On a recent visit to Austin, Texas, I made sure I had a chance to dine at Uchi, the highly respected Japanese inspired restaurant helmed by executive chef Tyson Cole. I expected some good sushi, flavorful beef and pork, and some beautiful presentations. What I got was beyond my expectations. To date, my three-and-a-half-hour dinner at Uchi is the best meal I've ever had.

What do professional cooks use to form the base of many flavorful sauces, while many home cooks simply discard and wash down the drain? The answer is fond. How could two groups of people treat the same thing so differently: one as a bother, the other as a boon? A little culinary knowledge is all it takes to incorporate the wonderful substance that is fond into all your home cooking.

Christopher Allen describes himself as "an archaeologist of flavor". He relentlessly digs deep to discover the missing ingredient to make his dishes Smithsonian-worthy.

For the last several days (if not weeks), I feel like I've been bombarded by these advertisements from Chili's (an international bar and grill chain that serves Tex-Mex inspired food) featuring their new Smokehouse Bacon Burgers. They claim to have "the thickest bacon you've ever seen". With a statement like that (How do they know? I've seen a lot of bacon!) I knew I had to go and take a look and see for myself (which is playing right into Chili's hands, but what can you do?).

There is a special place in my heart for soul food. Thinking of the crunch of buttermilk fried chicken, melt in your mouth texture of braised ox tails, and succulent barbecue ribs makes my mouth water. There aren't very many places in the San Francisco Bay Area that do an outstanding job at preparing soul food, but Hard Knox Cafe in San Francisco is definitely one of the best.

Fried Chicken with Corn and Mashed Potatoes & Gravy

A year ago, I had the opportunity to attend a tea presentation at San Francisco's Imperial Tea Court. During the presentation, I was formally introduced to a variety of different Chinese teas, brewing techniques, and briefly introduced to some of the interesting customs that revolve around tea drinking. Ever since that event, I've wanted to learn more about tea.

In September 2007, the owners of Cooks Shop Here in Northampton, Massachusetts published The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide. This book turned out to be an amazing resource that would be a great read for novices interested in tea as well as long time tea aficionados.

Now that the 2008 Michelin Guide is out for San Francisco, I thought it would be a good idea to update the map tool and listing that I put together for this website. This year, more total stars were given out than last year (42 total stars this year vs. 34 stars last year). The French Laundry remains as the only Bay Area restaurant to achieve the coveted three-star rating, but Chez TJ (earning an additional star) and Meadowood (new to this year's list) join last year's four two-star restaurants.

With only about ten days left before Michelin publishes the 2008 edition of the San Francisco guide, I realized that I had made no effort during the last twelve months to visit any of the restaurants granted the coveted Michelin stars. Doing a quick search for the list of restaurants revealed just that - a list of restaurants without addresses or links. So, I decided to pull together the info and post them in one place.

This is no big secret: I like food. I like to eat food, look at food, read about food, prepare food, and think about food. But, even more than food, I like beverages. More specifically - I love sweet, flavored beverages like juices, teas & tisanes, sodas, and other soft drinks. Three years ago, I published a recipe for limeade and a U.K. reader suggested using SodaStream to make it bubbly. I finally got around to trying out a SodaStream (called a Soda-Club Home Soda Maker in the United States), and it is awesome! I use the Soda-Club machine at least once a week and always keep a bottle of freshly carbonated water available at all times.

In May 2007, the Culinary Institute of America released a new cookbook focused entirely on vegetables. Fittingly titled Vegetables, this latest release from the CIA is (as expected) more than just a collection of recipes. The book starts with an overview of vegetables, nutrition, storage, and preparation techniques before diving into the well written, easy to follow recipes. If you're a vegetarian looking for well written recipes or a meat lover who's looking for some variety, you're going to love Vegetables.


Vegetables is available only in Hardback.

Tina and I have been wanting to recommend a particular restaurant to our friends for the last five years. The problem was we couldn't remember what town it was in or what it was called. All we knew was that it had the best fish and chips we had ever had, and it was somewhere in Northern California. This weekend we finally found it - it's Chad's Fish & Chips in Willits, California.

Chad's Fish and Chips
1661 S. Main St, D
Willits, CA 95490

Over half of all cookware sold today contains aluminum. It's a great metal for cookware as it conducts heat fast and evenly, is light to handle and is relatively inexpensive compared to other materials.

