Rating: 
Summary: I'm a cooking smarty-pants now!
Review: I got this cookbook for Christmas after I dropped several very broad hints. I skimmed it, then decided to enroll myself in my own Cookwise Class--I've started at the beginning with The Ultimate Brioche, and I'll cook all the way through to Chocolate Walnut Ruffle Cake. I figure you can't get a much better kitchen chemistry education than that without actually going to cooking school. For all you folks out there who thought that bread baking was an art and you didn't have it, PLEASE read Shirley's chapter on breadbaking and try some of her recipes, especially the French-style Crusty Loaf. Now I know why my bread always resembled large beach cobblestones (too much of the wrong kind of flour)--but no more! My only gripe is that some of her kneading techniques would be much more understandable with some photos or even simple line drawings, but I guess I'll make do until she gets her own cooking show. (Hint, hint, any TV producer that might be reading this.)
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for every cook.
Review: Although I can nitpick that there are many annoying things about this book (such as poor organization and overly complex recipes), it should be read by every serious cook. It has an abundant source of cooking information which I find more useful than that in Harold Mcgee's book. She also offers many of her favorite recipes which I find less useful, but some are excellent. It is helpful, but not absolutely essential, to have some knowledge of chemistry (e.g. high school chemistry) to appreciate this book. I have been making bread for 25 years and thought that there was nothing new to learn, but was amazed to find that her techniques do result in a superior loaf. However, I do not like the way she measures a cup of flour. Her cup of flour is quite a bit larger than is usual. It is really better and much more accurate to weigh flour with an inexpensive kitchen scale.
Rating: 
Summary: Very informative
Review: Several months ago I got 'CookWise', which became the first cookbook I read cover-to-cover. What I appreciate about this book is that it explained how ingredients interact. With this information I've been able to evaluate recipes I find online, and to modify recipes to suit me. Even if you have no intention of cooking the sorts of dishes which are used to illustrate points, the book is worth it for the technical information. I would have appreciated more detailed descriptions of grains (other than wheat) and white sugar-substitutes (such as honey, stevia, fruit sugar and maple sugar). This would be useful for people with allergies or other reasons to avoid certain substances. Still, from this book I learned many things which have helped me in developing recipes with substitutions.
Rating:
Summary: Why does it do that????? AHA!
Review: I have been cooking forever, a devotee of Food Channel, myriads of cookbooks, a fan of Alton Brown (a lot of whose stuff has apparently come from Shirley who appears on the show). I can whip up a masterpiece (so I've been told) from the leavings in the refrigerator, recipes never to be repeated. I have created recipes from tasting commercial products for duplication and improvement. At last, the knowledge of how it all fits together in one place! This book is amazing. It is NOT a cookbook in the usual sense of a collection of recipes, but a Cook's book, that will teach you to cook better, more wisely, with better assurance of the results. It allows you to truly become a cook rather than a blind recipe follower. It tells you how AND why cooking works in all the big areas of baking, frying, candies, ice creams and lots of others. It is a friendly textbook that will confer a master's degree worth of useful knowledge. It is a must read if you care about food preparation beyond opening a box and mixing.
Rating:
Summary: Best Cooking Book I Own
Review: The answers are all in here. It's one thing if you have a mentor in the kitchen with you but most of us don't. The author is not ashamed to tell you how she's messed up in the past and how to avoid it. The science and the chemistry, of custards for example, and her detailed, down to earth instructions are not what you want to read when guests a walking up the driveway but they are so well written that they'll stick with you and make you a better cook for having devoted the time at your leisure. And you'll make fabulous cheesecake, yum-yum. I'd love to go to cooking school some day when I don't have little kids running in and out of the kitchen but in the mean time cooking is a creative outlet and I feel that this book has given me confidence to try new things because I understand "why". This book is not cover to cover recipes but it doesn't need to be. The knowledge imparted has helped me fill in the gaps in the instructions in recipes from top cooking magazines and cook books. The roast pork tenderloin recipe in Cookwise is fabulous, delectable. But the technique is the key and it applies to most meats for roasting. That's what this book is about. My husband and I used to eat out every night in Manhattan. Now we eat at home 350 days a year and we entertain. And it's been great for impressing people with anectdotal cooking conversation if that's your thing... the ability to talk about the different amounts of gluten in flour and what it will do for your patsries....! Buy it, read it. You'll open it over and over. It's the best money you'll spend.
