Dirty Work: Salad Days with The Food Lab’s J. Kenji López-Alt

J. Kenji López-Alt was soaking wet and talking to me about getting middle schoolers drunk.

The "culinary nerd-in-residence" and columnist at Serious Eats had joined me at VICE HQ for what was supposed to be a pleasant jaunt through the MUNCHIES Garden, where he would have the chance to talk up his massive new tome, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science.

But this was two weeks ago, when Hurricane Joaquin began its northward ascent through the Atlantic Ocean, farting out wet gusts of rain across the East Coast in the process. With several shittily manufactured umbrellas in hand, we braved the storm to pick some lettuces, sorrel, herbs, and tomatoes, getting thoroughly drenched in the process. The umbrellas succumbed to the wind, their backs broken, as Kenji snipped and plucked produce from the garden.

Back inside, he switched straight into high seriousness and nursed a beer as he arranged his mise-en-place. I couldn't tell if Kenji was put off by the weather and our lack of a well-appointed kitchen—there is a special place in hell for the city officials who are in charge of approving gas line permits—or if his game face was simply one of determination. "Am I talking enough?" he asked as I dumbly stared at him prepping greens for a salad.

A few moments later, demonstrating what can only be called a technique for instant mayonnaise—utilizing the vortex formed by an immersion blender to rapidly combine discrete puddles of lemon juice, whole eggs, and oil—Kenji invoked the dynamics of a typical middle school dance. "That's my metaphor for making mayonnaise," he explained. Water and oil, like nervous heterosexual youths, typically don't mix, so you need to add something to bring them together. For mayonnaise, it's the lecithin in eggs. "It's a chemical emulsifier, which means one end [of the molecule] is hydrophobic and one is hydrophilic, so it acts as a bridge between water and oil. Emulsifiers are like the booze you add to get the kids to get along nicely."

This is what Kenji does best: using the principles of chemistry to make beloved dishes better, tastier, and easier, all while explaining them in ways that even the most scientifically averse can understand.

Kenji's road to foodism was an unlikely one. He had no great interest in cooking as a child, showing more of an aptitude for science and math than culinary arts. After high school, he enrolled at MIT and began studying biology, but he soon became disenchanted by laboratory life. Like many rudderless American kids, he took a job as a prep cook. ("I had a T-shirt that said 'Knight of the Round Grill," he recalled with a laugh.) Soon enough, the cooking bug took root in him. He spent eight years working in professional kitchens before transitioning food media, first taking a job at Cook's Illustrated. In 2009, he landed at Serious Eats and began his wildly popular column The Food Lab, from which his nearly 1,000-page book draws its name.

If you've ever Googled how to make Sichuan chili oil or a sous-vide, deep-fried porchetta, you're already familiar with his recipes. Kenji is one of the most prolific food writers online today, and his keyword game is strong—probably because he has cooked just about everything you can think of.

And yet the curious thing about The Food Lab is that it is not a cookbook in the idiom that we've come to expect. If you're looking for absurd flavor pairings, exhortations on the value of pickling or foraged foods, or general culinary navel gazery, you won't find it here. This is a book about burgers, buttermilk biscuits, and fried chicken.

"There are no unique flavor combinations in here, for better or for worse," Kenji said. "That was the goal: make sure that everything is something that people have strong emotional connections to."

But even then, that's a slightly disingenuous characterization. In the end, The Food Lab is a book about technique; the pan-seared steak recipe comprises barely half a page, but Kenji spends 30 pages before that explaining the science of cooking beef.

"One of the things lacking in a lot of cheffy cookbooks is the fact that not everybody has access to the ingredients that chefs do. A lot of times I find cookbooks to be more aspirational than useful," he said, admitting that he nonetheless finds such books informative and inspiring. "I do have a lot of respect for the people who keep in mind the constraints of a home cook and try to make sure that what they're making is going to be useful."

At its finest, the book is a more approachable companion to The Modernist Cuisine at Home, a still-daunting text for even adventurous home cooks who don't have the kitchen real estate or financial wherewithal to convection-steam zebra-striped omelets for dinner. At its worst, it will disappoint cookbook collectors accustomed to expressionist plating, elaborate lighting setups, and recipe names that are little more than a list of disparate ingredients: chicory, venison bone, haunted lichen, whatever.

"I took all of the photos," he confessed almost sheepishly, leafing through the pages of his book. "I got better at them toward the end." Kenji is an amateur's professional, someone who keeps one foot firmly planted in blogger territory while drawing on the knowledge of the culinary intelligentsia.

After finishing his herbed mayonnaise—"There was a period of time when it wasn't cool to say mayonnaise on a menu," he sighed, "so people called everything 'aioli' even when it wasn't"—Kenji toasted cubes of ciabatta in a small amount of olive oil. Earlier, he salted roughly chopped tomatoes to draw out their juices, which he later used as a base for a simple vinaigrette for a panzanella. "Osmosis!" he declared.

When it came time to poach eggs for the salad, Kenji strained out the loose white before adding the eggs to a pan of barely simmering water, to which he only added a pinch of salt. (Despite received wisdom, vinegar does nothing to help the eggs firm up.) Instead of a timer or thermometer, a few gentle prods of his finger told him when the eggs were ready.

Kenji then swooshed a schmear of the mayonnaise on a plate, on top of which he added a small mountain of the panzanella. On another plate, he piled our garden's grab-bag of greens, dressed lightly, and gently rested two poached eggs atop them. For a final flourish, he nicked the bulging edge of the egg, causing a gentle trickle of yolk to ooze out, nacho cheese-like.

It was utterly delicious.

Not too bad for a terrible rainy day, I mused. "And no real kitchen," Kenji added.