FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Answers for your foodie questions
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor
When I started out as a reporter, many newspaper food editors were home economists, and many offered readers cooking advice and a recipe search service by mail or on the telephone.
Today the typical food editor is a writer who is knowledgeable about food and cooking, and few newspapers offer formal reader assistance programs (although most food editors will look up a recipe for you).
I field a question or two pretty much every day, and keep a battered and much annotated copy of "The Joy of Cooking" on my desk, along with the latest edition of Sharon Tyler Herbst's "Food Lover's Companion," an excellent food dictionary. Other texts I rely on: Elizabeth Schneider's "Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables" and "The Asian Grocery Store Demystified."
I was interested, then, when a new reference book arrived, "The Kitchen AnswerBook," by Hank Rubin (Capital Books, paper, $22.95).
Rubin, who has been a chef, restaurant owner, cooking teacher and longtime wine columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, amassed a list of 5,000 questions and answers in the course of teaching a class in advanced food preparation as a volunteer for a community school in the Bay Area.
He has organized this book into subject areas ("Baking," "Eggs," "Stocks, Sauces and Soups," "Utensils," and so on) and in each segment, the questions progress from basic ("What is cheese?") to complex ("Are French cheeses sold in the United States different from those sold in France?").
This format lends itself to discussions of oddball or esoteric issues: "Why is there light and dark meat in chickens but all dark meat in ducks and geese?" "If leftover wine is added to vinegar, will a good vinegar ensue?"
Occasionally, Rubin misses the mark. Among the most common questions food editors handle is "How can I make self-rising flour?" Rubin explains what it is — flour to which baking powder and salt has already been added — but doesn't give the proportions for making it (1 cup flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt).
Still, this book is going to spend some time on my coffee table, to be dipped into in spare moments until I've paged over the whole volume. Then, it will come back to the office to be added to the reference library on my desk.
