The Missing Ingredient
The Curious Role of Time in Food and Flavor
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Narrated by:
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Karen Cass
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By:
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Jenny Linford
About this listen
From hours in the oven to years in the barrel, this illuminating book examines the relationship between the cook and the clock, and the underappreciated impact that time has on our favorite dishes
Two minutes into boiling an egg, the white isn’t set and the yolk is totally raw. After five minutes however, the white is fully set and the yolk slightly runny - a perfectly spoonable, soft-boiled egg. Boil for another three minutes for a set and tender yolk, or an additional five minutes for a fully set yolk. But be careful: once you boil the egg past ten minutes, you’ll have a crumbly yolk and dry, overly firm white. When it comes to boiled eggs, you may think you’re only dealing with one ingredient, but there is another less obvious, but still critical ingredient involved that should not be overlooked: time.
The Missing Ingredient is the first book to consider the intrinsic yet often forgotten role of time in creating the flavors and textures we love. Through a series of encounters with ingredients, producers, cooks, artisans, and chefs, acclaimed author of The Chef’s Library Jenny Linford shows how, time and again, time itself is the invisible ingredient in our most cherished recipes. Playfully structured through different periods of time, the book examines the fast and slow, from the seconds it takes for sugar to caramelize to the centuries it takes for food heritage to be passed down from our ancestors. From the brevity of blanching and the days required in the crucial process of fermentation, to the months of slow ripening that make a great cheddar and the years needed for certain wines to reach their peak, Linford dissects each segment of time needed to cook - and enjoy - simple and intricate cuisine alike. Including vignettes from the immediacy of taste (seconds), the exactitude of pasta (minutes), and smoking and barbecuing meats (hours), to maturing cheese (weeks), infusing vanilla extract (months), and perfecting parmigiana and port (years), The Missing Ingredient is an enlightening and essential volume for foodies, bakers, home cooks, chefs, and anyone who appreciates a perfectly-executed dish.
©2018 Jenny Linford (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
From his first apprenticeship in France to his Michelin-starred restaurant empire, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s cuisine is inspired by the freshest ingredients, the simplest techniques, and the drive to make the ordinary perfect. It all started at home. JGV is an invitation into the kitchen with a master chef. With humor and heart, Jean-Georges looks back on success and failure, sharing stories of cooking with legendary chefs Paul Bocuse and Louis Outhier, traveling in search of new and revelatory flavors, and building menus of his own.
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Informative and fun!
- By David Stuk on 11-24-22
By: Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and others
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Unprocessed
- My City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food
- By: Megan Kimble
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In January of 2012, Megan Kimble was a 26-year-old living in a small apartment without even a garden plot to her name. But she cared about where food came from, how it was made, and what it did to her body: so she decided to go an entire year without eating processed foods. Unprocessed is the narrative of Megan's extraordinary year, in which she milled wheat, extracted salt from the sea, milked a goat, slaughtered a sheep, and more - all while earning an income that fell well below the federal poverty line.
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Very insightful
- By Anonymous User on 01-10-21
By: Megan Kimble
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Eating for England
- The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table
- By: Nigel Slater
- Narrated by: Nigel Slater
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The British have a relationship with their food that is unlike that of any other country. Once something that was never discussed in polite company, it is now something with which the nation is obsessed. But are we at last developing a food culture or are we just going through the motions? Eating for England is an entertaining, detailed, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation of the British and their food, their cooking, their eating, and how they behave in restaurants.
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A Must-Hear!
- By Laura on 07-04-08
By: Nigel Slater
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Ingredienti
- Marcella's Guide to the Market
- By: Marcella Hazan, Victor Hazan
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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When Marcella Hazan died in 2013, the world mourned the passing of the "Godmother of Italian cooking". But her legacy lives on, through her cookbooks and recipes, and in the handwritten notebooks filled with her thoughts on how to select the best ingredients - Ingredienti. Her husband and longtime collaborator Victor has translated and transcribed these vignettes on how to buy and what to do with the fresh produce used in Italian cooking, the elements of an essential pantry, and salumi.
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Once again, Marcella Says
- By Victoria on 07-23-16
By: Marcella Hazan, and others
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The Tastemakers
- Why We’re Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue (Plus Baconomics, Superfoods, and Other Secrets from the World of Food Trends)
- By: David Sax
- Narrated by: David Sax
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this eye-opening, witty work of reportage, David Sax uncovers the world of food trends: Where they come from, how they grow, and where they end up. Traveling from the South Carolina rice plot of America’s premier grain guru to Chicago’s gluttonous Baconfest, Sax reveals a world of influence, money, and activism that helps decide what goes on your plate.
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Informative - Engaging - Entertaining!
- By Rena on 09-01-14
By: David Sax
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Buttermilk Graffiti
- A Chef’s Journey to Discover America’s New Melting-Pot Cuisine
- By: Edward Lee
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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American food is the story of mash-ups. Immigrants arrive, cultures collide, and out of the push-pull come exciting new dishes and flavors. But for Edward Lee, who, like Anthony Bourdain or Gabrielle Hamilton, is as much a writer as he is a chef, that first surprising bite is just the beginning. What about the people behind the food? What about the traditions, the innovations, the memories? A natural-born storyteller, Lee decided to hit the road and spent two years uncovering fascinating narratives from every corner of the country.
