Product Description
Not A Crisp Read
Never judge a book by its cover. That’s especially true of Los Angeles Times Food Editor Russ Parsons’ “How to Read a French Fry” (Houghton-Mifflin, 2001).
The glowing reviews, from French Laundry’s Thomas Keller, to several notable cookbook authors, ready you for a five-diamond read.
Sadly, it’s pretty limp book that never really maxes out the science, or the recipes.
THE PROS
I can admire the spirit of the attempt here. Parsons is trying to produce a highy accessible book that makes the science of foods, that we cook with every day, accessible to the average home cook. The concept of following a scientific skim of a topic, with recipes that can make the lesson more understandable, is a wonderful concept for a teaching format.
Parsons spent more than twenty-five years at the Los Angeles Times as both the Food Editor, and a writer. He has more James Beard awards than you can shake a stick at. He not only has access to some of the top chefs in the world, but all of the great food writers, whose works that he’s reviewed.
THE CONS
Which makes this book all the more disappointing. Instead of being a powerful place to learn, that does the complete job of migrating the food-science inexperienced to a much deeper understand of how to cook, it really just skims the surface.
PARABLES & PRACTICES DON’T PAIR
For a newcomer, you pick up a book that advertises the science of food both with excitement, and a bit of dread. “Food science”, after all, sounds so intimidating. It really needs to be easy, and thorough.
“French Fry” is good on the first, really bad on the latter.
Veering away from wonderful, but DRY reads like Hervé This’ book, Molecular Gastronomy, Parsons blends some fascinating food factoids with recipes, both original, and borrowed, that are supposed to help the reader understand how the principles, that he’s teaching to us, work.
The recipes selected, behind each food science chapter, DO use the science of the ingredients discussed. Had Parsons actually given you, though, IN THE RECIPE, an opportunity, during the cooking steps, to explain specific moments, and tie them back into the science, when some of it is visible, in the process, it would have made for a much more powerful telling.
There are a few added factoids, here and there, but, really, each receipe should tell its own part of the science story, while the dish is being cooked. It is much easier, for most of us mere mortals, to understand, by connecting the dots to what we are cooking.
Even without better tying of the text of recipes back to the chapter’s lesson, some of the lessons, themselves, miss some very important stuff about using the science to buy better products that produce the best outcomes.
Look at one focus: Parsons’ take on oil and fats. They’re a critical component of the almighty french fry. He goes into some depth as to how they work in terms of hydrogenation. His discussion of smoke point, and oil breakdown, is another very important topic. Yet he never dives into the practical:
- the importance of the right type of oil for the right job;
- the manufacturer’s processing of the oils and how that can dramatically effect, oil temperature, the break-down of the oil;
- which oils make for the best frying of particular food types, or cultural recipes..
OILS AREN’T ALWAYS ALL CREATED EQUAL
As I’ve told you, in articles about canola, or avocado oil, most “vegetable” oils are seed, and fruit oils. How they’re extracted makes a BIG difference in their use, taste, and your good health.
Very few commonly available seed oils are “expeller pressed.” It’s more expensive, as you don’t get 100% of the oil out of every seed. To make oils cheaper, the more commonly available, inexpensive, supermarket oils are fully extracted from the seed using Hexane, a gasoline derivative.
The seed oil/hexane mix is then cooked to 63°c-69°c (145°F-156°F) to boil the toxic hexane off into collectors, where it is cooled, and reused again. Aside from the trace elements of Hexane, or the mineral oil used to “scrub” the oil, also a bit toxic, that are present in your big-brand canola, safflower, and other seed oils, these “pre-cooked” oils perform less well, unless they’re “expeller pressed.”
Likewise, fruit oils, like avocado, or olive, are not all created equal. There are a LOT of scams in olive oil. A “grilling” oil may well be either a very week third pressing of the fruit, or it could even be rancid olives, picked up off of the ground, cleaned, and descented.
Likewise, Avocado oils can range from top-of-the-line, high-fry 266°c/510°F cooking oils. to some last-pressing avocado oils that should never be used for frying at all.
Missing, in Parsons’ telling, are some explanations of how cheap, weak, and fake products can cook radically differently. That’s not helpful when you buy something, at your local market, thinking it will work great, only to find out that it has a fraction of the cooking “power” that you expected.
Home chefs tend to blame themselves for the recipes not coming out right, when, at times, like in Parsons’ book, the fault is with the author, for failing to talk about the things that affect your success.
RETREAD RECIPES REDUCE
The recipes, are where “French Fry” goes especially limp. A few are original. Others are lifted from other cookbooks. They are supposed to support the chapter lead-ins, that discuss food science.
A few do. The majority of them, though, seem to simply bulk out out the book, for people who might get bored, and want to cook something. The “dots” are never connected from the process, to the science.
my take
Published more than two decades ago, a revised edition of “How to Read A French Fry,” might fix some of its glowing deficiencies. Mr. Parsons is a well informed food writer.
Since its publication, there have been many, many books on molecular gastronomy, and the culinary science of foods. “How to Read A French Fry,” is in sore need of a refresh. Parsons needs to work a lot harder to make each recipe a teachable moment, in the readers’ kitchens.
For its many culinarily egregious exceptions, I can only bring myself to a three-diamond, “meh,” mark rating. I hope to see a vastly improved version, one day.
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