Status Updates From Cooked: A Natural History o...

Cheese that stinks of manure (or sex) offers a safe way for us to flirt with forbidden desires; even a cheese that stinks of death offers a perverse sort of pleasure. For, if the final fermentation that awaits us is too horrible to contemplate, perhaps a little preview of putrefaction on a cheese plate can, like a Gothic/horror movie, give us the little frisson of pleasure that comes from rehearsing what we most fear

Learning about cheese making- its skin of decomposed milk as a vibrant ecological community- emphasizes just what a weird & wonderful achievement cheese is: how our ancestors figured out how to guide the decomposition of milk so it might be arrested & then defended; deftly deploying rot against rot, fungus against fungus, to suspend milk’s inexorable slide into putrifaction just long enough to enjoy a tasty cheese.

A cheese is an ecological system, and the cheesemakers techniques operate like forces of natural selection to determine which species will succeed, thereby creating the cheese’s specific flavors & aromas & textures. In this, a cheese is much like a sourdough bread culture, except that its microbial community is even more complex & long lived. Indeed, it is still living when we eat it (bread culture dies in baking).

Taken together, the microflora may function as a kind of sensory organ, bringing the body the latest information from the environment, as well as the new tools needed to deal with it. The bacteria in your gut are continually reading the environment and responding; they’re a molecular mirror of the changing world. And because they can evolve so quickly, they help our bodies respond to changes in our environment.

The big problem with the western diet is that most food has been overly processed to be readily absorbed, leaving nothing for the lower G.I. It turns out that one of the keys to health is fermentation in the large intestine. We have changed the human diet in such a way that it no longer feeds the whole super-organism, only our human selves. We’re eating for one, when we need to be eating for, oh, a few trillion.

Most of our fermentations are instances of rot interrupted- the bacilli/fungi on temporary loan from soil to the aboveground world. Here, deliciousness is the by-product of decay, as the funky scent reminds us. As the primary processes by which nature breaks down living things so that their energies & atoms might be reused by other living things, fermentation puts us in touch with the ever-present touch of death.

Consider for a moment the everyday proximity of death. The bloom of yeast on ripe fruit, or lactobacillus loitering on a cabbage leaf. Whether fungus or bacterium, these invisibles come wielding the right kit of enzymes to take apart, molecule by molecule, life’s most intricate structures, reducing them- ourselves included- to simple foods for themselves & other living (& incipient) beings.

You cannot fractionate the seed without ruining the flour. As soon as you separate the bran from the germ, that’s it, it’s all over, the germ will turn rancid. Nature made a perfect package when it made the seed: there are antioxidant compounds in the bran that protect oils in the germ from oxidizing. But only if they are kept together! Once you break apart the seed you can never put Humpty back together again.

By now the public is aware of & wanting the benefits of whole grain, but modern mill machinery has been expressly designed to get the whitest possible flour, splitting off germ at first break. Milling white flour & selling off the nutrients is more profitable than selling it whole. To leave the germ in the flour would literally ‘gum up the works’. The engineering & nutrition are pulling in opposite directions.

White flour was easier to bake with & more portable, consolidating & industrializing the milling industry. However nutrient deficiencies fostered by widespread white flour/bread consumption became a problem, so industry & gov’t decided to fortify white bread. Here was a classic capitalist “solution”: rather than address a problem at its source, the milling industry could now sell the problem AND the solution.

Another reason modern milling pushed towards white flour: bran (its impact on dough)- taste & aeration.
Bran tends to be bitter, so whiter flour meant sweeter bread.
Milling the whole grain cuts the bran into microscopic shards, which are like tiny knives that pierce the gluten strands & impair its ability to hold air & rise.
Those tiny bran knives are relatively heavy too, making it more difficult to raise a loaf.

Stand back far enough, and the absurdity of this makes you wonder about the sanity of our species: when wheat is milled the most nutritious part of the seed is scrupulously sheared off (coat of bran, the embryo/germ). The best 25% of the seed (vitamins & antioxidants, minerals & healthy oils) are often sold to the pharmaceutical industry, which recovers some of the vitamins & sells them back to us as fortification.

Sourdough fermentation partially breaks down gluten, making it easier to digest and destroying some of the peptides thought to be responsible for gluten intolerance. It’s possible the increase in gluten intolerance & celiac is partly because modern breads no longer receive a lengthy fermentation. Organic acids produced by the sourdough culture also seem to slow absorption of sugars in white flour.

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?