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--- cooked_by_pollan [2013-09-06 08:31] – lies
+++ cooked_by_pollan [2018-10-25 13:57] (current) – nik
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-==== Cooked By Michael Pollan ====
+==== Cooked — Michael Pollan ====
-[[reading notes]] from **Cooked** (present in the [[foam library]] https://www.zotero.org/groups/foam_library/items/itemKey/4MP2FF5D )
+[[reading notes]] from **Cooked** (present in the [[library:foam library]] https://www.zotero.org/groups/foam_library/items/itemKey/4MP2FF5D )
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 But though umami can make a food taste "meaty", meat is only one of the many sources of __glutamate__. (...) Ripe tomatoes, dried mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, cured anchovies, and a great many fermented foods (including soy sauce and miso paste) contain high levels of glutamte (...) A bit like salt, glutamate seems to italicize the taste of foods, but, unlike salt, it doens't have an instantly recognizable taste of its own. (...) It's possible that the umami chemicals activate not only the sense of taste in our mouths, but also trip the sense of touch as well, creating an illusion of "body".
+(...) __dashi__, the classic Japanese stock (...) a cooking water designed, albeit unwittingly, to contain as much umami and as little of anything else as possible (...) made from dried seaweed, shavings from a cured fish, and optionally, a dried mushroom or two. But it so happens that each of those items contains a different one of the three principal umami chemicals. Put all three in water and you get synergies that vastly amplify the umami effects.
+(...) __human breast milk__ is rich in this particular (umami) taste.
+"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 "Button Soup" or "Ax Soup"), some poor, hungry strangers come to town with nothing but an empty pot. The villagers refuse them food, so the strangers fill thier pot with water, drop a stone in it, and put it on to boil in the town square. This arouses the curiosity of the villagers, who ask the strangers what it is they're making.
+"Stone soup," the strangers explain. "It's delicious, as you'll soon see, but it would taste even better if you could spare a little garnish to help flavor it." So one villagers gives them a sprig of parsley. Then another remembers she has some potato peelings at home; which she fetches and drops into the pot. Someone else throws in an onion and a carrot, and then another villager offers a bone. As the kettle boils, one villager after another comes by to throw in a scrap of this, a bit of that, until the soup had thickened into something nourishing and wonderful that everyone -villagers and strangers - sits down to enjoy toghether at a great feast.
+"You have given us the greatest gift," one of the village elders declares, "the secret of how to make soup from stones."
+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." In the case of braises and stews, this usually means cranking up the cooking temperature (...) __Time__ is everything in these dishes. (...) "Smile" - hatch a tiny bubble now and then, but never boil. (...) __low and slow cooking__ (...) Time is the missing ingredient in our recipes - and in our lives.