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Michael Pollan, a Cob Oven, & the NY Times

December 27, 2010

Six cooks, no spoilt broth: Mike Emanuel built the oven. Aya Brackett took the photo for the NYT; see link below for the rest of her slideshow.

“Communal table: A 36 Hour Dinner Party”

The NY Times Magazine recently published this article by Michael Pollan about a 36 hour dinner party cooked in a mud oven. Best, for me, was how he explained the purpose of the oven:

The idea is to make the most efficient use of precious firewood and to keep the heat (and the danger) of the cook fire some distance from everybody’s homes. But what appeals to me about the tradition is how the communal oven also becomes a focus for social life (“focus” is Latin for “hearth”), a place to gather and gossip and escape the solitude of cooking at home. Shared meals have always been about community, about what happens among family and friends — even enemies — when they gather around a table to eat; but once upon a time, before every family had its own kitchen in which Mom labored more or less alone, cooking was itself a social activity, one that fostered community and conversation around the chopping board or cook fire long before the meal was served.

The link to the article is here. The slideshow is here.

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from the publisher

Hand Print Press began in the early 90s, when I self-published Build Your Own Earth Oven. I was thinking of myself as a capital A  Artist. However, as I learned from the garden and other teachers, art just means “to fit together” — it’s how the world works — flora, fauna, humans — all must fit themselves together, with each other, with the landscape, with wind and weather. In addition to the bookstore (which now includes a few other authors), the site contains stories and updates on ovens, heat, baking, beauty, agriculture, fire, community, culture, (spoon) carving, etc. It’s all art! Thanks for visiting. You can contact me at handprint at cmug dot com, or thru instagram.
— Kiko Denzer

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