Kitchen Alchemist
Wizard with a pipette. This picture is from here
When Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal wanted to check the best way to cook a really nifty pulse, allegedly he wrote a fan letter to Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, the kitchen-nerd’s Bible.
Harold McGee is the doyen of the science of cooking, from creating the perfect caramel to fermenting peas. He writes a great column for the New York Times, in which he tackles such knotty issues as how much water does pasta really need and how gross is it to share a dip? And he has a website called The Curious Cook, exploring the science of food and its transformations.
Now from that title, you can see why we need to check his chart…
… and sometimes astrology is just so straightforward. Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, is the asteroid of the kitchen, sacred to all cooks, and McGee has her conjunct Pluto, the god of transformation in Leo, the sign of the performer.
Can’t help thinking there’s a little bit of black magic in McGee’s kitchen too with wizardy Uranus and crazy Lilith conjunct in the cook’s sign of Cancer. No wonder he suggests using a dash of liquid nitrogen for your sorbet.
And the science? You expect a good Saturn-Mercury contact for a scientist, don’t you.
Nice. Now about that kimchee….
No birth time sadly
http://www.curiouscook.com/
Harold McGee made cooking make sense to me – it’s chemistry with a dash of alchemy. Thanks for his chart, now Harold McGee makes sense!