Microwave cooking (not reheating)

[Fire Me Boy!]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/di...ur-coffee.html

Creating a Dish, Not Just Reheating One

ALLOW me to introduce you to your microwave. I met mine just the other week.

This mysterious, stigmatized box has acquired a reputation as a mere popcorn popper and leftover heater-upper. But it can do so much more. It can fry. It can dry. It can produce a perfectly steamed whole bass with ginger and scallions, topped with fried parsley. Just give it four minutes.

Game-changing new uses like that were brought to my attention with the release of “Modernist Cuisine at Home,” a home-cook-friendly iteration of “Modernist Cuisine,” the six-volume megabook on the science of contemporary cooking that routinely calls for tools like a centrifuge. The “At Home” recipes can still be quite demanding (a 45-minute scrambled egg, a 29-hour roast chicken), but when I got to the chapter on the microwave, my world flipped on its axis.

“The microwave tends to be an underappreciated thing in the kitchen,” the author Nathan Myhrvold told me over the phone. “It’s overused for one set of tasks and underused for another.”

Microwave cooking — not reheating, but cooking — can be particularly healthful, something to keep in mind in the wake of the holiday cookie overload. Steaming involves no added fat, and frying requires just a swipe of oil.

Read the rest: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/di...l?pagewanted=2