Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food--New from O'Reilly

Online, August 19, 2010 (Newswire.com) - For more information, contact:
Sara Peyton (707) 827-7118 or peyton@oreilly.com

Cooking for Geeks--New from O'Reilly
Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food

Sebastopol, CA--Are you the innovative type, the cook who marches to a different drummer--used to expressing your creativity instead of just following recipes? Are you interested in the science behind what happens to food while it's cooking?

Then "Cooking for Geeks" (O'Reilly Media, $34.99 USD) is for you.

More than just a cookbook, "Cooking for Geeks" applies your curiosity to discovery, inspiration, and invention in the kitchen. Why is medium-rare steak so popular? Why do we bake some things at 350 degrees F/175 degrees C and others at 375 degrees F/190 degrees C? And how quickly does a pizza cook if we overclock an oven to 1,000 degrees F/540 degrees C? Author and cooking geek Jeff Potter (@cookingforgeeks) provides the answers and offers a unique take on recipes-from the sweet (a "mean" chocolate chip cookie) to the savory (duck confit sugo).

"Readers of 'Cooking for Geeks' will be much more comfortable walking into the kitchen, picking up a frying pan, and trying something new after reading the book," says Potter, who has been cooking since he was a child growing up in California. "'Cooking for Geeks' shows you how to have fun in the kitchen by blending science with cooking and takes a playful, quirky approach to teaching you how to be a better cook."

This book will help you:

- Initialize your kitchen and calibrate your tools
- Learn about the important reactions in cooking, such as protein denaturation, Maillard reactions, and caramelization, and how they impact the foods we cook
- Play with your food using hydrocolloids and sous vide cooking
- Gain firsthand insights from interviews with researchers, food scientists, knife experts, chefs, writers, and more, including author Harold McGee, TV personality Adam Savage, chemist Herve This, and xkcd

"There's really no book out there like Cooking for Geeks--it's science textbook meets cookbook, written to appeal to anyone who's curious about how the details work in the kitchen," says Potter. "And it's not just for technical geeks--anyone who wants to do more than just follow a recipe will enjoy the book."

For a review copy or more information please email peyton@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.

Jeff Potter has done the cubicle thing, the startup thing, and the entrepreneur thing, and through it all maintained his sanity by cooking for friends. He studied computer science and visual art at Brown University.

Additional Resources:
For more information about the book, including sample content, full table of contents, author bio, and cover graphic, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596805890

For an article on Jeff's recent talk at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth 2010), see:
http://gizmodo.com/5589621/livehope-jeff-potter-cooks-for-geeks

To follow Jeff's blog and see more information about the process of Cooking for Geeks, see:
http://cookingforgeeks.com

Cooking for Geeks
Jeff Potter
ISBN: 978-0-596-80588-3, 432 pages
Book Price: $34.99 USD, Ebook Price: $31.99 USD
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000

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