Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Calling Alton Brown
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
Or Christopher Kimball, for that matter. A gynecologist learns how to cook a turkey.
Letting the turkey spend the night in a bath of salt, sugar and water seemed like overkill to Lee. But Bennett, who gave up a veterinary career to go to culinary school, decided to rely on her medical background to explain it to the doctor. The salty brine helps increase the amount of water in the cells, Bennett said. Lee got it immediately. "It's sort of like edema!" she said...."Put the meat thermometer parallel to the femur," Bennett instructed.
"Ah, language I can understand," Lee said. "But I need an X-ray here. I can't see the femur."
Later, when Lee carved the bird, she would again be stumped by anatomy. A kitchen cleaver -- especially Lee's poorly sharpened one -- was no scalpel.
Bennett tried to explain how to cut the breast off whole, running the blade down the breast bone and against the rib cage. It wasn't working.
"She's a fabulous surgeon, but she doesn't do thoracic surgery. That's the problem," said [another doctor]...