Rating: 
Summary: A stellar volume very very poorly laid out
Review: Right off the bat, I wanted to like this book. I really really did. I have a tremendous respect for someone like Shirley Corriher, who is a huge advocate of better cooking through science. Clearly, she has the science part down, and goes into great length to make sure readers understand the how and whys of cooking. Along with this, she has some excellent recipes included in this book. The touch of grace biscuits for one are just amazing, almost indescribably good in their texture and taste. That said, I'm giving this book two stars, not for the content, but for the presentation. To say this book is hard to follow is an understatement. The sheer amount of information shoved into this book is astounding, "shoved" being the verb that can best convey how overfilled and poorly designed this book is. Explanations of techniques/science are interspersed with recipes, making for a totally disorienting read. Recipes start on the bottom of a page, and then overlap to the back of the page, similar recipes aren't grouped together, etc. When I read this book, I got the impression that Corriher just started up her word processor, printed out a whole bunch of stuff, and gave it to an intern at the publisher for layout and design. Basic type and layout rules seemed to be overlooked just to get as much information as possible into the pages, and the book suffers tremendously. In a revised version, this book could easily become one of the 10 most important cookbooks ever published, but at this point, it's too overfilled, overwhelming and under-thought-out to warrant buying. Again, don't get me wrong. The material in this book is stellar, there's just no flow at all. I hope the publisher resets this book in the future, so it gets the praise it really deserves!
Rating:
Summary: The "why" not just "hows" in a very conversational style.
Review: I first saw Shirley Corriher on Cooking Live on FoodTV. I was greatly impressed by how she explained the principles behind cooking ingredients and techniques in a very conversational, yet thorough manner. Her book is every bit as conversational and charming as she is live. What stands out about Cookwise is that it is written specifically with practical application in mind. It's not just a "here's what happens to the molecules" book, but "here's what happens and how you can apply it to your own cooking." Too many books of this type come across as Bill Nye the Science Guy books, but Cookwise has exactly the right balance. After reading the book you will come away more confident in experimenting with your own recipes and concoctions because you will understand why certain things happen. It's organized well, the recipes are broad, and it's a very easy read. I can't recommend this book enough and look forward to her next book, Bakewise, when it comes out.
Rating: 
Summary: A good "How and Why" book, but poorly organized
Review: I LOVE cooking, and with lots of reading, TV shows, many hours spent in restaurant dining rooms, at-home experimentation and mistakes I've fallen even more deeply in love with everything about food. So, naturally, when I had the opportunity to learn the "how and why" behind my failures and to learn more "tips and techniques" I ran right out to buy Shirley's book. I am naturally curious, so, a book which explains WHY things happen seemed a logical addition to my 50 feet of cookbooks. I'm sorry to say that while I find the chemistry very interesting, the scientific explanations very clear, and I am learning a great deal, I have trouble with the book's organization. OK, perhaps it's not supposed to be like other "cookbooks", and it clearly isn't, but I think a good edit would improve the readability immeasurably. Shirley does do an outstanding job of explaining "why", and that simple fact should not be overlooked, but this book seems best suited for "reading and learning" and NOT as a reference text where one would go to check out a technique or to find a recipe.
