Husband-and-wife duo Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot are this generation's hip young guides to the hows and whys of cooking, which they explain in 50 entertaining essays and then put into practice with 75 recipes for avid cooks to try at home.

Home cooks are digging into once-geeky food science with astonishing vigor. While Harold McGee's landmark book on the subject, On Food and Cooking, is a bible of detailed technical information, Ideas in Food is the book for the current geek-chic cooking revolution. With its practical, hands-on approach to exploring and applying fascinating cooking techniques, it means anyone--at any level--can try this at home.

Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot have an uncanny ability not only to understand cooking on a molecular level, but also to clearly communicate what's going on to those not trained in chemistry. Ideas in Food dives into the nuts and bolts of ingredients, cooking techniques, and tools, leading to astonishing--and astonishingly delicious--results. Readers will learn why roasting dried pasta results in a finished dish with a wonderfully rich flavor and catch up on fancy-sounding hydrocolloids--the talk of the food world for their use in making gels--and discover they probably have one in their own pantry--cornstarch! And home cooks can finally master homemade bread once they learn how different leavening agents--yeast, baking soda, and baking powder--work and contribute to flavor. Ideas in Food unleashes creativity in the kitchen and changes the way we think about cooking.