Very rarely do I find a cookbook that I think could replace all my others and, while Michael Ruhlman's Ratio doesn't quite make me want to purge my culinary reference collection, it certainly makes me consider doing so. By way of thirty-three ratios and suggestions for variations, Ruhlman teaches cooks how fundamental ingredients (water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs) work together. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins and pancakes become crepes.
I think this passage sums up the essence of the entire book: "Batters are almost incestuously linked to one another and show an exceptionally delicate balance between one another. The loosest of the batters is crepe, and we move up with increasing proportions of flour to popover, pancake and fritter, muffin, cake, and so on in potentially infinite variations until you hit the point of the fulcrum and tip over into dough: pasta, pie crust, cookie, and bread...I think that people who are gifted pastry chefs have simply seen the crepe-bread continuum more clearly for longer, rather than seeing crepe equaling one set of instructions, bread another, and so have been able to improvise; they understand how small adjustments in fat, flour, egg, and sugar can result in satisfying nuances of lightness and delicacy or richness in flavor and texture. It's all one thing."
I borrowed Ratio from the library and will be making copious notes before I return it. The only reason I wouldn't purchase the book is that its large middle section provides ratios for stocks, forcemeats (sausage etc), mousselines (meat/cream/egg fillings) and fat-based sauces - nothing I'd realistically be producing in my kitchen! Really, it's the baking section that interests me but I do believe that you'll soon be able to pick out the serious cook in the crowd based on who has a stained copy of Ratio close at hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment