Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (66 page)

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———.
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MacKay and I had good results with several of these recipes.

Cooked
is the story of my education,
so I want first to thank all my extraordinary teachers, for their generosity and
patience as much as for their knowledge.

In the arts of cooking with fire, I was
privileged to learn from a great pit master, Ed Mitchell. But I had tutorials with
several other masters of smoke and want to thank Francis Mallmann for several inspiring
sessions in Texas, Alice Waters for sharing her passion for the grill (and her restless
flipping technique), and Bittor Arguinonez for admitting me into the sanctuary of his
kitchen. I also learned a lot about grilling from Jack Hitt, Mike Emmanuel, and Chuck
Adams. Thanks too to Lisa Abend, for her guidance, translation, and good company in
Spain, and to Dan Barber for encouraging me to go there in the first place. John T.
Edge, at the Southern Foodways Alliance, could not have been more generous with his
knowledge and contacts in the barbecue world. Thanks also to Joe Nick Patoski for a
memorable introduction to the cuisine that Texans call barbecue, to Greg Hatem for his
hospitality in North Carolina, Peter Kaminsky for his
insights into
both barbecue and pigs, and to “Kitchen Sister” Davia Nelson, for her leads
and generosity.

Not only this chapter, but the entire book
owes a tremendous debt to Richard Wrangham, for his pathbreaking writings on how cooking
made us human, which I’ve drawn on throughout, and for taking the time to educate
me about the “cooking hypothesis.”

In learning about cooking in pots (which is
to say “cooking,” as the term is generally understood), I could not have
done better than to apprentice myself to Samin Nosrat, who, besides being a great cook,
turns out to be a brilliant teacher as well. Her contribution to this project extends
far beyond the dishes and lessons she taught me; she also introduced me to grillers and
bakers and fermenters, and was a continual source of timely advice, good company, and
general inspiration. Amaryll Schwertner also welcomed me into her kitchen at
Boulette’s Larder and gave me a valuable lesson on braising, as well as the
importance of even the most minor ingredient. Sylvan Mishima Brackett generously taught
me how to make the magic water known as dashi. A bit further from the stove, Harry
Balzer at the market research firm NPD gave me a graduate education in how Americans eat
and think about food. Mark Kurlansky deepened my appreciation for salt, Jerry Bertrand
for flavor, Richard Wilk for ritual. My exchanges with, and readings of, Joan Dye Gussow
and Janet Flammang proved crucial as I navigated the treacherous waters of gender in the
kitchen.

Getting to know Chad Robertson and learning
how to bake even a pale imitation of a Tartine loaf was one of the highlights of this
project. His stance toward the craft of baking—focused, uncompromising, never
complacent—became an example to me, and not only in the kitchen. Lori Oyamada and Nathan
Yanko, bakers at Tartine, could not have been more hospitable or generous or fun to work
with. Keith Giusto and Joseph Vanderliet shared some of the secrets of milling (and
millers are a secretive bunch) as well as their superb flours.
Thanks
also to Richard Bourdon and Dave Miller for welcoming me into their bakeries, as well as
to Steve Sullivan at Acme in Berkeley, Craig Ponsford at Ponsford’s Place in San
Rafael, Kathleen Weber at Della Fattoria in Petaluma, and Mike Zakowski, “the
Bejkr” at the Sonoma farmers’ market. Bob Klein at Community Grains (and
Oliveto) admitted me into his “Grain Trust” and invited me to my first
“wheat tasting.” Monica Spiller, David R. Jacobs, and Steve Jones shared
their deep knowledge about whole-grain milling and nutrition. Cereal scientists David
Killilea and Russell Jones taught me all about the seed itself; Glenn Roberts, Jon
Faubion, R. Carl Hoseney, and Peter Reinhart shared their expertise. Emily Buehler
answered myriad queries about sourdough fermentation. I learned much about wheat and
other grasses from the work of Richard Manning and Evan Eisenberg. And the Rominger
family not only welcomed me to their farm, but had the questionable judgment to let me
take the wheel of their combine and harvest a few rows of their wheat. Thanks to
biologist Michael Eisen, my colleague at Berkeley, for generously offering to sequence
the genome of my sourdough starter in his lab; I only wish I could have made more sense
of the results. Chef Daniel Patterson, perfumer Mandy Aftel, and neuroscientist Gordon
M. Shepherd tutored me in olfaction and inspired some helpful experiments.

I’m in debt to all the many fermentos
who guided me through so many personally uncharted territories, but especially to Sandor
Katz, to cheese maker Sister Noëlla, and to the brewers, amateur and pro alike: Shane
MacKay, Will Rogers, Adam Lamoreaux, and Kel Alcala. Though I didn’t end up
writing about them, several other cheese makers gave freely of their time and knowledge
and so left their mark on these pages: Soyoung Scanlan of Andante, Marcia Barinaga of
Barinaga Ranch, and Sue Conley at Cowgirl Creamery. Thank you, Alex Hozven, for sharing
your story and letting me work at the Cultured Pickle—my time there vastly improved my
pickling, in theory as well
as practice. In Korea, I had a wonderful
guide to traditional ferments in farmer and Slow Food leader Kim Byung Soo, and got a
priceless lesson in the making of kimchi and the meaning of “hand taste”
from Hyeon Hee Lee. While researching fermentation, a generous and deeply knowledgeable
group of academic fermentos gave me a crash course in microbiology and food science:
Bruce German, who opened my eyes over and over again; Patrick Brown, friend of the
fungi; Maria Marco, my guide to the kingdom of lactobacillus; and Rachel Dutton, pioneer
of the cheese-rind ecosystem. Thanks also to Momofuko fermentos David Chang and Daniel
Felder. I don’t personally know Burkhard Bilger, but he must be a closet fermento;
I learned much from his writings on the subject in the
New Yorker
. Joel Kimmons
at the CDC was an inspiring guide to the microbiome and so much more.