Taste Makers stretches from World War II to the present, with absorbing and deeply researched portraits of figures including Mexican-born Elena Zelayeta, a blind chef; Marcella Hazan, the deity of Italian cuisine; and Norma Shirley, a champion of Jamaican dishes.In imaginative, lively prose, Mayukh Sen—a queer, brown child of immigrants—reconstructs the lives of these women in vivid and empathetic detail, daring to ask why some were famous in their own time, but not in ours, and why others shine brightly even today. Weaving together histories of food, immigration, and gender, Taste Makers will challenge the way readers look at what’s on their plate—and the women whose labor, overlooked for so long, makes those meals possible.

    What would this reading trajectory say about you? With passion, humor, and insight, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life.Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for twenty-eight years – carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk – reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob.Bob is Paul’s Book of Books, a journal that records every book she’s ever read, from Sweet Valley High to Anna Karenina, from Catch-22 to Swimming to Cambodia, a journey in reading that reflects her inner life – her fantasies and hopes, her mistakes and missteps, her dreams and her ideas, both half-baked and wholehearted. Her life, in turn, influences the books she chooses, whether for solace or escape, information or sheer entertainment.But My Life with Bob isn’t really about those books. It’s about the deep and powerful relationship between book and reader. It’s about the way books provide each of us the perspective, courage, companionship, and imperfect self-knowledge to forge our own path. It’s about why we read what we read and how those choices make us who we are. It’s about how we make our own stories.

    From the ancient Greeks to modern yuppies, from cannibalism and the taking of the Eucharist to formal dinners and picnics, she thoroughly defines the eating ritual.

    Given the choice, he'll go on vacation to Devon or Wales or, if pushed, eat English food on a package tour of the Mediterranean. So what happened when he was convinced by Gervais and Merchant to go on an epic adventure to see the Seven Wonders of the World? Does travel truly broaden the mind? Find out in Karl Pilkington's hilarious travel diaries.

    Though her boyfriend dedicates a novel to her and then leaves her in the middle of a party she gives to celebrate its publication, she comes away from it all with more than the bouquet of magazine scent strips that he left behind. In attempting to get rid of his stuff, she discovers the Zen of making jam, and through it the simple pleasure of creating a little world in which things turn out the way they're supposed to. She shares her funny stories of love lost, the twisted road out of her depression and the advice she got from psychics and strangers. Each of the chapters sees her go off in a new direction, looking for help in a different way, from dating again to taking a job, and sampling all the new cultural landscape has to offer to heal, from seeing a shrink to taking a seminar with a relationships guru.After years in New York and a move to Montana, Bull finds herself suddenly drawn back to her childhood home of Wisconsin, where "USA Today has just announced in a colorful pie chart that the people there are the only ones in the country who are fatter and drinking more beer than they were ten years ago." Bull delights in taking aim at all the celebrities who've crossed her path as a journalist, tossing their worst moments into the stories wherever they help. Wise, funny, and enlightening in spite of itself, Blue Jelly argues that depression, when it sends you off on adventures like these, is very good for the soul. Plus, there are 15 real canning recipes.

    How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections. Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.

    Rombauer self-published the first three thousand copies of Joy of Cooking in 1931, it has become the kitchen bible, with more than 20 million copies in print. This new edition of Joy has been thoroughly revised and expanded by Irma’s great-grandson John Becker and his wife, Megan Scott.John and Megan developed more than six hundred new recipes for this edition, tested and tweaked thousands of classic recipes, and updated every section of every chapter to reflect the latest ingredients and techniques available to today’s home cooks. Their strategy for revising this edition was the same one Irma and Marion employed: Vet, research, and improve Joy’s coverage of legacy recipes while introducing new dishes, modern cooking techniques, and comprehensive information on ingredients now available at farmers’ markets and grocery stores. You will find tried-and-true favorites like Banana Bread Cockaigne, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Southern Corn Bread—all retested and faithfully improved—as well as new favorites like Chana Masala, Beef Rendang, Megan’s Seeded Olive Oil Granola, and Smoked Pork Shoulder. In addition to a thoroughly modernized vegetable chapter, there are many more vegan and vegetarian recipes, including Caramelized Tamarind Tempeh, Crispy Pan-Fried Tofu, Spicy Chickpea Soup, and Roasted Mushroom Burgers. Joy’s baking chapters now include gram weights for accuracy, along with a refreshed lineup of baked goods like Cannelés de Bordeaux, Rustic No-Knead Sourdough, Ciabatta, Chocolate-Walnut Babka, and Chicago-Style Deep-Dish Pizza, as well as gluten-free recipes for pizza dough and yeast breads. A new chapter on streamlined cooking explains how to economize time, money, and ingredients and avoid waste. You will learn how to use a diverse array of ingredients, from amaranth to za’atar. New techniques include low-temperature and sous vide cooking, fermentation, and cooking with both traditional and electric pressure cookers. Barbecuing, smoking, and other outdoor cooking methods are covered in even greater detail. This new edition of Joy is the perfect combination of classic recipes, new dishes, and indispensable reference information for today’s home cooks. Whether it is the only cookbook on your shelf or one of many, Joy is and has been the essential and trusted guide for home cooks for almost a century. This new edition continues that legacy.

