It Isn't Really a Pudding

In the conception stages of coming of with this self challenge, my friend Lizzy  knowing full well what it was going to entail, gave me a cookbook.  I would be really angry about the cookbook, if it wasn't something that I thought was really interesting and had thought of purchasing before.  Cooking for Geeks is probably one of the most intense cookbooks I have ever own. I do not mean intense as in the skill to be required to accomplish the recipes. I mean intense as in the amount of information that is skillfully shoved into every single nook and cranny of this book.

I feel like my IQ increased just by looking at recipes. Every recipe is skillfully explained on what to expect and why it does what it does.  I figured that since I had mastered chocolate pudding, that Chocolate Mousse (page264) would be more of the same.  I was a fool, but now I know better. Mousse is not a pudding. Anyone who tells you differently, needs to shut their mouth.  It is a plebeian concept to believe that mousse and pudding are the same.  Pudding is a dense collaboration of taste and flavor, while a mousse is a light and airy symphony of the senses.  Okay, that might a little bit of an exaggeration, but I think I made my point.


Despite my pre conceived notions as to how this would go down due to previous pudding experience, I was pleasantly surprised. The version of mouse I made was the egg white version, which came out extremely light and airy. The taste was rich, but not thick the way that pudding can achieve.  I felt like I was a much classier person by serving a delicate chocolate mousse after dinner, than when I serve pudding.

I am very much looking forward to making more recipes out of this book and feel like this is one of those perfect books to give some one that doesn't understand cooking. The logical approach that follows through this cookbook, breaks down cooking in to simple concepts of cause and effect.  I very much would recommend a person to acquire this book for any cookbook collection, as it is useful in reference as well as recipe.