I’m actually a little surprised that I made it halfway
through this year before completely succumbing to a Distraction: a book I haven’t
read before but I nonetheless must read. Cooked,
the newest book by one of my favorite authors, also happens to be about one of
my favorite subjects: food and cooking. Once I had access to this book, I didn’t
stand a chance of sticking solely with all those Books I’ve Read Before.
Cooked is Michael
Pollan’s chronicle of learning to cook from scratch in terms of four elements: fire,
water, air, earth. In the realm of fire, he explores whole hog pit barbecue.
For water, he learns to braise. Air is the element leavening the sourdough
bread he learned to make and earth is the natural home of the microbes he
borrowed to ferment vegetables, milk and grains. This, to me, was a surprising
way to organize a book on cooking and it proved to be very interesting.
Of course, Pollan isn’t just going to give us a recipe
diary. The book is filled with accounts of his time with experts on each
subject (I particularly like the cheese-making, microbiologist nun) and more of
his characteristic quality journalism along with tactful but frank opinions. Plenty
of facts and techniques, successful and less successful ventures are all chronicled
in detail.
Through this giant set of cooking lessons, Pollan doesn’t just
emphasize the importance of good recipes, quality ingredients, and healthy
eating. The real answers to questions
about why anyone should want to cook when just about anything one needs is commercially
(and usually affordably) available are complex and have as much or more to do
with connections between people. And using the four traditional elements to
transform products of the environment into nourishment for human communities
has been the key to the idea of “cooking” for all of history.
You might also like: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
A Year of Books I’ve Read Before
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