    John Thorne's classic first collection is filled with straightforward eating, home cooking, vigorous opinions, and the gracefully intelligent writing that makes him a cult favorite of people who like to think about food.

    As the home of A. J. Liebling, Joseph Wechsberg, and M.F.K. Fisher, who practically invented American food writing, the magazine established a tradition that is carried forward today by irrepressible literary gastronomes, including Calvin Trillin, Bill Buford, Adam Gopnik, Jane Kramer, and Anthony Bourdain. Now, in this indispensable collection, "The New Yorker "dishes up a feast of delicious writing on food and drink, seasoned with a generous dash of cartoons. Whether you re in the mood for snacking on humor pieces and cartoons or for savoring classic profiles of great chefs and great eaters, these offerings, from every age of The New Yorker s fabled eighty-year history, are sure to satisfy every taste. There are memoirs, short stories, tell-alls, and poems ranging in tone from sweet to sour and in subject from soup to nuts. M.F.K. Fisher pays homage to cookery witches, those mysterious cooks who possess an uncanny power over food, while John McPhee valiantly trails an inveterate forager and is rewarded with stewed persimmons and white-pine-needle tea. There is Roald Dahl s famous story Taste, in which a wine snob s palate comes in for some unwelcome scrutiny, and Julian Barnes s ingenious tale of a lifelong gourmand who goes on a very peculiar diet for still more peculiar reasons. Adam Gopnik asks if French cuisine is done for, and Calvin Trillin investigates whether people can actually taste the difference between red wine and white. We journey with Susan Orlean as she distills the essence of Cuba in the story of a single restaurant, and with Judith Thurman as she investigates the arcane practices of Japan s tofu masters. Closer to home, Joseph Mitchell celebrates the old New York tradition of the beefsteak dinner, and Mark Singer shadows the city s foremost fisherman-chef. Dining out: All you can hold for five bucks / Joseph Mitchell --The finest butter and lots of time / Joseph Wechsberg --A good appetite / A.J. Liebling --The afterglow / A.J. Liebling --Is there a crisis in French cooking? / Adam Gopnik --Don't eat before reading this / Anthony Bourdain --A really big lunch / Jim Harrison --Eating in: The secret ingredient / M.F.K. Fisher --The trouble with tripe / M.F.K. Fisher --Nor censure nor disdain / M.F.K. Fisher --Good cooking: / Calvin Tomkins --Look back in hunger / Anthony Lane --The reporter's kitchen / Jane Kramer --Fishing and foraging: A mess of clams / Joseph Mitchell --A forager / John McPhee --The fruit detective / John Seabrook --Gone fishing / Mark Singer --On the bay / Bill Buford --Local delicacies: An attempt to compile a short history of The buffalo chicken wing / Calvin Trillin --The homesick restaurant / Susan Orlean --The magic bagel / Calvin Trillin --A rat in my soup / Peter Hessler --Raw faith / Burkhard Bilger --Night kitchens / Judith Thurman --The pour: Dry martini / Roger Angell --The red and the white / Calvin Trillin --The russian god / Victor Erofeyev --The ketchup conundrum / Malcolm Gladwell --Tastes funny: But the one on the right / Dorothy Parker --Curl up and diet / Ogden Nash --Quick, hammacher, my stomacher! / Ogden Nash --Nesselrode to jeopardy / S.J. Perelman --Eat, drink, and be merry / Peter De Vries --Notes from the overfed / Woody Allen --Two menus / Steve Martin --The zagat history of my last relationship 409(3) / Noah Baumbach --Your table is ready / John Kenney --Small plates: Bock / William Shawn --Diat / Geoffrey T. Hellman --4 a.m. / James Stevenson --Slave / Alex Prud'Homme --Under the hood / Mark Singer --Protein source / Mark Singer --A sandwich / Nora Ephron --Sea urchin / Chang-Rae Lee --As the french do / Janet MalColm --Blocking and chowing / Ben McGrath --When edibles attack / Rebecca Mead --Killing dinner / Gabrielle Hamilton --Fiction: Taste / Roald Dahl --Two roast beefs / V.S. Pritchett --The sorrows of gin / John Cheever --The jaguar sun / Italo Calvino --There should be a name for it / Matthew Klam --Sputnik / Don DeLillo --Enough / Alice McDermott --The butcher's wife / Louise Erdrich --Bark / Julian Barnes

