1. Can a home chef actually make the dishes in Modernist Cuisine?
Nathan Myhrvold: The majority of the recipes in the book can be made in a conventional home kitchen, especially if you get some fairly inexpensive additional equipment, like a digital gram scale or a water bath for sous vide cooking (the book covers what to look for when buying such gear). It was decided early on, however, that those recipes that illustrate the fascinating culinary applications of advanced ingredients, such as liquid nitrogen, and equipment such as centrifuges and rotorstator homogenizers, would not be "dumbed down." As a result, the book offers recipes that will be exciting for anybody who loves food, regardless of whether they are an amateur at home or a top professional chef.
