Congrats to my dear friend Blake Bailey, whose bio of John Cheever, won best bio of 2009 from the National Book Critics Circle on Thursday. I mentioned this bio when it came out. It's fabulous, highly recommended. Blake also wrote a bio of Richard Yates, which is every bit as good, if not better. I have no doubt his Charles Jackson bio (which he talks about on the WSJ blog) will be the same, even if Jackson is all but forgotten.
At last, we’ve put together this basic video demonstration of Ratio: The Smart Phone Application (built by Will Turnage, designed by Leah McCombe) so that people can see what it does and how it works. I love the application because it’s truly useful. If I’m making hamburgers or meatloaf, it will give me the amount of seasoning I need depending on how much meat I have. If I only want a few cookies, not two dozen, it will create the recipe for me. If I find I only have one egg, but still want to make a blueberry muffin, it calculates the amount based on one egg. If I want to whip up a last minute caramel sauce it tells me how. If I want to know even the basic proportions of a stock, it’s there for me. It’s also a great ounces-to-grams converter.
This application will be of special value to anyone who works in a kitchen and to any and all culinary students. And you chefs, authors, and bloggers who develop your own recipes, this application provides the trunk from which a thousand variations branch off. I hope you’ll have a look!
This is version 1.0.1, with all bugs taken care of. Will and Leah are working on the Droid version now!
Here are some comments and reviews about the application:
Russ Parsons, in the LATimes Blog: “Michael Ruhlman wrote a really good book earlier this year called Ratio. Now he’s gone out and turned it into an even better iPhone application. … And though [his] approach may seem a little mechanistic in a cookbook (what if you happen to want a cookie with a different texture than the one chosen?), it’s sheer genius in an app, where the expectations are different. Think of ‘Ratio, the App’ as a combination culinary pocket calculator and aide-memoir.”
Chicagoist: “This application is so good it almost makes us regretting buying the book first. … At $4.99, it’s a steal.”
From the Village Voice Blog: “While Ruhlman’s app enters an already crowded market for cooking-related iPhone applications, with its gee-whiz calculations, it has the potential to be one of the most useful. The home cooking world may finally have its own version of Turing Bombe, complete with pretty colors and custard icons.”
Seventeen years ago, my friend Stephanie began a Burns' night celebration, in honor of her Scottish heritage, and we carry it on still, an occasion to gather a group, once all in Cleveland but now half dispersed. We tour the highlands, as it were, and I address the haggis— "Fair fa your honest soncie face/Great chieftan o' the puddin race" —thrusting the knife in at the appropriate "warm-reeking" moment. But Stephanie had arrived as well with her grandmother's shortbread, and the book from which it comes. Having coincidentally been making various versions of shortbread for a current project, I was particularly interested in hers.
Shortbread is the simplest of preparations, flour, butter and sugar and in that simplicity is its deliciousness. Also, it couldn't be easier or faster. Boxed pancake mix ...
Welcome to Ruhlman.com where I blog about food, cooking, recipes and technique, because the world is better when we cook for ourselves. Thanks for visiting and I hope you’ll join the conversation.