    She identified with Jewish cultural attitudes, but not with the institutions; she had fond memories of her Jewish grandmothers, but she found their religious practices irrelevant to her life. It wasn't until she entered the kitchen--and world--of her mother-in-law, Miriam, a Holocaust survivor, that Ehrlich began to understand the importance of preserving the traditions of the past. As Ehrlich looks on, Miriam methodically and lovingly prepares countless kosher meals while relating the often painful stories of her life in Poland and her immigration to America. These stories trigger a kind of religious awakening in Ehrlich, who--as she moves tentatively toward reclaiming the heritage she rejected as a young woman--gains a new appreciation of life?s possibilities, choices, and limitations.

    Hilarious, touching, and always surprising, they cover everything from early adversity to career-making triumphs. How I Learned to Cook is an irresistible treat for cooks (and foodies) of all abilities, and includes stories by such culinary giants as Ferran Adria, Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, Gabrielle Hamilton, Suzanne Goin, Eric Ripert, and more...

    As the only Asian family in a tiny township, Furiya's life revolved around Japanese food and the extraordinary lengths her parents went to in order to gather the ingredients needed to prepare it.As immigrants, her parents approached the challenges of living in America, and maintaining their Japanese diets, with optimism and gusto. Furiva, meanwhile, was acutely aware of how food set her apart from her peers: She spent her first day of school hiding in the girls' restroom, examining her rice balls and chopsticks, and longing for a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich.Bento Box in the Heartland is an insightful and reflective coming-of-age tale. Beautifully written, each chapter is accompanied by a family recipe of mouth-watering Japanese comfort food.

    Six years later, she still lives and works in Paris, cooking up a selection of classic French dishes from all over the country and giving them a fresh makeover with her own modern twists. From a Croque Madame muffin and the classic Boeuf bourguignon, to a deliciously fragrant Provencal lavender and lemon roast chicken, Rachel celebrates the culinary landscape of France as it is today and shows how simple these dishes are.The 120 recipes in the book range from easy, everyday dishes like Omelette Pipérade, to summer picnics by the Seine and afternoon 'goûter' (snacks), to meals with friends and delicious desserts including classics like Crème brulee and Tarte tatin. It's a book that celebrates the very best of French home-cooking in a modern and accessible way. Real French food is no longer something only served in fancy restaurants; Rachel will show how you can add a little French culinary touch to your everyday life at home, no matter where you are in the world, or how big your kitchen is!

    Now he’s a full-time, stay-at-home Dad and his experience with food has changed . . . a little. He's come to realize that kids don’t need puree in a jar or special menus at restaurants, and that raising an adventurous eater is about exposure, invention, and patience. He writes of the highs and lows of teaching your child about food--the high of rediscovering how something tastes for the first time through a child’s unedited reaction, and the low of thinking you have a precocious vegetable fiend on your hands only to discover that a child’s preferences change from day to day (and may take years to include vegetables again). Sharing in his culinary capers is little Iris, a budding gourmand and a zippy critic herself who makes huge sandwiches, gobbles up hot chilis, and even helps around the kitchen sometimes. Hungry Monkey takes food enthusiasts on a new adventure in eating and offers dozens of delicious recipes that "little fingers" can help to make.

    Katie Quinn spent months as an apprentice with some of Europe’s most acclaimed experts to study the art and science of fermentation. Visiting grain fields, vineyards, and dairies, Katie brings the stories and science of these foods to the table, explains the process of each craft, and introduces the people behind them. What will keep readers glued to the book like a suspense novel is Katie's personal journey as an expat discovering herself abroad; Katie's vulnerability will turn readers into fans, and they'll finish the book feeling like they're her best friends, trusted with her innermost revelations.In England, Katie becomes a cheesemonger at Neal's Yard Dairy, London’s preeminent cheese shop—the beginning of a journey that takes her from a goat farm in rural Somerset to a nationwide search for innovating dairy gurus.In Italy, Katie offers an inside look at Italian winemaking with the Comellis at their family-owned vineyard in Northeast Italy and witnesses the diversity of vintners as she makes her way around Italy.In France, Katie meets the reigning queen of bread, Apollonia Poilâne of Paris' famed Poilâne Bakery, apprentices at boulangeries in Paris learning the ins and outs of sourdough, and travels the country to uncover the present and future of French bread.Part artisanal survey, part travelogue, and part cookbook, featuring watercolor illustrations and gorgeous photographs, Cheese, Wine, and Bread is an outstanding gastronomic tour for foodies, cooks, artisans, and armchair travelers alike.