PublishedParticular Books, May 2018 |
ISBN9781846148972 |
FormatHardcover, 368 pages |
Dimensions22.2cm × 14.4cm × 3.3cm |
A delightful epicurean adventure through the most essential yet overlooked of culinary ingredients- time
The Missing Ingredient is about what makes good food, and the first book to consider the intrinsic yet often forgotten role of time in creating flavour. Written through a series of encounters with ingredients, producers, cooks, shopkeepers and chefs, exploring everything from the brief period in which sugar caramelises, the days required in the crucial process of fermentation in so many foods we love, to the months of slow ripening and close attention that make a great cheddar, or the years needed for certain wines to reach their peak, Jenny Linford shows how, time and again, time itself is the invisible ingredient. Linford shows how paying attention to time in the kitchen and elsewhere improves our food, from the patient browning of meat to the long investment of many food producers in fields and storehouses around the world. The result is a joyful account of the vital role of time in our culinary lives, and a book to savour.
Bill is one of the founders of Boffins and has been involved in selecting the books we stock since our beginning in 1989. His favourite reading is history, with psychology, current affairs, and business books coming close behind. His hobbies are reading, food, reading, drinking, reading, and sleeping.
Now this book is perfect for the armchair foodie. It’s all about time in cooking and beverage making, and the chapters are Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months and Years. How about that? So when we think of seconds, caramel comes to mind, or blanching; for minutes we might think of perfectly cooked eggs or correctly brewed tea; for hours think bread making; for days it’s pickling and fermenting; and so on right through to the years it takes to make great parmesan cheese, or whisky, or balsamic vinegar. This is a truly delightful book, a romp through the history of food and the traditional ways of making and preparing it. And it’s just the book to help build a winter appetite.
