You say, “OK I get the sizzle, I read that page“. But what is the deal with STEM?
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATH
This all started during COVID. Like everyone I was struggling with getting food into the house, keeping up before the produce went bad and trying to be creative. So to share recipes and have some semblance of human contact I started posting to Facebook. Soon enough several people said, “You should do a website.” After a bit I said, “Why not?”
Well, after a lot of nights staring at the ceiling, I realized that I need to talk about the things that have formed how I think about food. There are some obvious influences, like Julia and Jacques, Anthony and Ruhlman, Alton and McGee (if you have to ask who they are we need a side conversation). Also, if you know my background, you know that I am an engineer that spent over 40 years building factories and making stuff.
I LOVE making stuff. Somebody once asked me about how the engineer became a cook. In answering that question I realized that making food is just like making a product. There is design, materials selection, process development, execution, etc, etc, etc.
So the name reflects 2 of my loves…the sound that the food makes when it hits the pan, that sizzle… and STEM (SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATH).
My vision for the website is that it be first and foremost about the FOOD but with STEM tied in (hidden in there like the vegetables that a child will not eat). I hope to tie my recipes to burning questions like this:
-SCIENCE: Why will my food taste better and LESS salty if I add salt while I am cooking than if I add it at the end?
-TECHNOLOGY: So how does a blender work anyway?
-ENGINEERING: I made one loaf of banana bread, I wonder how they manufacture them by the thousands?
-MATH: I wish there was an easy way to remember how to make a vinaigrette? There is, it’s called a ratio.
You may say “Not a totally original idea Mark”. Yes, there are others who merge these things and answer these questions. But I learned it actually takes a lot of Google searching to get the answers to the above. I’ve tried to design the site so that you can get those answers…if you want… while you are reading my recipes, or you can just make the food… if that is all you want. I expect that if we do this right we will all learn something together.
I learned in my own cooking journey, that learning WHY is the best thing you can do to really feel like a cook. Understanding the technique and science frees you from needing a recipe, or lets you look at a recipe and say “cool idea, but we’re going to do it like this”. Most of the recipes on this site will be trying to give you a basic footing, or technique that you can build on.
Some of you who know me personally will know that I am involved with the SME. SME (formerly the Society of Manufacturing Engineers) is a not for profit organization that has been serving the manufacturing and engineering community for over 80 years. In 2019 I served as their president. As an SME member since 1992 I have been on the journey to help emerging professionals though our mission to Inspire, Prepare, and Support.
I learned from working with SME that when we represent the “community” of manufacturing our greatest value is in bringing people together through knowledge, particularly when that knowledge is from a non-traditional source. My hope for the sizzle&STEM experiment is to build our own food community by asking others to contribute, whether it be a home cook that wants to share a recipe, a restaurant owner who talks about the challenges beyond the food, or a food engineer showing us how to make pies by the thousands.
So here is where I am so far… name picked, endless copyright searches, logo designed, URL purchased, website host selected, WordPress theme launched, some pages built, new recipes developed and written, links added… and so on and so on. All of this is a huge learning curve, but loving every minute so far. I want to thank again ALL OF YOU who contributed in so many ways in helping me get my head around where I wanted to go on this journey. Your name suggestions, FB comments, direct texts, phone calls, and much more were key in getting the swirl of thoughts in a somewhat ordered place. In particular, I want to thank Ron Mauceri for designing the logo. He is an amazing graphic designer and a great friend (called me within an hour of my first post on this subject to offer to help).
And then there is my person, Lynn, she listens to all my wacky ideas, eats all my concoctions and gives me honest and loving feedback. I can’t love her enough.
Thank you for joining us on the journey. Let’s learn some cool stuff…together.
And oh yes, lets cook some fun food.