The process of truly great home cooking is demystified via more than a hundred lessons called out as "small victories" in the funny, encouraging headnotes; these are lessons learned by Julia through a lifetime of cooking thousands of meals. This beautifully curated, deeply personal collection of what Chef April Bloomfield calls "simple, achievable recipes" emphasizes bold-flavored, honest food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. More than 160 mouth-watering photographs from acclaimed photographers Gentl + Hyers provide beautiful instruction and inspiration elevate this entertaining and essential kitchen resource for both beginners and accomplished home cooks.

    From traditional favorites like Snickerdoodles, Oatmeal Raisin, and Favorite Lemon Squares to future stars of the cookie jar like the trail mix–inspired Teton Trailers and chewy, chocolaty Midnight Macaroons, Great Cookies provides something to satisfy every taste and every occasion. There’s even a section devoted to the quintessential American cookie—chocolate chip. With nuts or without? White chocolate or milk? Chocolate dough? Oatmeal in the dough? Carole provides a dozen chocolate chip recipes in all, plus definitive research on a crucial issue: “Not All Chocolate Chips Are Created Equal.” Drop cookies. Bar cookies. Piped, pressed, and rolled. Great Cookies covers every conceivable method for baking these tasty confections. In the more than thirty years that she has studied and taught baking, Carole has cataloged a wealth of helpful tips and troubleshooting hints that for the first time are gathered in one collection. With guidelines for measuring and substituting ingredients, storing and freezing, recapturing that fresh-from-the-oven flavor, decorating, even gift-wrapping and shipping, Great Cookies addresses all the basics and then some. And this ultimate guide is rounded out with authoritative information on ingredients, equipment, and the foolproof techniques for which Carole is known, including the essential “Secrets To” hints for every type of cookie. With master baker Carole Walter by your side, you may never look at a glass of ice cold milk the same way again.

    In Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, award-winning master baker Jeffrey Hamelman presents the definitive, one-stop reference on the art and science of bread baking - a kitchen essential for seasoned home bakers and professionals alike. Hamelman, a professional baker for nearly three decades, was a member of the United States national baking team that won first place in the 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, the bread-baking World Cup. Here, he shares this experience, putting world-class artisanal loaves within reach of any serious baker. Opening with a comprehensive overview of the foundations - essential ingredients; hand techniques for kneading, scoring, and shaping; the basic process from mixing through baking - he lucidly guides bakers through all elements of this richly rewarding craft. Bread contains 118 detailed, step-by-step recipes for an array of breads: versatile sourdough ryes; breads made with pre-ferments; and simple, straight dough loaves. Recipes for brioche, focaccia, pizza dough, flat breads, and other traditional baking staples augment the diverse collection of flavors, tastes, and textures represented within these pages. From the delicate flavor and aroma of classic French baguettes to the mellow smoothness of Roasted Garlic Levain, a bread for every season and every palate is here.Each recipe clearly outlines the key stages, with easy-to-use charts that list ingredients in both American and metric measures, quantities appropriate for home baking, and baker's percentages. Hundreds of drawings vividly illustrate techniques, and 35 handsome color photographs display finished breads. Sidebars accompany each recipe and section with valuable tips, from the subtle art of tasting and evaluating breads to the perfect fare to complement Vollkornbrot. A complete chapter on decorative breads - with instructions on techniques as well as a wide variety of exquisite patterns - will inspire magnificent display creations.Laced throughout the book, Hamelman's personal narratives offer a compelling portrait of a lifelong love affair with bread and vividly communicate this passion. For bakers seeking to finesse this time-honored craft or simply to learn the tricks of the trade from a real master, Bread is a resource to be consulted time and time again.

    As he wondered how to escape his career, he rediscovered a list of goals he had scrawled out years before, the last of which said: Go everywhere, eat everything. With that, he had found his mission -- a yearlong search for the delicious, and curious, and the curiously delicious, which he names "Eat My Globe" and memorably chronicles in these pages.In Majumdar's world, food is everything. Like every member of his family, he has a savant's memory for meals, with instant recall of dishes eaten decades before. Simon's unstoppable wit and passion for all things edible (especially those things that once had eyes, and a face, and a mom and a pop) makes this an armchair traveler's and foodie's delight -- Majumdar does all the heavy lifting, eats the heavy foods (and suffers the weighty consequences), so you don't have to. He jets to thirty countries in just over twelve months, diving mouth-first into local cuisines and cultures as different as those of Japan and Iceland. His journey takes him from China, where he consumes one of his "Top Ten Worst Eats," stir-fried rat, to the United States, where he glories in our greatest sandwiches: the delectable treasures of Katz's Delicatessen in Manhattan, BBQ in Kansas and Texas, the still-rich po' boys of post-Katrina New Orleans.The meat of the story -- besides the peerless ham in Spain, the celebrated steaks of Argentina, the best of Munich's wursts as well as their descendants, the famous hot dogs of Chicago -- is the friends that Simon makes as he eats. They are as passionate about food as he is and are eager to welcome him to their homes and tables, share their choicest meals, and reveal their local secrets. Also a poignant memoir, "Eat My Globe" is a life told through food and spiced with Majumdar's remembrances of foods past, including those from his colorful childhood. (Raised in Northern England, he is the son of a fiery Welsh nurse and a distinguished Bengali surgeon.) A captivating look at one man's passion for food, family, and unique life experiences, Eat My Globe will make you laugh -- while it makes you hungry. It is sure to satiate any gastronome obsessed with globetrotting -- for now.

