Blending history, science, and personal anecdotes, Wilson reveals how our culinary tools and tricks came to be and how their influence has shaped food culture today. Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide machines of the modern kitchen, but also the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet, chopsticks and forks. In Consider the Fork, award-winning food writer Bee Wilson takes readers on a wonderful and witty tour of the evolution of cooking around the world, revealing the hidden history of objects we often take for granted. But these tools have also transformed how we consume, and how we think about, our food. Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious - or at least edible. He oversees every order that comes out of his kitchen.Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson’s secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies – from the fork to the microwave and beyond – have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat. “Each ingredient demands its own precise timing and heat intensity,” the chef says. So fine are the holes that smoke enters while liquid stays in. Arguinzoniz’s most famous invention is a laser-perforated pan for cooking risotto.

Caviar? In a double-tiered lidded mesh pan, at 122 degrees and just until it starts sweating oil. Can an egg yolk be grilled? Yes, in a little ringed fine sieve with removable sides, which looks like a miniature cake pan. (Arguinzoniz scrapes the grills every day anyway, to remove the scent of old carbon char and any accumulated drippings.) Rather, he cooks the food in various sievelike baskets and pans he’s created. Very few ingredients are grilled directly on grates. The grills are powered by wood coal that Arguinzoniz prepares himself, twice a day, in two 750-degree ovens. This way, the ingredients’ distance from heat can be regulated with perfect precision. The grates move up and down during cooking through an ingenious system of tracks and pulleys controlled by a wheel. Lining the entire wall of his kitchen are six custom-made, stainless steel grills. Since the necessary tools didn’t exist, Arguinzoniz designed them himself. Taking grill cuisine to unexpected places required a whole new set of equipment. They arrived at the table barely heated through and improbably succulent, with a touch of wood smoke. A few years later, he divined a way of grilling fresh anchovies, sandwiching two tender little butterflied fish together, misting them with Txakoli spray and then cooking them for a nanosecond. Instead, he invented a meshlike stainless steel saucepan and positioned it high above the hot coals. Actually, Arguinzoniz didn’t try to toss them onto the grate either. And so, in the late ’90s, he did the impossible: He grilled angulas, which are so fragile and miniscule no sane chef would ever toss them onto the grate. “What if delicacies like foie gras or spiny lobster met the grill?” he’d fantasize.

The flavors were charred and delicious but one-dimensional, and eventually, inspired by the prime ingredients served at the white-tablecloth restaurants he occasionally visited, he wanted more.

Initially, Arguinzoniz served iconic Basque asador (grill-house) dishes: chuletas (bone-in rib eyes), whole sea bream, cogote de merluza (hake neck).

Steak escape trace fork