Book Review

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan, Penguin, 2014.

This is a brilliant exploration of how we humans have learned to transform the raw materials of vegetables or meat into delicious and nutritious foods. Pollan explores just four types of ‘cooking’ through the medium of the four ancient elements, fire, water, air and earth, which cooks use in their magical work of alchemy. In the course of his investigations into cooking with each element, he visits, cooks with and learns from an amazing variety of skilled cooks, bakers and cheesemakers, brewers and fermenters. Cooked is the story of his further education, as he apprentices himself to these masters. So in “Fire” he learns the techniques of cooking whole animals over an open fire; in “Water” he deals with cooking in a vessel, boiling and braising; in “Air” baking; and in “Earth” fermenting – cheesemaking and brewing.

He believes learning to cook is “the most important thing an ordinary person can do to help reform’ our modern ‘food system, to make it healthier and more sustainable” and to help “people living in a highly specialised consumer economy reduce their sense of dependence and achieve a greater degree of self-sufficiency”. Anyone who reads his section on modern industrial breadmaking, for example, will come away questioning the benefits of packaged or supermarket produced bread. We may each take inspiration from a different element – I’m never for example going to embark on cooking whole animals over an open fire – but I was riveted by the exploration of fermenting and pickling as the most ancient form of food preservation and am determined to learn more. This is in the ‘Earth’ section, because the microbes and bacteria (yes, beneficial ones!) that make this possible are a part of the earth itself. His often quoted statement ‘Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting’ now makes excellent sense to me.

His gentle, humorous style is a delight, never guilt inducing. His curiosity and determination to reach excellence are impressive. And the quest for natural foods, carefully cooked at home from fresh ingredients, is one many of us are happy with on Arran. Our ‘shopping’ choices may seem more limited but looked at from Pollan’s perspective, we have an abundance of natural foods, and all the elemental help we could wish for.

Sue Weaver