Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Michael Pollan has the amazing ability to take the mundane (corn, building a workshop, plant seeds) and make it fascinating. So it shouldn't come as a surprised that Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation could take something many of us take for granted and turn it into an incredible journey. Pollan opens the book by explaining the day that realized that all of the questions that occupy his time seem to lead back to cooking. How to improve your health? Cooking. Good way to connect with the family? Cooking (and brewing). The most important thing we can do to help reform the American food complex? Cooking. Pollan admits he has always been mildly interested in the act, but it wasn't until he realized how important it could be that he began wanting to learn how to do it in earnest. Pollan realized that though American's seem to be obsessed with cooking (Top Chef, The Taste, Anthony Bourdain, Hell's Kitchen) we seem to do very little of it. Pollan breaks down his education into four sections, much like he broke down The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma. The first section, called Fire, starts out at a North Carolina BBQ. It's here that Pollan strives to solve the mystery of "pig-plus-wood-smoke-plus-time" and what makes it so darn good. He spends time with pit-masters, learning the find art of the fire, which involves everything from Freudian theory, ancient gods and the Bible to chemistry and, of course, Big Meat. Before his fire education will be over, the reader will journey with Pollan to Manhattan, Berkeley, Spain and back again. From there we dive into Water, which starts out, inexplicably, with chopping onions. As any home cook knows, onions are a basic element of cooking, but did you ever consider what evolutionary advantage onion tears could possibly have for the onion? In this section, Pollan tackles water in a seven-step recipe that walks through copping, sautéing, browning, braising and finishing. But of course, this being Michael Pollan, nothing is quite that simple. While learning about braising the reader also gets an education in chemistry and the mystery of umami. On to Air, which is all about baking. Pollan breaks down bread into its most pure form "an ingenious technology for improving the flavor... of grass." Here we learn about evolution and, as Pollan spends his time with master bakers, fermentation. Any other author might have trouble linking such disparate ideas as bacteria and engineering, but this section ambles easily between the two ideas. Pollan doesn't spend all of this time in his home kitchen mastering the art of crumb and crust, however, and he takes us from the blue surf waves of the ocean to the industrial Hostess plant all in the name of understanding air (can I have his job?). Finally, we come to earth, or "Fermentation's Cold Fire." As you would imagine, it is here that Pollan turns his eye to vegetables and animals, but the section starts out with death. Bacteria, mold and even Jello gets its due as Pollan takes us into the garden and into the soil for making kimchi. From there we head to the dairy farm where we learn about milk and its more popular big brother, cheese. Pollan works along side cheese master Sister Noella in Connecticut, learning the amazingly intricate ins and outs of cheese creation. This section is also the one in which Pollan address alcohol, which is right at home among the vegetables, it turns out. The story of beer and spirits is one of biology, of course, but also history and culture. In the end, this isn't just a book about learning to cook, nor should it be considered an addendum to The Omnivore's Dilemma. Though Pollan tackles some of the same issues (health, agribusiness and the human body), Cooked is the retelling of a journey. And the opportunity to meet these culinary superstars is wonderful, but it is only a fraction of the story. Of course there is the requisite finding of the satisfaction of making your own foods, but the bigger aspect is the author and reader's education in the nature of the world and of human culture. Whether you are familiar with Pollan's previous work or not, this is a must read for anyone who is even remotely curious about the world around us.