My thoughts on Cooked

Pollan giving a TedTalk (From Wikipedia)

One of my "intellectual idols" would have to be Michael Pollan. I've been interested in his work after watching Botany of Desire, Food, Inc., and the Ted Talk he gave from the plants' perspective. I agree with many of his ideas on food and enjoy hearing him speak on them. I admire the work he has done to provide some clarity of what is going on with the modern day food system.

Cooked is Pollan's latest book that takes a look at the history of four cooking methods, barbecue, braise, bake, and ferment. The narrative is Pollan's journey to learn about these methods from masters of each of these crafts that tangentially bounces to the historic, psychological, and scientific stories related to each technique*. I am completely envious of this experience because it involves two things that love to do, cook and learn; to have been able to take the time to learn from masters of these cooking techniques is just awesome and something that hardly anyone could afford to do. However, his writing gives the impression that learning each techniques is within reach and cooking school is not a must.  For each method, I kept thinking to myself, "I could do that." While currently do not have lots of time to try each of these cooking methods at the moment (kind of hard at the moment being a student and a new teacher), I definitely want to try each technique. Oh, and I want to make the note that I do cook at home right now, but not with the type of cooking styles Pollan uses. I'll admit that I'm hoping this summer could be a time that I can try my hand at making a loaf of bread, braise a nice cut of meat, or even try my hand at barbecue this summer. I greatly recommend this book who enjoys good food and wants to be voyeuristic about learning how to cook.

*I wanted to also note that I read this as an audiobook, which helped out a lot. In the past, I tried to read In Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilema, but I had gotten so caught up in the tangental narratives that I would ge frustrated and not finished. This time, it went so much smoother and I really enjoyed the fact that Pollan reads the book himself. It helps provide clarity to the narrative. I would definitely recommend this book as an audio book, and now plan on using this format to complete the other Pollan books on my shelf.