Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's ironic that the first chapter of Ruhlman's Twenty is titled "Think"; he obviously didn't do nearly enough thinking while writing this book. His premise, that there are only a handful of cooking techniques one needs to know, is sound, if unoriginal (James Peterson said the same thing in his 2007 book "Cooking"). But right away he starts to go wrong - most of his "techniques" are not techniques at all. He seems to understand that on one level, yet with an illogical flurry worthy of Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass," he conflates actual technique (poaching) with ingredients (eggs) and even complex preparations (soup). It's not that I think acid, salt, eggs and water are unimportant in cooking; Ruhlman is right in putting them front and center. But when he insists on calling ingredients and recipes "techniques" he creates unnecessary confusion - both in his writing and in the structure of the book as a whole. Take eggs, for instance. If he treated them as an ingredient, then the egg section would have such recipes as poached eggs, scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, and perhaps angel food cake (which relies on whipped egg whites for its structure). Instead, because he can't figure out the difference between ingredients and techniques, the egg chapter contains scrambled eggs, but poached eggs are in "Poach"; deviled eggs are in "Chill" and angel food cake makes an appearance in "Sugar." Trying to guess where any particular type of recipe will end up a dizzying exercise in futility. Meatloaf is in "Water" because it's cooked in a water bath, but while his cheesecake is also cooked in a water bath, that recipe appears in "Eggs." A recipe for grapefruit granite shows up in "Chill" but lemon-lime sorbet is in "Sugar." Confused writing is one thing. But Ruhlman is also sometimes flat out wrong. In "Water," for instance, he stresses over and over again that water always boils at 212F/100C. Anyone living in Denver, Salt Lake City or Peru can tell you this is false, as can anyone who's ever cooked with a pressure cooker. Also in Water, he gushes over the capacity of water to dissolve flavor molecules, but in his enthusiasm, he goes on to say that "the same thing doesn't happen with oil, or with any other liquid." Actually, yes it does; oil and alcohol both dissolve taste molecules. In the salt chapter, he says on one page that 40 grams of salt in a liter of water gives you a 1-percent solution (it doesn't) and yet on the next page he says that 50 grams in a liter gives you a 5-percent brine (it does). On the positive side, the photos are great, as far as they go. But why have a photo of salting a chicken, which I think most people can figure out, and not have photos of trussing a chicken (which he doesn't even bother to describe) or boning out a chicken breast (which he describes, but not well)? Overall, this is a book that with more care could have been very useful. But as he wrote it, it's frustrating and sloppy. Ruhlman would have done well to heed his own advice: "Pay attention."