Book Review of Yes Chef by Marcus Samuelsson

For October the book club selected reading is Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson and Veronica Chambers (chosen by Amanda of Omar Niode Foundation).

I found this Chef memoir surprisingly different in that Marcus from the start had such a unique perspective. His journey starts with the circumstances of becoming an orphan in Ethiopia to his adoption and warmth of his family in Sweden to his journey in joining the culinary kitchen world through Europe and then his immigration to the US via his entry point of New York City.

His viewpoint is different from other chefs in that he doesn’t come off as a work hard party hard type of person, even as a young man. He does hang out with friends and there are mistakes –  including life changing ones. He humbly works hard –  he’s extremely driven all his life to strive to be the best – and pays his dues as he learns and strives. You often will find yourself more frustrated for some of what he goes through in obstacles then it seems he does  –  from the screaming chefs above him to paying his life savings to own his name again.

His start as an aspiring athlete in his youth keeps him off of drugs and gives him an incredible discipline and ethic I don’t often see in Chef memoir –  maybe because he can remember more clearly than others. At the same time, Marcus has always during his life been aware of his outsider status –  both railing against it and discrimination against his skin while also accepting and embracing it.

Marcus is great in particular in being able to step outside a situation to see the why behind the actions of people, good and bad. As he travels and explores new cities and new kitchens, he is always observant of the patterns and connections.  He does talk about food, but even more so he shows how food is a connector to all people and it echoes his own desires to communicate himself and cultures of people through the food he creates.


My only minus is that the book seemed to putter out at the end –  maybe the events are too recent and fresh to have gotten as much reflection as earlier in the book. He spends a lot more detail about people from his earlier days than those in his current such as the surprising lack of story of falling in love with his wife versus during kitchen peers during his apprenticeships in his youth.

But overall, my book review of Yes Chef cam be summarized as that his stories of his struggles and efforts –  the journey to success when he became his own man after Top Chef and opened his own restaurant –  are a worthwhile stories to know about finding your place in the world and perseverance.

If you are interested in the online book club the Kitchen Reader, the gist of our casual club is there is a new book selected for every month, each book is related to food, and members write a review on their blog during the last week of that month.

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Book Club: Molecular Gastronomy by Herve This

For September the selected book subject for my online book club, The Kitchen Reader, was Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History) by Hervé  This.

The subject of molecular gastronomy usually refers to the blending of the craft of cooking, which is so much hands on experience and a bit of an art form, with the science of chemistry and perhaps even engineering and physics in the execution of the food. It’s the combination of art and science, which results in sometimes pretty unique and spectacular concepts in both taste as well as other ways to experience the food such as visually or texturally.

That’s how, for instance, you get things like these from Moto in Chicago (I enjoyed more of the chef’s cooking recently at a Feast State of the Art dinner), with pictured below from a past meal at Moto an edible menu printed on edible, inkjet paper with inks of fruit and vegetables and a “Grapefruit” on a spoon that is designed to be like a gin and tonic-that’s what that liquid ball which bursts in your mouth is, the gin and tonic part, then balanced by the frozen pieces of grapefruit below and the creme fraiche and toasted coconut flake. The last photo is from when I attended the Modernist Cuisine exhibit when it was in Seattle and they were creating cross-sections to understand the heating elements in various cooking apparatus!
Moto, an edible menu printed on edible, inkjet paper with inks of fruit and vegetables Moto, Grapefruit dish, this is actually designed to be like a gin and tonic-that's what that liquid ball which bursts in your mouth is, the gin and tonic part. This is balanced by the frozen pieces of grapefruit below and the creme fraiche and toasted coconut flake. I like the touch of how the gelatinous gin and tonic has a picture of a grapefruit somehow Checking out the Modernist Cuisine Exhibit at Pacific Science Center

This month, reading this book made me feel like again I was back in school. Unlike the other month where I was with an American history professor following Thomas Jefferson’s time in France  this time it was mini lectures by a Chemistry Professor. The chapters are short, so the equivalent of maybe a 20 minute lecture, and generally follow a Socratic method where we are first presented with some interesting questions. This may be followed up by some initial answers that are out there from others research or at least assertions. Then professor This starts to talk through his own experiment to find an answer, from setting it up, what happens, and his conclusion about what this means.

He provides enough science in his experiment that you can follow and believe you could even recreate some of these experiments yourself if you wanted, though some which talk about heating various temperatures on the human tongue to see how temperatures affect sense of taste, I will leave to the experts. Others are more simple, such as making a broth by putting meat in when the broth is boiling vs when the broth is unheated to see if it makes a difference. For the normal reader, thankfully, he leaves out the real hard science so you only need to think back to the level of science labs in middle and high school to understand the experiment – no chemical equations on the chalkboard!

Despite a lot of discussion in his chapters via question and experiment, the yield is some useful tips a well from the book, such as

  • To make sure your egg yolk in your boiled egg is always in the middle, roll it around in the pot or pan while it is cooked to keep the yolk from rising and so it stays centered
  • After cooking meat, consider letting the cooked meat cool in a broth as it will absorb those juices back in – say a juice made from truffles, he suggests!
  • Blowing on your coffee is more efficient than stirring hoping to equalize the temperature of your whole cup.
    Coffee with a heart
  • Teaspoons in the neck of a champagne bottle are not as good as cork stoppers which are not as good as hermetically sealing a bottle of champagne to preserve it – but “never mind… one should not putt off tomorrow what one can do today. One you’ve opened a bottle, finish it off!” he advises.
  • Also, champagne bubbles are more stable in glasses that have been cleaned without a dishwashing detergent. So hand clean your glassware /make sure it is rinsed thoroughly. Also, the foam in champagne also reacts with antifoaming agents usually in red lipstick, so those wearing lipstick have less foam in their glasses after the first sip.
  • Adding salt to a variety of dishes reduces bitterness even better than sugar and intensifies agreeable tastes, and is why some coffee lovers like to put a pinch of salt in the filter – to reduce the bitterness of caffeine. Hmm, neat idea!
  • To prevent chocolate from “whitening” because of crystallized fat, store your chocolates at 14 C / 57 F and then warm it up before eating it.
    Chocolate samples on the Theo Chocolate tour in Seattle, this was my favorite chocolate Bread & Chocolate
  • It is for reasons of habit not science that red wine glasses are different than white wines. The same well calibrated glass (ISO glass) is really best for both red and white wines.
  • A large population of children 2-3 years old were given a choice to serve themselves out of a set menu to see if there were natural inclinations for or against foods. It turns out children will not distinguish much between various meats, but for vegetables they WILL eat spinach if it is napped with a white sauce and avoid foods with a hard and fibrous texture as it takes them longer to chew or bitter. So now you know how to trick anyone to eat vegetables.

Interested in joining us? All you have to do to join our book club is sign up at the online book club Kitchen Reader, read the book (or part of it) and post your thoughts on your blog during the last week of the month. Next month for October, the reading is Anything That Moves: Renegade Chefs, Fearless Eaters, and the Making of a New American Food Culture by Dana Goodyear.

Then, in November, our next book is Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni which is a food critic’s autobiography that is a love/hate relationship with food.

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