Cooked

If you know me well, you likely know that I love to read. What you may not know, because I am ashamed to admit it, is that I rarely finish a book. I think it is largely because I like to read several books at a time, and because nearly all books appeal to me - by the time I get half-way into one book, I'm on to another that piqued my interest.

I've been getting better in the last year or two, and this year I aim to read one book at a time and to finish every book (unless I don't enjoy the book, of course, because life is too short to slug through a boring or unpleasant book). As a result of my new discipline toward reading, I've finally finished a great book that I have been reading off/on since October - Cooked by Michael Pollan.

From the moment I picked up this book, I loved it.

The book offers evolutionary perspectives on cooking from social science and natural science lenses. Pollan focuses his study on the transformations that occur in the process of cooking - transformations at the molecular level, transformations to the natural world more broadly, and transformations to human culture.

In addition to the scientific approaches that he uses to explain cooking, Pollan also adds a personal level to the book by including anecdotes from his own apprenticeships with BBQ pit masters, chefs, bakers, cheese-makers, brewers, etc. across the globe. This helps to balance the "heady" aspects of the book with down-to-earth experiences cooking from scratch.

One of my favorite aspects of the book is that it values a variety of epistemologies. There is not one type of knowledge prized in this book - he includes perspectives from academics and scientists, but also from food producers from every walk of life (blue collar BBQ men, a cheese-making microbiologist nun, and so many more).

The book is divided into four sections - Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Each of these elements corresponds to a different form of cooking - Fire: meats over fire, Water: braises, pot meals, etc., Air: breads, Earth: fermented foods/drinks.

Pollan examines not only how and why these forms of cooking have evolved, but also discusses the place where we have arrived. Today we cook far less and buy more prepared meals than ever. Americans spend less time cooking than people in any other country, but the downward trend is global. Yet at the same time, we have elevated professional chefs to household names, we watch more cooking shows on TV, and we are seeing a revival movement of from-scratch baking, home-brewing, canning, etc. It is an interesting cultural development, and I enjoyed reading Pollan's theories behind this "Cooking Paradox."

While I've read other books by Pollan (though I may or may not have finished them...), I found Cooked particularly compelling. He has a wonderful voice - intelligent, inquisitive, but also humble and with a dash of good humor.

This passage of the book struck me as representative of Pollan's message for us:

"To brew beer, to make cheese, to bake a loaf of bread, to braise a pork shoulder, is to be forcibly reminded that all these things are not just products, in fact are not even really 'things.' Most of what presents itself to us in the marketplace as a product is in truth a web of relationships between people, yes, but also between ourselves an all the other species on which we still depend....The beer in that bottle, I'm reminded as soon as I brew it myself, ultimately comes not from a factory but from nature - from a field of barley snapping in the wind, from a hops vine clambering over a trellis, from a host of invisible microbes feasting on sugars. It took the carefully orchestrated collaboration of three far-flung taxonomic kingdoms - plants, animals, and fungi - to produce that ale. To make it yourself, once in a while, to handle the barley and inhale the aroma of hops and yeast, becomes, among other things, a form of observance, a weekend ritual of remembrance.

The world becomes literally more wonderful (and wonderfully more literal) as soon as we are reminded of these relationships. They unfold over the span of evolutionary time but also over the course of a few hours on a Sunday in an neighbor's backyard."