Imagine attending a cooking demonstration where you are shown how to blend red wine until it’s frothy, allowing it to oxidise quicker and better.
You might just do that at the new state-of-the-art culinary food studio at Leopard’s Leap wine farm in Franschhoek, conceptualised by the mastermind of Liam Tomlin.

This oxidation is one of the techniques discovered in the collection of volumes that I’ve heard so much about and have been dying to get my hands on, Modernist Cuisine: the Art and Science of Cooking.

There I saw it, at Liam’s Chefs Warehouse, standing amongst a selection of other outstanding books like Noma, Coco, Alinea and The Art of French Baking. The collection is hard to miss, consisting of five volumes of science, technique and wonder.

One of the authors, Nathan Myhrvold, is quite a character – a jack of all trades. Through these books he wanted to showcase new aesthetics, re-imagine food and seduce people to become more techno about it. But he’s done more than that.

The books are far from ordinary; the extensive photographs are taken with a high-speed shutter and the chemistry and physics of cooking are exposed in pictures sliced in half.

Chris Young, Maxime Bilet and Myhrvold break down the components of what makes the ultimate burger, which should take you about 30 hours to get right. They explain that wood has nothing to do with the taste of the meat, but rather the fat that drips onto the wood. This develops the good smoky taste. Also, you need to align the grain of the meat as it comes out of the mincer. It all makes good sense, actually! I think Escoffier would be proud to have it standing upright alongside his publication.

Now all I can think about is about eating a good burger for lunch, maybe up the road at Da Vinci’s. Please send me some suggestions!

Happy eating
Abigail

Pictured: Da Vinci's burger