Roger Ebert - The Pot and How to Use It: The Mystery and Romance of the Rice Cooker

Other Books by Roger Ebert
An Illini Century
A Kiss Is Still a Kiss
Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook
Behind the Phantoms Mask
Roger Eberts Little Movie Glossary
Roger Eberts Movie Home Companion
(annually 19861993)
Roger Eberts Video Companion
(annually 19941998)
Roger Eberts Movie Yearbook
(annually 19992007, 20092010)
Questions for the Movie Answer Man
Roger Eberts Book of Film: An Anthology
Eberts Bigger Little Movie Glossary
I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie
The Great Movies
The Great Movies II
The Great Movies III
Your Movie Sucks
Roger Eberts Four-Star Reviews19672007
Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert
Scorsese by Ebert

With Daniel Curley
The Perfect London Walk

With Gene Siskel
The Future of the Movies: Interviews with Martin Scorsese,
Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas

DVD Commentary Tracks
Citizen Kane
Dark City
Casablanca
Floating Weeds
Crumb
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

This book is for Martha, Mary, and Annabel

Three sisters who would find lots wrong with it.

The Pot and How to Use It copyright 2010 by Roger Ebert. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

E-ISBN: 978-1-4494-0601-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010921938

www.andrewsmcmeel.com
www.rogerebert.suntimes.com

Cover design and illustration by Julie Barnes

ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES
Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please write to: Special Sales Department, Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

I love Roger Ebert because he loves life. He loves good movies, he loves his devoted wife, Chaz, he loves all the wonderful folks in his blogosphere, and he loves good food.

And Roger really knows what good food is all about. I am not just talking about what tastes good, but about good food that is healthy and nutritious, too. Roger worked at gaining this knowledge. For many years, he has been an avid participant in the Pritikin Program and a regular attendee at health and fitness resorts such as the one where I work, Rancho La Puerta. At such facilities, he not only learned about healthy food, but also the importance of regular movement, and he applied these principles in his daily life. Most folks will remember that at one time Roger was a bit on the pudgy side. He lost an extraordinary amount of weight the old-fashioned wayby controlling what he put in his mouth and by burning excess calories with regular exercise. He got himself a pedometer, and instead of walking the recommended ten thousand steps per day, he walked twenty thousand. And despite a very sedentary job watching six hours of movies a day, and sitting for many hours thereafter to write his reviews, he lost somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred pounds. At that point, Roger was absolutely swimming in his clothes. I suggested that he needed a new wardrobe and he replied, Just a few more pounds. Roger was totally unconcerned about appearances and what others thought. He just wanted to reach his goal.

It was shortly after his incredible weight-loss achievement, that the life that Roger loves threw him a curveball that whacked him, and very hard at that. Roger once confided in me that it miffed him that most folks thought he lost all that weight because of his illness. I am here to testify as an eyewitness that he worked his fanny off by self-discipline and by making profound lifestyle changes.

That Roger should be tested with ill health just goes to show that in life, just as in the movies, the outcomes are not always fair or just. Good people, even when they do so much that is right and healthy, dont always emerge unscathed. I love Roger because, in spite of his challenges, he still loves life, and he still loves good food, even though he cannot eat it. I write this foreword as Roger has just come out of the cancer closet. In a touching and very revealing article in Esquire magazine, he told the world that he could not eat but by the aid of a stomach tube, nor could he speak without a computer-generated voice. A short time later, Roger demonstrated his new computer voice on a segment of The Oprah Show. Chaz was in tears as his real voice, pieced together from his many TV appearances, spoke through his laptop to her. There is no doubt that many readers and viewers were as touched by the sweet courage and persistence of this wonderful man as I was and am.

So, I must say that it is an honor to work with Roger on the Pot project. It is Rogers goal to offer you nutritious, satisfying recipes that are relatively quick and easy to prepare and dont stress the system the way modern manufactured foods do and without demanding too much of your precious time. The idea of one-pot meals welcoming hardworking folks with delightful aromas and a promise of a delicious home-cooked meal as they enter the door has enormous appeal for me. What a wonderful greeting after a hard days work to have dinner in the Pot ready to serve.

Roger mentions the dangers of saturated fat in his text. This is wise caution because hard fats tend to glom on to cholesterol, and together with calcium and sodium form cement that can clog the arteries. But there are some dissenting voices out there about tropical oils such as coconut and palm oil. After all, native folks in the tropics use these fats and have for millennia. These oils can withstand high temperatures and rarely, if ever, go rancid. There is also a move back to butter and lard. Why? Because the alternatives, hydrogenated vegetable shortening and the margarines made from it, are full of toxic trans fats that are one of the leading causes of inflammation and insulin resistance (a.k.a. prediabetes). These free radical bombardier fats are so injurious that cities such as New York and several states have banned them in restaurant food. I am happy to report that none of the recipes in the Pot use these tortured fats.

While on the subject of fat, because Anna Thomas says that the Pot only has two heat levels, insanely high and barely warm, please use oils that can tolerate the high-heat part. Good choices are monounsaturated fats such as olive oil and high oleic/high-heat sunflower, safflower oil and canola oils (these are hybridized to have more of the properties of olive oil), and peanut oil. Also, consider the more esoteric (and expensive) almond oil, macadamia oil, and avocado oil. Dont use corn, soy, nonhybridized sunflower, safflower, sesame, pumpkin, flax, or any generic vegetable oils in high-heat cooking. Any oil that contains substantial amounts of omega-3 (linolenic) or omega-6 (linoleic) fats burn very readily and create toxic chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and 4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (NHEs). If you want to understand more about what oils tolerate the highest heat, go to www.cookingforengineers.com/article/50/Smoke-Points-of-Various-Fats.