Cooking for Geeks

Chapter 1. Hello, Kitchen!

WE GEEKS ARE FASCINATED BY HOW THINGS WORK, AND MOST OF US EAT, TOO.

The modern geek is more than just a refined version of the stereotypical movie geek from the ’80s. True, there’s a contemporary equivalent, who have swapped Star Wars posters, pocket protectors, and large glasses held together by tape for really, really smart phones, hipster glasses, and social websites running on virtual machines. The Internet has given the computer geek a new challenge. For most of us techies, the largest obstacle in building something great has changed from a technical to a social one. The question is no longer can you build it, but will people want it? We’re becoming a different kind of community, one that has to relate to a half a billion Facebook users, Twitterers, and lolcats. (I can has cheezburger? See Simple Cheeseburger.)

But what it means to be a geek today can also be broader. Overly intellectual. Obsessed with details. Going beyond the point where a mainstream user would stop, often to the bemusement of those who don’t “get it.” Physics geeks. Coffee geeks. Almost-anything geeks. A geek is anyone who dwells with some amount of obsession on why something works and how to make that something better. And it’s become a badge of honor to be a geek.

At our core, though, all of us geeks still share that same inner curiosity about the hows and whys with the pocket-protector crowd of yesteryear. This is where so many cookbooks fail us. Traditional cookbooks are all ...