Book 7: "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation"

Remy from Ratatouille reminds me a lot of Michael Pollan in his new book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

Is it immature of me to compare one of the most widely praised food journalist/anthropologists of all time to an animated, cooking, talking mouse? Maybe so, but that's the image I kept coming back to while reading Michael Pollan's latest (06/12/2013--currently at #11 on the NY Times Bestseller List). 

Compared to the two previous Pollan books I've read, this one is by far the most "rich." It's full of vivid imagery, person epithets and substantive descriptions of food that made my mouth water on more than one occasion. He's more metaphorical, more nostalgic, more passionate, but somehow a little less convincing in the process. Reading about food is far less interesting than participating in the process, but Cooked comes as close as one can get to complete inundation of the senses. 

Which brings me back to the image of Remy, the diminutive hero of the 2007 Disney-Pixar production. Remy was adrift in Paris, a soul driven by a passion for food, contained in the body of a creature we all deem despicable and consequently bar from our houses and especially the kitchen, the paragon of cleanliness. From his perspective, the world of food was fantastical and magical. His discerning taste was conveyed via shimmering, multicolored  orbs, tiny fireworks and music that sought to capture the guttural feelings we ourselves might associate each item of food he put in his mouth. It was the spectacular imagery that substituted for words and put us in the head of a rat. What Remy lacked, Pollan definitely employed, that is, an expansive vocabulary that he applied as liberally as salt (you'll understand that reference if you read the book). In the absence of visual effects, the words definitely more than suffice.

At the same time, the words were often the root of my boredom. His investigation of the four elements of cooking: fire, liquid, earth and air, and the chronological anthropological timeline he associates with that journey of discovery is a clever, highbrow concept that drew me in. However, stanzas that could have been reduced through more stringent distillation, were passed through, maybe for their sheer elegance and eloquence. You could argue that 400+ pages is an inadequate allowance for a subject as broad and, as he proved, historically significant, as cooking, yet personally I could have done away with a bit of the flowery language, and instead appreciated more time dedicated to cross-cultural comparisons or even a broader examination of Americana cuisine. Or maybe even a few new facts would have done the trick. There was enough redundancy with The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food (and I'm sure The Botany of Desire and Food Rules, although I have yet to read them) that I could not help but feel a little cheated. For an author who has been recognized for lifting the blinders from his fans (upper, upper-middle class I'm sure), he definitely seemed to assume that a fair amount of review was needed. 

As in the previous Pollan works I've read, the book is divided into neat sections. Unlike The Omnivore's Dilemma, the sections of the book are unevenly entertaining. The section "Air," devoted to fermentation by yeasts, is particularly tedious, especially as Pollan discusses (at great length) the process of breadmaking. (I found the chemistry and microbiology intriguiging, but to say that bread undergoes any kind of transformation that I'd want to watch, much less imagine and contemplate, is a gross overexaggeration.) There's always a bit of nostalgia required on the part of the reader to grasp what Pollan is trying to achieve by writing books about the merits of real food. And I have just enough nostalgia to respect methods of preparation preceding the microwave era. His personal epithets and honest self evaluations have always struck me as balanced in the context of his fact finding. The drama of bread making apprentices, lost secret-recipe starter, "meridians of universal energy" and bacteria fucking were all palatable and amusing, but when he proceeded to compare loaf formation to erotica, I just about had had enough.

Whereas grilling has always been associated with a spike in adrenaline, bread making has always been the opposite. Pollan himself is aware that making bread is not so much achieved through the mastery of humans over raw ingredients (ie. grilling) as it is a symbiosis between wheat and the bacterium/yeast that give (literally) rise to it. Grilling requires one's full attention, or at least awareness, whereas bread dough can be kneaded and left alone without consequence. Of course that's the same feeling I had while reading "Air"--I too wished to wander away from the book and come back to enjoy the fully transformed product. In fact, But reading about freshly baked bread is never as fulfilling as tasting it, which made the end of his homemade bread experiment that much more painful to push past. 

After the doldrummery of aeration, I was doubtful that the book would redeem itself with a discussion about fermentation ("Earth"). Fermentation, said many ways by Pollan throughout the section, is our relationship with death. In addition to taking place underground or in inhospitable environments, fermentation has been linked to bacteria, decay, rotting and the human sense of disgust, which is not so much an evolutionary acquisition as a cultural one (Freud of course attributes disgust with our subconscious attraction to it). Fermentation is everywhere and it is experienced by all living organims ("Everything that lives, it seems, must play host to the germ of its own dissolution.") For all the ways that fermentation appears to be a dank subject to explore, it also offers a unique opportunity for human-nature symbiosis wherein we are the facilitators to a plethora of processes beyond our complete control, but from which we attain key markers of culture (ie. cheese, alcoholic beverages, specialized fermented products such as kimchee). Anthropologists have suggested that for all the emphasis on hunting and gathering, it was fermentation that formed us into civilizations and cultures capable of dealing with the inhospitable conditions of nature. At its core, fermentation is the most rudimentary form of food processing, and under the bright fluorescent lights of the modern food industry, maybe the most forgotten. 

Of the section on fermentation, I was most pleased with Pollan's somewhat thorough investigation of the underground movement he calls the "post-Pasteurian world." i have known for years now that microbes are important for balancing our internal systems. To strive for a world free of bacterium would be to doom humans to death, and for most of modern civilization, the movement has been from the animalistic conditions of nature to potent antibacterial solutions and an obsession with cleanliness. Only those who can embrace the complexity of nature will acknowledge the benefits of probiotics and the health benefits of gut wall bacterial cultivation. In addition to helping curb weight gain, gut wall bacteria can help reverse the effects of the Western diet and probably play a part in the most evil of all ailments: inflammation. The pushing out of fermentation techniques in favor of industrialized processing is yet another example of the West's obsession with creating man-made perfection from a system that was perfect to begin with. 

From the years(!) he spent researching and living the elements fire, water, air and earth, Pollan wasn't singularly more impacted by any one of his experiences, although he has managed to incorporate them into his daily life. He ended the book as he always does, with plenty of sap, but what he effectively communicated in the heart of my stomach, is that cooking represents much more than the ingredients involved or the sense of transformation. Cooking, like our decisions about what to eat, involve supply chains and a close investigation of where our food comes from. Neither connection is new to me after having read two previous works, but the weight of anthropology, culture and emotion were much more strongly felt in this book. Pollan admits that advancements in food processing and specialization has eliminated much of the economic advantages to cooking at home. He also tells us, and proves effectively by the end of the book, that there's more to life than the economy. We have to remember our families and culture, which are inescapably intertwined with food and cooking. Yes, there are health-related reasons for cooking your own food, but the benefits are most directly felt through the relationships we have with one another during the process. Maybe social benefits are less tangibly measured, but we feel it in the strength of our family and communal ties, our awareness of our place in global cuisine and the links we maintain with our evolutionary past. 

A book that sustains, rises, stumbles and ultimately leaves a pleasant taste. Rating: 4.5/5

The fruits of my labor: look how many pretty tabs I used! (And check out the Logitech iPad Mini Ultrathin Keyboard Cover I'm using to type this blogpost!)