If you were to look at the picture above you might assume that Netflix has now started offering cooking shows, but this isn’t the casse. After the success of Chef’s Table, which was a beautiful show that focussed on various chefs all over the world, it now has Cooked available. This four part documentary series has been made by writer Michael Pollan and filmmaker Alex Gibney (Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, The Armstrong Lie, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief) and isn’t about restaurants, top chefs or a specific way of cooking. It is about food in general and makes links to the basic elements: fire, air, water and earth and the effect they have on our daily meals.
That setup is very original and results in a series with its own way of approaching food. Each episode focusses on one of the basic elements and also shows how Michael Pollan himself makes something at home (like roasting a whole pig, making bread or brewing beer) mixed with imagery from a specific country. In the first episode a group of Aboriginals is followed as they gather food in nature. In another episode you see the role of bread in Morocco. All these elements tie together with the subject of the episode.
Cooked is a show which basically focusses on a natural way of eating. During one of the episodes a man who is being interviewed tells how he always says to other they can eat whatever they want. Do you want to eat apple pie together with some cookie and have some ice cream too? That’s no problem and you can eat as much of them as you want! There is one condition though, you have to prepare these all yourself. The way in which industrialisation has made it easy to eat good tasting, unhealthy prodct has had impact in the way we deal we eating and food. You can see that in the amount of time Americans spend in the kitchen. In the sixties it was about an hour a day, but now it is only 27 minutes. It’s something I think is happening in a lot of places as I myself want to get the family some food as fast as I can after a long day of work. You kind of forget how wonderful it is to spend more time on preparing a meal together with your family. It’s something I do make sure to do during the weekends.
Cooked is wonderfully shot, with beautiful closeups of people preparing food and giving you a sense of atmoshpere of specific cultures. Michael Pollan is able to tell his story in a fascinating way, giving the viewer new knowledge about preparing their food.
Cooked is available through Netflix
