Terroir. Latin: Terra - earth/land. Our identity with ---

Ha, ya thought I was gonna write about identity? pfft. nope. That's an alternative fact.



Actual title:

The Terroir of Water: primordial ooze and us. 

by Zanthia Dwight

Summary: In class, we watched episode 2 "Water" of Micheal Pollan's "Cooked", which showed how cooking with water is important and used in dishes around the world! It described the way water cooks things by the molecules it exchanges with the flavors floating in it, and then it went on a tangent for 30-40 minutes about Micheal Pollan's biggest obsession: processed food, the food industry, and nutritionism; he also throws in a little bit about women and suffrage. (What does all this have to do with water? I couldn't tell you.) Parts of the episode showed aspects of how other people use water to cook their food and what that looks like in homes around the world. Peeking in a home in Europe or America, you can find house-spouses making dishes that require the boiling of water for noodles, noodles^2, noodles^3,  oatmeal, coffee^10, tea, stews, rice, potatoes, steamed veggies, pancakes, pot roasts, lobstah, turkey, and even more. In India and other East Asian countries, women make different types of coconut products using water as the additive, filter, or base. The coconut milk is made by adding coconut to water, and then a similar process makes these very delicate coconut pancakes! Water is the essential ingredient in all these primary and daily dishes. 

We talked about terroir in class as the other taste in the list of types of tastes: salty, sweet, savory, bitter, umami,  and terroir. "Terroir," said Dr. Justin Eckstein. "Is primarily used to describe the taste of ale or wine, because it can have an earthy flavor." But this isn't the full use of the word terroir, but it plays a part in it! As the very in-depth Wikipedia page can attest, terroir is a broad and often fought about term, especially with luxury crops like wine grapes, coffee beans, tea, and many other alcohol inclined crops. "While wine experts disagree about the exact definition, particular consideration is given to the natural elements that are beyond the control of humans. Components often described as aspects of terroir include, Climate, Soil type, Geomorphology, and other plants growing in and around the vine plots"(Wiki). The place the crop is grown is extremely important to not just the outcome of the plant but the nutrition and taste of it. Growing a plant to a certain taste can be even more specific than just French Champagne grown in Champagne, France, it could be specific to the very grower themselves in their certain fields, with their specific amount of shade, surrounding flora, and tilled soil. BUT THEN, it can also include human controlled aspects of crops! Like the fact that monocropping has erased some of the effects terroir might have on mass-produced crops like corn, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, apples, etc. 

Backgrounding:
Sometimes what we don't think about when cooking with water is the taste of water itself.  Where does our water come from? What do we add to our water supply? What do we filter out? Why do we filter it?

Water supplies are different across the country, some states have to outsource its supply because of environmental differences, like California. Drying up whole rivers and lakes all over the west= outsourcing. Others get theirs from the natural environment, like Colorado. Every city in Colorado is built where they have natural runoff from the mountains for water. Other places like Seattle, might get theirs locally as well, but because of pollution, it has to be heavily filtered and treated to be safe for public consumption.  Then each state, because of their diverse populations, sources, and consumption have to decide what gets in the water and what gets taken out. Flouride, for instance, is a debated substance that goes into most public water supplies because science says it will increase public health. Certain minerals are found naturally in water supplies and not found in others. It seems, that since there are natural and human ingredients, processing, and acquisitional differences between the water across America, water has a certain, terroir.  

Then you have places like Flint, Michigan. This is not terroir, it is poison.

Question: Consider water: How does the water I use in Boston to make Kraft Mac N Cheese effect the taste? If I were to make the same Mac N Cheese in Tacoma, would it taste different? What about in France?

First, let's get down to the tiny things inside our water that tastes different. In August 2016, The Harvard Gazette, which publishes really ground-breaking research done by students and faculty of Harvard, released a terrifying article about PFAS in water supplies across American major cities, like Boston, LA, Vancouver, WA, and many many more. PFA stands for polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances which are industrial chemicals that cause cancer and other major health complications.
“For many years, chemicals with unknown toxicities, such as PFASs, were allowed to be used and released to the environment, and we now have to face the severe consequences,” said lead author Xindi Hu... “The actual number of people exposed may be even higher than our study found because government data for levels of these compounds in drinking water is lacking for almost a third of the U.S. population — about 100 million people"(The Harvard Gazette).

Yum. 

And this isn't the only fun one that floats around! Here are some more! 

There are plenty of things in American water that differs in contents and saturation, so it changes the flavor of the water. "But, as it flows through the ground, through rivers and pipes and so forth, water naturally picks up a variety of soluble ingredients that subtly contribute to its flavor"(Cook's Science). The cook science article also brings in that the geographical location of where the water is sourced changes its flavor drastically because of the surrounding minerals and chemicals. "Calcium makes water taste milky and smooth, magnesium can be bitter, and sodium makes it taste salty." It goes on to detail other water source tastes: water from wells might be earthier from plant matter, water near the ocean smells like sulfur because of sulfur-producing microbes that live in groundwater. 

The article also claims that not just the minerals or location of our water is taste effecting, but so are the chemicals that treatment plants use to disinfect and filter our water. Chlorine is a type of disinfectant that leaves a very distinct taste in water, and if there is too much for safe consumption in the water, it will smell like a swimming pool or hot tub.

The metallic taste in your water? That's iron from your old pipes. You can also acquire a bunch of iron from cooking with old pots and pans, it'll rub off on your food.
Apparently, certain types of water are good for certain types of cooking! Bakers rely on water with lots of calcium in it to help thicken up the gluten. Kentucky Bourbon pledges itself to Limestone compounds heavily in the water to get the right taste of their alcohol.

Answer: As for my Mac N Cheese, there might be a slight, very slight, difference in taste because I live close to the ocean in Boston, and we also have more ground-water. Tacoma water seems pretty plant treated to me, more chlorine like.  Mac N Cheese here might seem sweeter from chlorine, where at the Mac N Cheese in Boston might seem saltier from the sulfur.

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