Cooked - A Natural History of Transformat Part 34

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 gra.s.ses 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 Noella, 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 Momof.u.ko 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.

One more teacher turned out to be absolutely indispensable to the entire project: Harold McGee. As any chef will tell you, Harold is the go-to guy for all questions of kitchen science, and I went to him more than I care to admit. But whether the question stumping me involved chemistry or physics or microbiology, he had the answer at his fingertips or could soon find it, and just as important, express it in terms I could follow. I don't know how anyone wrote about the science of cooking before the publication of On Food and Cooking, which was always within reach.

When I decided to include four recipes in an appendix, I had no idea how hard a recipe is to write and get right. Jill Santopietro tested them all, over and again, and edited the recipes for clarity, gracefully indulging and repairing my ignorance. They should all work now, which was not the case before she got hold of them.

Back in Berkeley, I was blessed to have the extraordinary research a.s.sistance of Malia Wollan. A gifted reporter and writer, Malia brought the full range of her journalistic wiles to the project and never failed to track down the study or statistic or source I needed, no matter how sketchy my requests. She also fact-checked the ma.n.u.script, saving me from countless errors and embarra.s.sments, and gracefully fixed all sorts of problems in the text. Her dedication and good humor made the hard work of getting all the science right as agreeable as it could possibly be. I'm grateful also for the research contributed by Elisa Colombani and my student-a.s.sistants at the School of Journalism, Teresa Chin and Mich.e.l.le Konstantinovsky. Thanks to the School of Journalism for being understanding about all the time off, and to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for supporting my research over the past decade. I'm also ever grateful to Steven Barclay for his wise counsel and support, and to his amazing team in Petaluma, for making the speaking part of the writing life so agreeable.

Cooked is my seventh book, published twenty-two years after Second Nature, my first, and looking back at the acknowledgments in that book, I'm gratified to see several names that belong in this one too, colleagues, friends, and loved ones who have had a hand in my writing from the beginning. The only book editor I have ever worked with is Ann G.o.doff; maybe there's a better editor out there-more acute, more supportive, more wise-but I can't imagine it. She is quite simply the best, and by now a dear friend as well. Happily I can say the same of Amanda Urban, my agent this whole career; her judgment on all matters large and small is not something you ever want to mess with. I owe them both what success I have had in the book business. And heartfelt thanks to the A team in their respective offices: Tracy Locke, Sarah Hutson, Lindsay Whalen, Ben Platt, and Ryan Chapman at Penguin; Liz Farrell, Molly Atlas, and Maggie Southard at ICM.

My longtime friends Mark Edmundson and Gerry Marzorati have discussed, read, and improved every one of my books-what a gift to have readers as perceptive as Mark and Gerry, and friends as steadfast and true. My old friend Michael Schwarz served once again as a valued counselor, and Mark Danner offered the perfect sounding board during our long walks at Inspiration Point, entertaining my ideas long before they had been baked into a book.

But my very first and best reader-the one who alone decides when a ma.n.u.script is ready to leave the house-is Judith Belzer. In addition to being my cherished partner in life, she is my indispensable editor, adviser, consoler, and kitchen collaborator. Our respective lines of work-my writing, her painting-have grown so entwined that I can no longer imagine what the books would be like-indeed, if they would be at all-if we had not met and joined forces way back when.

For my conviction that cooking matters I have my mom, Corky Pollan, to thank. Preparing dinner every night for four kids (three of them vegetarians), and now as often as she can for us and our spouses and her eleven grandchildren, she continually reminds us of the unparalleled satisfaction that comes from preparing a beautiful meal and enjoying it at the table together. She is a constant inspiration.

Lastly there is Isaac, who came into our lives very soon after my first book was published. Ever since, he has left his mark on all my books, but never more deeply than on this one. Isaac's evolution as an eater and a cook has taught me more about food, and cooking, than he probably realizes. The period of our lives that Cooked covers happened to coincide with Isaac's leaving home for college, and so with the end of our regular family dinner. If I have romanticized that inst.i.tution in these pages, it is because it has been so very sweet in our lives, not always, but certainly in the last few years, when the three of us could share the work in the kitchen and then reap the pleasure at the table. Thanks for every one of those meals.

-Berkeley

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