Lexie Carroll’s Reviews > Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation > Status Update

The microbes needed for bread fermentation are probably everywhere, but their growth is dependent on the baker controlling the environment: food & feeding schedule, ambient temperature, amount of water.
Frequent feedings & warm temperatures favor the yeasts, creating an airy milder loaf; less feedings & refrigeration favors the bacteria, leading to a more acidic environment, and more strongly flavored bread.

Bread fermentation depends on a symbiotic relationship between a yeast (Candida milleri) and a bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis). Each microbe consumes a different type of sugar, so they don’t compete for food. When the yeasts die their proteins break down into amino acids needed by the bacteria. L.s also produces acids that C.m. is fine with but that discourage other yeasts & bacteria.

On microwaving food:
“Is there any more futile, soul irradiating experience than standing before the little window on a microwave oven watching the carousel slowly revolve your frozen block of dinner? Time spent this way might be easier than cooking, but it is not enjoyable and surely not ennobling. It is to feel spiritually unemployed, useless to self and humanity.”

“Once I committed a couple of hours to being in the kitchen, I found my usual impatience fade & could give myself over to the afternoon’s unhurried project…There’s something about such work that seems to alter the experience of time, helps me to reoccupy the present tense. ‘When chopping onions, JUST chop onions.’ One of the great luxuries of life at this point is to be able to do ONE thing at a time.”

Time (slow cooking) is an essential ingredient in braises. When you first cook meat (a muscle), it tenses up (tight/tough), but after more time it “relaxes”.
Start a braise in the oven at 200 with the lid off, for 2 hours. This brings the liquid to ~ 120 which allows enzymes to break down connective tissues. Then cover the pot and increase temp to 250, until the meat reaches 180 (3-4 hrs): collagen melts=tender!

Umami Foods:
Tomatoes
Dried mushrooms
Parmesan
Cured anchovies
Meat stocks
Bacon
Soy sauce & miso
Dashi broth (kombu kelp + dried bonito fish)
* breast milk! (amino acids are cellular fuel & molecular building blocks of special value to growing stomach & intestinal tissues)

Umami, like sweet & salty, is a taste we are innately drawn to, as it signals the presence of an essential nutrient (protein). Protein contains long chains of amino acid building blocks. The 3 mains of umami are glutamate, inosinate & guanylate, and they have a synergistic effect, amplifying each other when combined. They don’t taste like much on their own, but intensify (italicize) the savory ingredients in a dish

Why are onions such a classic staple foundation in pot cooking dishes? They are the 2nd most important vegetable crop (after tomatoes), grow almost anywhere (cheap & available) & add sweetness. They also contain powerful antimicrobial compounds that survive cooking, and may, along with spices, protect us from dangerous bacteria on meat. This may explain why these ingredients increase in proximity to the equator.

The microwave oven stands at the opposite end of the culinary (and imaginative) spectrum from the cook fire. Compared with the mesmerizing draw of a fire, the microwave exerts a kind of antigravity- it’s flameless, smokeless, antisensory cold heat giving us a mild case of the willies. The microwave is as antisocial as the cook fire is communal. Who ever gathers around the Panasonic Hearth?

“Animals need food, water & shelter… we humans need all those things, but we need fire too.” (Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire).
We are the only species that depends on fire to maintain our body heat, as well as to cook our food. By now the control of fire is folded into our genes, a matter of not just human culture but also our biology (The Cooking Hypothesis of human evolution).