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cooked_by_pollan [2013-08-23 08:50] – lies | cooked_by_pollan [2014-01-08 14:19] – Links to foam_library changed to library:foam_library alkan | ||
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==== Cooked By Michael Pollan ==== | ==== Cooked By Michael Pollan ==== | ||
- | [[reading notes]] from **Cooked** (present in the [[foam library]] https:// | + | [[reading notes]] from **Cooked** (present in the [[library:foam library]] https:// |
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* [[dough and bread]] | * [[dough and bread]] | ||
* [[category food]] | * [[category food]] | ||
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+ | Above all else, what I found in the kitchen is that cooking // | ||
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+ | __Specialization__ is undeniably a powerful social and economic force. And yet it is also debilitating. It breeds helplessness, | ||
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+ | In a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization - against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. (...) Cooking has the power to transform more than plants and animals: it transforms us, too, from mere consumers into __producers__. | ||
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+ | FIRE | ||
+ | the control of fire | ||
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+ | According to Levi-Strauss the distinction between "the raw" and "the cooked" | ||
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+ | The braise or boil, since it cooks meat all the way through, achieves a more complete transcendence of the animal, and perhaps the animal in us, than does grilling over a fire, which leaves its object partly or entirely intact, and ofen leaves a trace of blood - a visible reminder, in other words, that this is a formerliy living creature we're feasting on. | ||
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+ | But I suspect that , as much as anything else, grilling meat over a fire today commemorates the transformative power of cooking itself, which never appears so bright or explicit as when wood and fire and flesh are brought togehter under __that aromatic empire of smoke__. | ||
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+ | Cooking, even though it may start by breaking things down, is the opposite of entropy, erecting complex new molecular structures from simpler forms. | ||
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+ | Yet however arbitrary such prohibitions may be, they retain the power to knit us together, __help forge a collective identity__: //We are the people who don't eat pork//. (...) forms of social glue | ||
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+ | Compared with the contemporary chef, the pit masters present themselves __less as artists than as prietsts__ (...) They' | ||
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+ | The microwave is as antisocial as the cook fire is communal. | ||
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+ | WATER | ||
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+ | That is (...) how economists seem to view the question of work and leisure: as antithetical terms that neatly line up with the equally antithetical categories of __production and consumption__. (...) As a political matter, is home cooking today a reactionary or a progressive way to spend one's time? | ||
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+ | With a modicum of technique and a little more time in the kitchen, the most flavorful food can be made from the humblest of ingredients. This enduring formula suggests that learning one's way around the kitchen - knowing what to do with the gnarly cut, the mirepoix, and the humble pot - might still be a good recipe for eating delicious food without spending much to make it. These are skills that confer __a measure of independence__. | ||
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+ | (...) __salt__ - the only mineral we deliberately eat - (...) Most of the salt we eat comes from the processed foods (...) "So, if you don't eat a lot of processed foods, you don't need to worry about it. Which means: Don't ever be afraid of salt!" (...) salt brings out the intrinsic flavors of many foods and can improve their texture and appearance. | ||
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+ | Historically, | ||
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+ | (...) roasting and boiling (...) " | ||
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+ | If the first gatronomic revolution unfolded under the sign of community, gathered around the animal roasting on the fire, and the second that of the family, gathered around the stew pot, then the third one, now well under way, seems to be consecrated to the individual: //Have it your way//. | ||
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+ | the __" | ||
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+ | In the story of a stew, the pot is the stage and the water the hero (...), the elemental actor that supplies unity of character and makes things happen. | ||
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+ | The difference between innate taste and learned smell (...) | ||
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+ | Like salt and sugar, (__umami__) evokes a universally positive response and, also like them, it signals the presence of an essential nutrient, in this case protein. | ||
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+ | But though umami can make a food taste " | ||
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+ | (...) __dashi__, the classic Japanese stock (...) a cooking water designed, albeit unwittingly, | ||
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+ | (...) __human breast milk__ is rich in this particular (umami) taste. | ||
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+ | "Stone soup" is the __ancient parable of this everyday miracle, of turning water into food__. In the story, which has been told for centuries in many different cultures (sometimes as "Nail Soup" or " | ||
+ | "Stone soup," the strangers explain. " | ||
+ | "You have given us the greatest gift," one of the village elders declares, "the secret of how to make soup from stones." | ||
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+ | These days, recipes are steeped in the general sense of panic about time, and so have tried to speed everything up, the better to suit "our busy lives." | ||
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