Written by MICHAEL POLLAN
Format: MP3 An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2013: Who has untangled the nature of modern AmericaΓÇÖs relationship with food more effectively than Michael Pollan? After sharing the experience of growing his own food in Second Nature, he illuminated how our appetites drive the evolution of edible plants with The Botany of Desire. Then he pondered The OmnivoreΓÇÖs Dilemma, weighing our precarious food chain and popularizing the pleasures of eating local; In Defense of Food and Food Rules distilled his conclusions into a manifesto and a manual. With Cooked, he closes the seed-to-table loop with a passionate exploration of the satisfying transformation of grilling, braising, baking, and fermenting--and their primal roots. Learning to cook elevated humans from lone animals into increasingly intelligent, civilized groups, and though we spend scant time doing real cooking, weΓÇÖve become obsessed with watching people cook--a paradox that points to longing for a lost experience. Through his own experiences making and enjoying food with pit masters, chefs, bakers, and ΓÇ£fermentos,ΓÇ¥ he retraces our path to connection with real ingredients and health for people and planet. Whether youΓÇÖre sympathetic or skeptical, you canΓÇÖt help but appreciate PollanΓÇÖs genius for conveying the elemental appeal of making a meal. --Mari Malcolm From Bookforum
Even when he's championing his ethical concerns, Pollan is a researcher, a prodigious gatherer and synthesizer of vast reams of information. Having throughly scutinized every other link in the food chain, he finally turns his skills to the one link missing from his repertoire. And in the process, he learned to cook. The chapters and their signature recipes are meant to stand in for the traditional four elements (water, earth, air, and fire). And each of these natural forces, Pollan writes, signifies one of the "great transformations of nature into culture we call cooking." The author's project is, in fact, nearly as all encompassing and essential as the elements themselves, ranging across several disciplines, embracing perspectives both stringently objective and deeply personal, and introducing us to a novel's worth of colorful characters whom he enlists to teach him the cooking method at hand. Cooked is a potently seductive invitation to discoverΓÇöor rediscoverΓÇö our most primal connection to the natural world, and it will likely induce more than a few readers to dust off their little-used pots and pans and to brush up on some essential knife skills. The only problem with Cooked is that, at a lengthyΓÇöalbeit entrancingΓÇö450-some pages, it'll be quite a while before you get back into the kitchen. ΓÇöLinda Delibero