Curious about "topics the internet left behind," where there's tons of deep knowledge in old books, but most everything online's shallow & Yahoo Answers-like. Serious piano practice technique is a good example; culinary composition is another.
Why do some topics end up that way?
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i'm very curious, what's culinary composition? there's nothing very deep in search results
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Basically: how do you compose a dish? Say I want to feature some beautiful snap peas in the context of a refreshing first course. What makes it a good idea to, say, pile them on toast smeared with ricotta, then to top them with meyer lemon zest, roasted almonds, and mint?
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Andy what do you think of ChefSteps? (Could @ but will leave the org unmentioned for now)
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nahh, i think andy's asking how to Play Food Jazz w/ intention. big design writing void too, b/c this part is all about process process process, everyone gets there their own way, either through research, play, aesthetics, etc i.e. this g&t vid
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Hah, yeah! Gosh, I love all of Achatz's videos. Yes, food jazz, but also more prosaic music: what should I put in my salad tonight?
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i think unless you're doing it as a job/student it's hard to justify the amount of product/food cost to do enough trial/err to build this intuition. even w/ breakfast sandos which i make a _lot_, at one point i say "ok, gotta mix this up" but it'd be diff if it were my _job_.
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Yeah. But books really do help: you read a few hundred dishes, cook a hundred of them, and you start to understand what a "California-style vegetable course" is.
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If you did the same thing with "recipe sites" online, I don't think you'd really accumulate much understanding.
right! this is what i mean by process and practice. you go through the muller brockmann grid book or hofmann's graphic design manual and you can improvise in that practice, just sketching out those notes, but it takes that curation and deep exploration to develop it independently
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that's true for allrecipes &c, but i don't think i agree in general! there's a lot on the internet about cooking that would be very hard to get from books. cooks have instagram accounts now! where you can just *watch them cook*, or see the day's menu
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youtube's great for learning things, because video conveys subtle details about technique that you can't get from writing, even from well-written books that don't leave stuff out. it's possible to watch a 10-minute promotional YT documentary about a restaurant and learn a *ton*
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Not quite “food composition” but I’ve started collecting this kind of kitchen lore that falls through the cracks of the Internet in a “evergreen note” style site. With enough time and attention it could grow into something the Internet typically ignores.
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New post: The Larder of Kitchen Lore
What might _intergenerational_ websites look like?
Writing evergreen notes in the kitchen
Every meal is a portrait
A new project with @ahbaranowska
kevinmcgillivray.net/the-larder-of-Show this thread
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These “topics the Internet left behind” seem to have a timeless idiosyncrasy to them. Perhaps a recipe box that is handed down generationally could develop that kind of quality, with time.