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Good listen for the aspiring food snob
- By thurman r. on 02-09-22
By: Edward Lee
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Rice, Noodle, Fish
- Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture (Roads & Kingdoms Presents, Book 1)
- By: Matt Goulding
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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An innovative new take on the travel guide, Rice, Noodle, Fish decodes Japan's extraordinary food culture through a mix of in-depth narrative and insider advice. In this 5,000-mile journey through the noodle shops, tempura temples, and teahouses of Japan, Matt Goulding, cocreator of the enormously popular Eat This, Not That! book series, navigates the intersection between food, history, and culture, creating one of the most ambitious and complete books ever written about Japanese culinary culture from the Western perspective.
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Starts strong tapers off
- By Craig Bryan on 01-02-21
By: Matt Goulding
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High on the Hog
- A Culinary Journey from Africa to America
- By: Jessica B. Harris
- Narrated by: Jessica Harris
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris weaves an utterly engaging history of African American cuisine, taking the listener on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, and tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form an important part of African American culture, history, and identity.
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more of a history lesson than a culinary book
- By Scott Johnson on 09-02-15
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Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
- Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking
- By: Samin Nosrat
- Narrated by: Samin Nosrat
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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A visionary new master class in cooking that distills decades of professional experience into just four simple elements, from the woman declared "America's next great cooking teacher" by Alice Waters.
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EXCELLENT, BUT...
- By KJNuri on 01-23-18
By: Samin Nosrat
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The Blue Zones Solution
- Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People
- By: Dan Buettner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Dan Buettner, the New York Times best-selling author of The Blue Zones, lays out a proven plan to maximize your health based on the practices of the world's healthiest people. For the first time, Buettner reveals how to transform your health using smart eating and lifestyle habits gleaned from new research on the diets, eating habits, and lifestyle practices of the communities he's identified as "Blue Zones"—those places with the world's longest-lived and thus healthiest people.
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Good Info, Well Presented
- By Soozzone on 06-29-15
By: Dan Buettner
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Ferran
- The Inside Story of El Bulli and the Man Who Reinvented Food
- By: Colman Andrews
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In his lively, unprecedented close-up portrait of Ferran Adrià, award-winning food writer Colman Andrews traces this groundbreaking chef’s rise from resort hotel dishwasher to culinary deity, and the evolution of El Bulli from a German-owned beach bar into the establishment voted annually by an international jury to be “the world’s best restaurant”.
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recasting needed
- By Marco I on 09-09-18
By: Colman Andrews
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Fast Food Maniac
- From Arby's to White Castle, One Man's Supersized Obsession with America's Favorite Food
- By: Jon Hein
- Narrated by: Jon Hein
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The charismatic radio personality from The Howard Stern Show celebrates what we love about American fast food, covering chains both national and regional and offering an opinionated view on restaurant history, secret menu items, and even drive-thru strategy.
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How is Jon Hein still alive?
- By Big Timmy Jim Tim on 03-12-17
By: Jon Hein
What listeners say about The Missing Ingredient
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chris L.
- 08-06-21
Falling too heavily on tautology
A book about time, you can imagine, a factor that's about as obvious as saying "you need hands to hold a knife," can quickly fall on tautology and obviousness. The only way to avoid that, however, is through careful introspection and revealing exciting new insights into how it can be utilized, or how it reveals something most cooks overlook. This book misses the mark. Linford spends most of the introduction flailing around tautologies, exclaiming clear biases, which can be summarised as "everything new and time-saving is bad and everything old and demanding on time is good." Clearly, there are cases where this is so. Aged balsamic is better, in many cases, than not-aged balsamic, as is Whiskey, parma ham, and even good steaks. But the biases are often tripped into contradiction. For example, for all Linford's claims of common foods now being called "homemade" when it was previously just "cooking," she also claimed that her favourite salted caramel (simply sugar and salt - and extremely easy to make) is made by a company. She attempts to gloss over that contradiction by selling the story that it's difficult and dangerous to do. It's really not. Not at all. But maybe it is on a commercial level (shrug emoji). She also takes the common bias against MSG, seeing it as an additive and wrapping it up in some justification of it being added over other time-consuming ingredients, which is just bizzare and a clear bias driven through ignorance. There are many more. It ends up in a rollercoaster of eye-rolls!
Unfortunately, this type of book is all too common now: writers that are not expert chefs, not food scientists
(nor even scientifically minded) and not particularly an expert in any sub-field of food writing books about the science of food and cooking, mostly through interviews with other experts that they lack the knowledge to vet or understand the veracity of the claims. You end up with empty tautologies, recycled garbage, and fluff. Lots of fluff. This is going immediately on the "refund" pile for me.
I liked the narrator though. I think she did a great job and she was very easy to listen to.
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