Book of the week: Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan

(Penguin, $28)

Michael Pollan is at it again, said Joe Yonan in The Washington Post. Seven years since The Omnivore’s Dilemma jump-started the public conversation about sustainable food production, the popular food writer’s new manifesto—which calls for a revival of the kind of meals that don’t involve an easy-open tab—“may prove to be just as influential.” In truth, Pollan is far from the first person to call for more cooking from scratch. But through “the power of his prose and his reasoning,” as well as a willingness to “put himself in the shoes of even the least experienced readers,” he just might be able to coax a significant share of Americans back to their stoves and back to healthier, happier, more attentive lives.

Not all readers will have patience for some of Pollan’s musings, said Janet Maslin in The New York Times. This “normally commonsensical” author is overly prone here to talk of an ingredient’s “deep Proustian echoes,” and he spends too many early pages waxing poetic about barbecuing’s sacred overtones. And when he finally attempts to barbecue some pork himself, said Chris Nuttall-Smith in the Toronto Globe and Mail, the “unintended and rather inconvenient message” is that barbecuing is best left to the experts. Cooked only “catches fire, so to speak,” when Pollan finally turns to the less familiar subjects of fermentation and bread-making, and introduces us to such fascinating characters as a nun with a Ph.D. in microbiology who makes artisanal cheese. “Here Pollan does what he is best at,” giving food a quirky human face.

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His anecdotes about creative foodies make for a fun read, said Jack Bishop in the San Francisco Chronicle, but I doubt they’ll coax many kitchen-phobic readers to break out their pots and pans. As a food writer and the editorial director of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS, I’ve discovered that Americans suffer no lack of fascination with cooking; they’re just convinced that they don’t have the time or talent to do it themselves. What really hurts Pollan’s cause is that he often “comes off as a dilettante in the kitchen.” The four recipes he provides in the appendix require no fewer than 19 pages of instructions—hardly encouraging to the novice searching for a nice weeknight meal. “Cooked might succeed in cajoling the privileged back into the kitchen,” but Pollan’s remedy “isn’t targeted to those most in need of one.”