Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai


Nina Mingya Powles - 2020
    Nina Mingya Powles journeys between Wellington, Kota Kinabalu and Shanghai, tracing the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her. Through childhood snacks, family feasts, Shanghai street food and student dinners, she attempts to find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage.

About Alice


Calvin Trillin - 2006
    You mean I peaked in December of 1963?I’m afraid so.But he never quit trying to impress her. In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse. The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”In that spirit, Calvin Trillin has, with About Alice, created a gift to the wife he adored and to his readers.

The Pedant in the Kitchen


Julian Barnes - 2003
    The Pedant's ambition is simple. He wants to cook tasty, nutritious food; he wants not to poison his friends; and he wants to expand, slowly and with pleasure, his culinary repertoire

Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris


Ann Mah - 2013
    A lifelong foodie and Francophile, she immediately begins plotting gastronomic adventures à deux. Then her husband is called away to Iraq on a year-long post—alone. Suddenly, Ann’s vision of a romantic sojourn in the City of Lights is turned upside down.So, not unlike another diplomatic wife, Julia Child, Ann must find a life for herself in a new city. Journeying through Paris and the surrounding regions of France, Ann combats her loneliness by seeking out the perfect pain au chocolat and learning the way the andouillette sausage is really made. She explores the history and taste of everything from boeuf Bourguignon to soupe au pistou to the crispiest of buckwheat crepes. And somewhere between Paris and the south of France, she uncovers a few of life’s truths.Like Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French and Julie Powell’s New York Times bestseller Julie and Julia, Mastering the Art of French Eating is interwoven with the lively characters Ann meets and the traditional recipes she samples. Both funny and intelligent, this is a story about love—of food, family, and France.

At Home on the Range


Margaret Yardley Potter - 1947
    Having only been peripherally aware of the volume, Gilbert dug in with some curiosity, and soon found that she had stumbled upon a book far ahead of its time. Part scholar and part crusader for a more open food conversation, Potter espoused the importance of farmer’s markets and ethnic food (Italian, Jewish, and German), derided preservatives and culinary shortcuts, and generally celebrated a devotion to epicurean adventures. Reading this practical and humorous cookbook, it’s not hard to see that Gilbert inherited her great-grandmother’s love of food and her warm, infectious prose.Proceeds from this book benefit ScholarMatch (scholarmatch.org).

The Complete One Pot Cookbook: 400 Complete Meals for Your Skillet, Dutch Oven, Sheet Pan, Roasting Pan, Instant Pot®, Slow Cooker, and More


America's Test Kitchen - 2020
    From sheet-pan suppers to no-boil pastas, millions of home cooks want the ease of hands-off meals made using a single vessel. These flavorful recipes represent years of the test kitchen's best strategies for successful single-pan cooking, from staggering cooking times so everything finishes at once to developing an arsenal of no-cook sauces and sides.We flip the lid on several one-pot cooking assumptions; first, that it's always slow. Half of the 400+ recipes can be made in 45 minutes or less. Next, that the recipes serve an army: We paid attention to smaller family sizes by adding scaled-down variations serving two throughout the book. And we made some of the all-time best recipes more flexible with choose-your-own pan options such as Classic Chicken Soup that can be made in a Dutch oven, slow cooker, or pressure cooker. Finally, we realized that decluttering dinner didn't stop with using just one pot but also meant limiting the number of bowls.Today's one-pot recipes are more varied than ever. Skip takeout with Sheet Pan Pizza. Make date-night Classic Arroz Con Pollo for Two in a saucepan. Cook for a crowd using a roasting-pan "Walk-Away" Roast Chicken with Potatoes. Set and forget Slow Cooker Spiced Pork Tenderloin with Raisin-Almond Couscous, or get dinner on the table fast using an Instant Pot to make Cod with Warm Tabbouleh Salad. This assortment includes more than just dinner. Simplify breakfast with Sheet Pan Breakfast Sandwiches, or make one-bowl (or no-bowl!) Peach Cobbler or Classic Bread Pudding in your Dutch oven.

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste


Luke Barr - 2013
    In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now. The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In Provence, 1970, he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food


Jennifer 8. Lee - 2008
    New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese), Jennifer 8 Lee, traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.

Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites


Kate Christensen - 2013
    Readers of memoirs of high literary quality, particularly those with food themes—most conspicuously Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me with Apples and Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones, and Butter—as well as admirers of M. F. K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin will be a large and eager audience.This memoir derives from Kate's popular foodcentric blog (http://katechristensen.wordpress.com), in which she shares scenes from an unusual upbringing and an unusually happy present-day life, providing an audience for this book that is already primed. That it is written by Kate Christensen means it will be a delicious reading experience in every sense—a compulsively readable account of a knockabout life, full of sorrows and pleasures, many of the latter of the sensual, appetitive variety.

