COOKED: A REVIEW.
"We are the only species that depends on fire to maintain our body heat, and the only species that can't get along without cooking its food. By now, the control of fire is folded into our genes, a matter not merely of human culture but of our very biology."-Michael Pollan, Cooked
I enjoy Michael Pollan's work and have read all but one of his books, but when I heard about his new endeavor, "Cooked" (published by The Penguin Press), I was skeptical. I was skeptical because of the name—which sounded to me like the title of a bad chef memoir—and I was skeptical because of the premise. In "Cooked," Pollan apprentices himself to "a succession of culinary masters," in sections themed Fire, Water, Air and Earth. But that wasn't necessarily the source of my skepticism. Where I became dubious, was at the focus of the first section: barbecue.It's not that I didn't care about barbecue—quite the opposite when offered a good plate of the stuff—it's that I didn't know if I really cared to read about it. I thought we simply didn't eat enough meat to necessitate an education on the subject. In my mind, barbecue was a rare and decadent event where, more often than not, we put aside our ethical leanings, dump sauce over some factory-farmed pulled pork and make a mess of our beards, ideals and shirts, respectfully. And to some extent, my definition wasn't far off. But what I hadn't considered before reading "Cooked" was that my relationship to barbecue wasn't just some moral confusion and a few ruined items of clothing, but that I actually cared a lot more about barbecue than I realized.If Hannah and I don't start a fire, we don't eat hot food. And I would say it's this necessity that's rendered me downright obsessed with starting fires. Every day, I watch each fire burn, transfixed by the magic like a child at a puppet show. I observe carefully how different woods burn and smell, how the fire dances, drunk on oxygen, gorging on carbon. I relish the flavor of a squash licked by flames, cooked by the hot coals of oak. I enjoy this act in some sort of primordial fashion that I'd never questioned until "Cooked", until barbecue.And it didn't end at barbecue. Pollan goes on to explain our need and love for wood-cooked food, for food cooked in pots, bread and, my personal favorite, fermentation. "Cooked" turned out to be precisely the kind of book I wanted it to be (title notwithstanding). It was a book that connected me, biologically, to the act of cooking food, which is all I ever ask for in a book. I love to know why. Why do we cook? Why salt? Why cheese? Why beer? I could read books that simply answer "why" indefinitely, and the more of them written by Michael Pollan, the better.You can find "Cooked" online, but all books read better when picked up at your local bookstore (except for mine, which is paradoxically only online).- Jesse.