Rating:
Summary: Supremely Useful for Any Cook
Review: I've just opened Shirley Corriher's 500-page masterpiece Cookwise to a random page, hoping to find true wisdom. If the random opening technique works with my Shakespeare and my dictionary, it ought to work with a book subtitled: The Hows & Whys of Successful Cooking. Sure enough, I've hit pay dirt. The chapter is "Eggs Unscrambled," the recipe, "Mesmerizingly Smooth Flan." The author (who lives in Atlanta) lets it slip that she has actually taught the recipe "in Texas to people who had been making flan for years," and who subsequently abandoned their tried and true recipes in favor of hers. It's true that you'll see similar boasts-usually based on the work output of a female ancestor-in recipe books you can buy at any gift shop or truck stop. But Ms. Corriher leaves her Granny out of the picture; instead she relies on science. In the flan's case, using corn syrup with a little lemon juice prevents the caramel from crystallizing; an extra egg yolk adds smoothness; a towel placed underneath the baking disk prevents the bottom of the flan from overcooking. Tips and tricks are one thing-every cook should keep a collection-but few "kitchen secret" books can compare to Shirley Corriher's well organized voyage through practical food science. I should hope the eye latches on to the word "practical" before it does "science" in the previous sentence. The author is not just a "culinary food sleuth" who roams the country giving speeches and fixing problems in corporate test kitchens; she is also a dedicated home cook with extensive experience cooking for real people in family and social situations. You can buy stimulating, even well-written, books on food science that may or may not give you techniques you can apply in your own kitchen, but Cookwise treats science only as a means to immediate results. This species of science isn't simply interesting; it can be liberating. (If the word "science" brings up nightmares from eighth grade, the word "perspective" is an appropriate substitute.) In her introduction, the author relates how thrilled she is whenever she learns a fact or technique that can be helpful in improving a dish. As an example, she'd never realized how important bubbles in fat were in cake-making. When you make a cake, the baking powder or soda you add doesn't create a single bubble, she reveals. These leavening agents only enlarge bubbles that are already in the mix. You, the cook, create the bubbles when you mix butter and sugar together as the first step in making your cake batter. The best cooks beat the butter and sugar together five minutes or more; the average cook combines the ingredients and little more. Your old recipe, or your granny, may have already told you to do this, but now that you know why, you're one step ahead. Technically, yes, this is science, but don't worry, there isn't going to be a surprise quiz. You will find recipes in Cookwise-230 in fact-and many of them are as basic as Shirley's "beat-the-Texans-at-their-own-game" flan: homemade mayonnaise, sinfully easy fudge, lemon curd, pecan pie, sweet potato pudding, prime rib, seared scallops. They are sound recipes of course, but if that were all, Cookwise would be one of those volumes you'd have on your shelf for occasional use but little more. Instead, the recipes illustrate the many principles Corriher crams into this extensive book. Because only food fanatics like me read these kinds of books from cover to cover, Cookwise is structured to be an open-anywhere browser. An ideal place to start, perhaps, is with an individual recipe that appeals to you. Once you learn the principles behind the recipe and produce a successful dish, you cannot unlearn them, and will automatically apply them to dozens of recipes from sources far and wide. I am now learning from these pages the useful fact that acids-with vinegar and citrus juices acting as the major culprits-also tend to discolor vegetables. Corriher gives me an immediate trick with the science: when you want a citrus flavor, say in a salad dressing, use the zest (grated peel) from citrus fruits like lemons and oranges instead of the juice. If I'm making a salad for an outdoor picnic, however, safety comes first; a high acid content based on either citrus juices or vinegar will help keep bacteria away. I haven't yet read Cookwise from cover to cover as I have Alan Davidson's The Penguin (Oxford) Companion to Food (a thousand-page masterpiece) or James Trager's The Food Chronology (only slightly shorter), and there's a reason. I keep putting Cookwise down to cook real food for real people. Since I do read culinary reference works, I am aware that I may already have encountered many of the principles Corriher discusses, but I also recall "learning" about chlorophyll in eighth grade. It may have been useful if my eighth grade science teacher had lectured on broccoli rather than on the chlorophyll it can so easily lose if overcooked. It will suffice that Shirley Corriher (who, by the way, is a benevolent, cherubic presence who frequently pops up as a guest on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" television series) has pulled all the science together into a package I can use every day in my own kitchen. Food writer Elliot Essman's other reviews and food articles are available at www.stylegourmet.com
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Understanding what you are doing and Why
Review: This Cookbook can be read like a novel, used to cook great food from or studied like a text. All cooks that want to know more about why they are doing what they are doing Must read this great well written book.
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