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace


Tamar Adler - 2011
    F. K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf— written in 1942 during wartime shortages—An Everlasting Meal shows that cooking is the path to better eating. Through the insightful essays in An Everlasting Meal, Tamar Adler issues a rallying cry to home cooks. In chapters about boiling water, cooking eggs and beans, and summoning respectable meals from empty cupboards, Tamar weaves philosophy and instruction into approachable lessons on instinctive cooking. Tamar shows how to make the most of everything you buy, demonstrating what the world’s great chefs know: that great meals rely on the bones and peels and ends of meals before them. She explains how to smarten up simple food and gives advice for fixing dishes gone awry. She recommends turning to neglected onions, celery, and potatoes for inexpensive meals that taste full of fresh vegetables, and cooking meat and fish resourcefully. By wresting cooking from doctrine and doldrums, Tamar encourages readers to begin from wherever they are, with whatever they have. An Everlasting Meal is elegant testimony to the value of cooking and an empowering, indispensable tool for eaters today.

Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place


Scott McClanahan - 2013
    Crapalachia is a portrait of these formative years, coming-of-age in rural West Virginia.Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves oral folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana.

Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers


Natalie Eve Garrett - 2019
    Luscious, full-color illustrations by Meryl Rowin are woven throughout, and accompanying each story is a recipe from the writer’s own kitchen.Lev Grossman explains how he survived on “sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey” General Tso’s tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes learning to care for herself during her confusing young adulthood, beginning with nearly setting her kitchen on fire. Claire Messud tries to understand how her mother gave up dreams of being a lawyer to make “a dressed salad of tiny shrimp and avocado, followed by prune-stuffed pork tenderloin, served with buttered egg noodles” for her family. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie remembers a childhood friend―who later died as a soldier in Nigeria―with a pot of fragrant jollof rice. What makes each tale so moving is not only the deeply personal revelations from celebrated writers, but also the compassion and healing behind the story: the taste of hope.

Antoni in the Kitchen


Antoni Porowski - 2019
    With appealing vulnerability, he shows cooks of all levels how to become more confident and casual in the kitchen. The verve and naturalness of his approach earned raves from Food & Wine and Bon Appétit to GQ and the New York Times, which noted his dishes prove that “sometimes simple is anything but simplistic.” Some of the recipes in this book are weeknight healthyish meals, while others are perfect for off-the-cuff entertaining. Visual stunners, they’re often composed of fewer than five ingredients. Whether Bastardized Easy Ramen; Malaysian Chili Shrimp; Roasted Carrots with Carrot-Top Pesto; or Salty Lemon Squares, all are visual stunners and can be carried off with panache, even by beginners.

The Art of Eating in: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove


Cathy Erway - 2010
    An underpaid, twenty-something executive assistant in New York City, she was struggling to make ends meet when she decided to embark on a Walden- esque retreat from the high-priced eateries that drained her wallet. Though she was living in the nation's culinary capital, she decided to swear off all restaurant food. "The Art of Eating In" chronicles the delectable results of her twenty-four-month experiment, with thirty original recipes included. What began as a way to save money left Erway with a new appreciation for the simple pleasure of sharing a meal with friends at home, the subtleties of home-cooked flavors, and whether her ingredients were ethically grown. She also explored the anti-restaurant underground of supper clubs and cook-offs, and immersed herself in an array of alternative eating lifestyles from freeganism and dumpster-diving to picking tasty greens on a wild edible tour in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Culminating in a binge that leaves her with a foodie hangover, "The Art of Eating In" is a journey to savor. Watch a Video

A Half Baked Idea: How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu


Olivia Potts - 2019
    She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband.Afterwards, grief pushed Olivia into the kitchen. She came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Her cakes sank and her custard curdled. But she found comfort in jams and solace in pies, and what began as a distraction from grief became a way of building a life outside grief, a way of surviving, and making sense of her life without her mum.And so she concocted a plan: she would begin a newer, happier life, filled with fewer magistrates and more macaroons. She left the bar and enrolled on the Diplôme de Pâtisserie at Le Cordon Bleu, plunging headfirst into the eccentric world of patisserie, with all its challenges, frustrations and culinary rewards - and a mind-boggling array of knives to boot.Interspersed with recipes ranging from passionfruit pavlova to her mother's shepherd's pie, this is a heart-breaking, hilarious, life-affirming memoir about dealing with grief, falling in love and learning how to bake a really, really good cake.