I love a good Macaroni and Cheese. The problem is, like potato salad, I am very particular about my Mac & Cheese. I like it creamy, but not soupy or goopy. It should be thick enough to stand up a fork in it, but not gritty or grainy. It's not easy to find a recipe that lives up to my expectations, but here's one that I finally found that is just amazing.


Macaroni and Cheese Bake (serves 12)
Boiled Macaroni

Macaroni and Cheese Bake

It is hard to say whether or not there has been a book that has made a greater impact to American home cooking as the Joy of Cooking. This extraordinary cookbook that the New York Times has called "the Swiss Army knife of cookbooks" received a face lift late last year as the 75th Anniversary Edition was published. Does everyone need a copy of Joy of Cooking in their kitchen? Should you buy this edition if you have a previous one? The answer to both questions is a resounding "yes"!

After a whole series of poor executed mainstream movies being released into the American cinemas, last weekend's release of Pixar's Ratatouille was a real breath of fresh air. Ratatouille may be the ultimate foodie movie (perhaps even beating out Tampopo - only time will tell) and is both clever and original, but might not be as attractive to children as previous Pixar animations. For adults and food lovers, Ratatouille is the best movie Pixar has made so far.

With Ratatouille (a new animated movie from Pixar) coming out in a couple weeks, I thought it would be fitting for me to present a recipe for Ratatouille (a dish from Provence). This is a wonderfully flavorful vegetable dish that can be served as either a side or as a main entree.




Ratatouille (serves 4 to 6)

Having a fundamental understanding of what is going on in the kitchen can not only help you avoid disasters but also assist in making the right decision the first time you try out a recipe or wing it. Understanding how heat transfer affects your cooking is a first step in realizing why we'd choose a particular cooking implement or specific heating method (steaming vs. baking, frying vs. boiling) for one dish but not another. In this article, Burr Zimmerman describes how heat transfer works as it relates to cooking.

Burr Zimmerman has 11 years of (amateur) cooking experience, 9 years of chemical engineering experience, and 7 of trying to combine them.

This Father's Day, think about getting your father (or father-in-law or father figure or father of your children or father of children you are fond of) a gift that he'll enjoy as well as directly or indirectly provide some food which you'll get to enjoy. Here's a dozen ideas that I thought of.

After about six months of working (off and on), I've decided to roll out a brand new interface on a brand new platform for Cooking For Engineers. The bulk of the pages have been converted to the new look and rewritten in Ruby on Rails. There are still a number of ancillary pages that will continue to run in PHP (including the forums) because I'm not sure it's worth my time rewriting those. I'm sure you guys would much rather I spend my time tinkering in the kitchen and writing articles instead.

If the background of this article is grey, then you're still looking at the old site. If the background of this article is yellow, congratulations! Your DNS has been updated with the new server IP address. For those still viewing the old site, please be patient - we've moved machines and that info needs to propagate across the internet. This takes as little as a few hours to accomplish, but some ISP's don't bother checking the updated tables for up to 6 days (ahem, Comcast).

If you're on the new site, please be aware that it is brand new code, so there will probably be bugs everywhere. If you see a bug, please e-mail me at: cooking@cookingforengineers.com.

Thanks!

I just finished reading Toast: The Story of a Young Boy's Hunger. I received this book as a gift when Cooking For Engineers won Food Blog of the Year of 2005 (Bloggies.com) and didn't get a chance to start reading it until a month ago. If you believe that food is integral to your life (beyond simply a life sustaining means) or have ever remembered an event in your life by the smell of the kitchen or the taste of a pie, then this book will work for you.

I love soft drinks. If it's cold, non-alcoholic, and flavored - I want to try it (at least once). (After an unfortunate incident with a salty yogurt drink, I should also add "sweet" to that list.) Tina also shares my curiosity and likes to taste soft drinks (but taste is all she does - I love to drink the stuff - fruit juice, sparkling water, sodas, lemonade, and even Sunny Delight). We both have a special place in our hearts for cream soda, so we decided to do a taste test. In order to limit our selection - we focused on regular (no artificial sweeteners) cream sodas without high-fructose corn syrup.