'Cooks get to put their hands on real stuff, not just keyboards and screens but fundamental things like plants and animals and fungi. They get to work with primal elements, too, fire and water, earth and air, using them - mastering them! - to perform their tasty alchemies.' In a culture of celebrity chefs and food reality shows, in countries which are crammed with fresh ingredients flown in from every corner of the Earth, we nonetheless year-on-year wade ever deeper into a great swamp of processed foods. The more we watch food on television, the less food we actually prepare and cook. Michael Pollan's marvellous new book is a clarion-call for the virtues and values of proper cooking - an essential, defining human activity which sits at the heart of our cultures, shapes family life and is in itself hugely enjoyable. In a series of brilliantly observed encounters with chefs from around the world, Pollan takes us on a journey through the fundamentals of cooking, uncovering the inner mysteries of everything from tiny specks of yeast to a whole hog roast. The result is an extremely funny and surprising book that encourages us to revel in the magical activity of making food.
