January 2008 Archives
Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?
Because most of what we're consuming today is not food, and
how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly
alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible
foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food
science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first
clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has
been replaced by nutrients and common sense by confusion. The result is what
Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition,
the less healthy we seem to become.
But if real food -- the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food -- stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help.
So what makes this book so different? The author Michael Pollan, has developed a good background in this area. His previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001); A Place of My Own (1997); and Second Nature (1991). Michael is also a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. Pollan served for many years as executive editor of Harper's Magazine and is now teaching Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley.
I have found the book to be very credible, informative and enjoyable. I am sure that anyone whom eats to live will enjoy this fine book also.
This is not your typical cookbook. This is for lack of a better description a great how-to book and a culinary encyclopedia!
It is not something that you buy to set on a coffee table for guests to thumb through pictures for it only has drawings. I have never read a book on cooking that I refer back to as often as this one.
Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic.
Hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first
appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers; novice
and professionals turn for an unmatched understanding of where foods come from,
what they're made of, and how the process of cooking transforms them.
McGee prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking for the books 20th anniversary. McGee has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and added more than 100 new illustrations. The new edition of On Food and Cooking provides countless insights into food, preparation, and enjoyment.
From the publisher:
On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical
food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the
inventive culinary movement known as "molecular gastronomy." Though
other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking
remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations,
and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution
of foods and cooking techniques.
Among the major themes addressed throughout this new edition
are:
* Traditional and
modern methods of food production and their influences on food quality
* The great
diversity of methods by which people in different places and times have
prepared the same ingredients
* Tips for
selecting the best ingredients and preparing them successfully
* The particular
substances that give foods their flavors and that give us pleasure
* Our evolving
knowledge of the health benefits and risks of foods
On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.
Harold McGee writes a column on science and food for the New York Times called The Curious Cook and has a blog where he files
". . . brief reports from the intersection of food and science. It's a lively neighborhood these days. There's a constant influx of new information in food chemistry and microbiology, agriculture and manufacturing, and in human perception and health. I glean items from current technical publications and scientific meetings, from conversations with cooks and scientists, and from questions that come up in my own kitchen in the San Francisco Bay area." - Harold McGee
You can see the table of contents and read excerpts of the book on his website Curious Cook as well as see links to his New York Times article. The current Times article is titled; The Invisible Ingredient in Every Kitchen but there are many more and hopefully Harold will continue to share is insightful and much needed knowledge for the rest of us just trying to catch up.
