BOOK REVIEW: Michael Pollan Books-Part 2: Cooked A Natural History of Transformation

I know it has been 2 years since I started this review but Part two of my Michael Pollan book review series is on the book Cooked A Natural History of Transformation.  If you missed the first part on The Omnivore's Dilemma you can find it here (or if you just forgot since its been so long). While Omnivores Dillemma was a must read book because of its huge impact on food politics in this country, Cooked was the book I needed in my life. Essentially this book is about the lost art of cooking. 

Who needs to read this book: Anyone who gets stressed out from cooking. People who like to cook will find this book interesting . 

What are four "Perspectives" in this book: 

• Fire: Fire focuses on the "real" way to cook southern whole pig barbeque. If you eat meat I don't know how you can read this chapter and not have a craving for good pulled pork.
• Water: This focuses on braising food. Seriously I will never look at sauteeing onions the same way again.
• Air: BAKING BREAD!!! I love love loved this section...more so because this was something I could try out in my own house. I went to whole foods asked the baker for some of his sour dough starter (he was great he brought me into the back of the bakery and showed me the "mother"). I started storing my real "whole grain" flour in the fridge and  I went through a phase where the only bread in the house was bread that I baked. That had to be put on hold though when I gained 5 lbs just from all the bread I was baking.  Now days I don't bake as much bread but the whole experience reminded me the importance of real "whole grain" flour and now I try to make chapatis at least once a week (chapati flour is a true whole grain flour). 
• Earth:  This section is about fermenting foods, specifically vegatables (think pickle, kimchi etc.), animals (i.e. milk into cheese) and Alcohol (no explanation needed).  I am a smelly cheese junkie so the section on raw milk cheese had me heading to Whole foods cheese counter. One of these days I will make my own mozzerella but for now, Whole foods cheese counter is going to have to do.

If you don't like to read... but are interested in this-  Once again I have two options for you. 

1) The audio book (for my local friends, yes our local library system has this book both paper and audio). This was one of my favorites because Michael Pollan himself was narrator for this audio book. You don't often get to hear an author read there own work (at least I don't) and hearing the exclamations and inflections come straight from the author himself was really great.

2) Watch  Cooked on Netflix this is a four episode series on Netflix (one series for each "Perspective" in the book). As with most film adaptations of books, they do not go into nearly as much depth as the book however they are still really fun to watch, In each of the the netflix episodes he adds some of his other research not discussed in the book: dubba wallas of Mumbai, India, a Aboriginal tribe in Australia, traditional bread making in Morrocco, fermenting Cacao beans in the amazon, and other traditional alcohol fermenting culture none of which are mentioned in the books. 


Some of my favorite quotes:

"How is it that at the precise historical moment when Americans were abandoning the kitchen, handing over the preparation of most of our meals to the food industry, we began spending so much of our time thinking about food and watching other people cook it on television? The less cooking we were doing in our own lives, it seemed, the more that food and its vicarious preparation transfixed us."

"The very same activity that many people regard as a form of drudgery has somehow been elevated to a popular spectator sport. "