed and assured cook who can track down why sauces curdle or why the muffins were dry -- a cook who will never prepare a failed recipe again!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13294 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-03
• Released on: 1997-08-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Amazon.com
Is it safe to let a biochemist into your kitchen? If it's Shirley Corriher, extend an open invitation. Her long-awaited book, Cookwise, is a unique combination of basic cooking know-how, excellent recipes--from apple pie to beurre blanc--and reference source. She makes the science of cooking entirely comprehensible, then livens it up with stories, such as when her first roast duck blew up because she overstuffed it and the fat from the bird caused it to expand beyond capacity. Food companies pay Corriher fancy fees to troubleshoot their recipes, and Cookwise puts her encyclopedic knowledge ever at your fingertips. If you want to know how to make the flakiest pastry, best-textured breads, delicious fruit desserts from fruit that's not fully ripe, impeccable sauces, and attractively bright cooked vegetables, this book contains the answers. "What this recipe shows" tells you up front what's useful in each of the book's 230-plus recipes. "At-a-glance," "What to do," and "Why" help you learn or troubleshoot in minutes. If eight steps to a perfect Juicy Roast Chicken are daunting, think of the delight of Rich Cappuccino Ice Cream in three steps or the seductive Secret Marquise in five.

From Library Journal
Corriher is a well-known culinary consultant and problem solver whose answers to kitchen mysteries have appeared in many food publications. Now she has set down some of her vast knowledge in this big, wide-ranging reference/cookbook. In seven basic chapters, from The Wonder of Risen Bread to Sweet Thoughts and Chocolate Dreams, she explains why recipes work, what to do when they don't, and how to make them even better (anyone who's ever wondered why the same cake recipe always tastes better when her neighbor makes it will find out the probable reasons why). More than 200 recipes interspersed throughout demonstrate Corriher's explorations and explanations. Also included are At a Glance charts for easy reference (e.g., Finetuning Cookies), trouble-shooting charts (Yeast Bread Problems), charts on the basics (Whipped Cream: What To Do and Why), and dozens more. Although the recipes are delicious?and surely foolproof?this unique work will be far more valuable as a reference than as a cookbook. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
At some time, every chef has been perplexed by a cookie inexplicably spreading all over a baking sheet or a pie with an uncuttable crust. Why does this happen even though the cook scrupulously followed a tested, reliable recipe? Corriher comprehensively details cooking and baking techniques in a cookbook that is much more than a compendium of recipes. She knows exactly why that cookie spreads, because she understands the physics of butter and other fats, and she shares her knowledge usefully with home and professional cooks. Corriher applies her astounding food science to all aspects of the baker's art: biscuits, pies, cakes, and breads. In addition, eggs, meats, and sauces receive her probing analyses of what goes awry in the kitchen and how to remedy it. Anecdotes leaven what might otherwise be dull, dry text. Her command of contemporary nutritional science yields useful tables of comparative data. This book answers so many cooking questions that it is utterly indispensable to any cookery reference collection. Mark Knoblauch

Customer Reviews

A Cook's Secret Weapon!
This book is an absolute gem! I have learned so much from "Cookwise" and am constantly referring to it for information (and inspiration). Ms. Corriher excels in explaining the science of cooking in an easy-to-understand format that does not patronize. She is knowledgeable and passionate about her subject and seems to have a sincere interest in helping her readers become better cooks. From learning the differences between flours and in which instances to use them for successful results to making a lemon meringue pie with meringue that doesn't weep, it's all in here.

I've read this book from cover to cover and seven chapters discuss bread and breadmaking techniques; how to bake successful pie crusts, cookies and cakes; the role of eggs in cooking and baking; sauces; cooking methods for fruits and vegetables; meat and seafood cookery; and last but by no means least, desserts.

If you love cooking and indeed want to become wiser, get this book! You'll be very pleased you did.

a classic filled with information
This book is often rated tops in terms of well presented, thorough information on the basics of how cooking and baking work.

Great book!
I enjoy reading this book bits at a time. Usually, I have to re-read the same section just to make sure I've understood the science Shirley is laying out.

I haven't tried any of the recipes. I bought it because I always like how Shirley explains things to us when she pops in on Alton Brown's show, Good Eats.

It's a very enjoyable and interesting book. If you like learning the science behind cooking, but you're not a scientist. This book may be for you.