    She had never before considered making her own peanut butter and pita bread, let alone curing her own prosciutto or raising turkeys. And though it sounded logical that "doing it yourself" would cost less, she had her doubts. So Reese began a series of kitchen-related experiments, taking into account the competing demands of everyday contemporary American family life as she answers some timely questions: When is homemade better? Cheaper? Are backyard eggs a more ethical choice than store-bought? Will grinding and stuffing your own sausage ruin your week? Is it possible to make an edible maraschino cherry? Some of Reese's discoveries will surprise you: Although you should make your hot dog buns, guacamole, and yogurt, you should probably buy your hamburger buns, potato chips, and rice pudding. Tired? Buy your mayonnaise. Inspired? Make it. With its fresh voice and delightful humor, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter gives 120 recipes with eminently practical yet deliciously fun "Make or buy" recommendations. Reese is relentlessly entertaining as she relates her food and animal husbandry adventures, which amuse and perplex as well as nourish and sustain her family. Her tales include living with a backyard full of cheerful chickens, muttering ducks, and adorable baby goats; countertops laden with lacto-fermenting pickles; and closets full of mellowing cheeses. Here's the full picture of what is involved in a truly homemade life -- with the good news that you shouldn't try to make everything yourself -- and how to get the most out of your time in the kitchen.

    F. K. Fisher in The Gastronomical Me, food is more than a metaphor in The Bread and the Knife. It is the organizing principle of an existence. Starting with "A Is for Al Dente," the loosely linked chapters evoke an alphabet of food memories that recount a woman’s emotional growth from the challenges of youth to professional accomplishment, marriage, and divorce. Betrayal is embodied in an overripe melon, her awakening in a Béarnaise sauce. Passion fruit juice portends the end of a first marriage, while tarte Tatin offers redemption. Each letter serves up a surprising variation on the struggle for self-knowledge, the joy and pain of familial and romantic love, and food’s astonishing ability to connect us with both the living and the dead. Ranging from her grandmother's suburban kitchen to an elegant New York restaurant, a longhouse in Borneo, and a palace in Rajasthan, The Bread and the Knife charts the vicissitudes of a woman forced to swallow some hard truths about herself while discovering that the universe can dispense surprising second chances.

    This celebration of farm life is a companion volume to the PBS series hosted by Adams. 64 full-color photographs.

    She'll trek for hours or even days in search of a good lunch. Ant Egg Soup is the result of her adventures in Laos, the stories of the people she met, the places she visited and, of course, the amazing food she tasted. Drinking raw turkey blood with herbs in a tribal village, cooking Paradise chicken in a little guest house by the Kung Si waterfalls, and sampling fried cricket during the Festival of the Golden Stupa are just a few examples. Funny and refreshing, with recipes and lines drawings, Ant Egg Soup will awaken the senses while redefining the art of travelling and eating abroad.

    But in today's treadmill, take-out world -- our fast-food nation -- does pie still have a place?As she traveled across the United States in an old Volvo named Betty, Pascale Le Draoulec discovered how merely mentioning homemade pie to strangers made faces soften, shoulders relax, and memories come wafting back. Rambling from town to town with Le Draoulec, you'll meet the famous, and sometimes infamous, pie makers who share their stories and recipes, and find out how a quest for pie can lead to something else entirely.

    Or, at least, you'll flick through these pages and find recipes so inviting that you'll head straight for the kitchen: roast garlic and tomato soup, uplifting chilli-lemon spaghetti, charred leek lasagne, squash skillet pie, spicy fish finger sandwiches or burnt-butter brownies. It's the kind of cooking you can do a little bit drunk. It's the kind of cooking that is probably better if you've got a bottle of wine open, and a hunk of bread to mop up the sauce.But if you sit down with this book and a cup of tea (or that glass of wine), you'll also discover that it's an annotated list of things worth living for: a manifesto of moments worth living for. Because there was a time when, for Ella Risbridger, the world had become overwhelming. Sounds were too loud, colours were too bright, everyone moved too fast. One night she found herself lying on her kitchen floor, wondering if she would ever get up - and it was the thought of a chicken, of roasting it, and of eating it, that got her to her feet, and made her want to be alive.This is a cookbook to make you fall in love with the world again

    And there’s much to love: hundreds of gloriously pungent varieties—crumbly, creamy, buttery, even shot through with bottle-green mold. So many varieties, in fact, that the aspiring gourmand may wonder: How does one make sense of it all?In The Whole Fromage, Kathe Lison sets out to learn what makes French cheese so remarkable—why France is the “Cheese Mother Ship,” in the words of one American expert. Her journey takes her to cheese caves tucked within the craggy volcanic rock of Auvergne, to a centuries-old monastery in the French Alps, and to the farmlands that keep cheesemaking traditions alive. She meets the dairy scientists, shepherds, and affineurs who make up the world of modern French cheese, and whose lifestyles and philosophies are as varied and flavorful as the delicacies they produce. Most delicious of all, she meets the cheeses themselves—from spruce-wrapped Mont d’Or, so gooey it’s best eaten with a spoon; to luminous Beaufort, redolent of Alpine grasses and wildflowers, a single round of which can weigh as much as a Saint Bernard; to Camembert, invented in Normandy but beloved and imitated across the world.With writing as piquant and rich as a well-aged Roquefort, as charming as a tender springtime chèvre, and yet as unsentimental as a stinky Maroilles, The Whole Fromage is a tasty exploration of one of the great culinary treasures of France.

    Carla shows us that soul food is more than barbecue and mac and cheese. Traditionally a plant-based cuisine, everyday soul food is full of veggie goodness that’s just as delicious as cornbread and fried chicken.From Black-Eyed Pea Salad with Hot Sauce Vinaigrette to Tomato Pie with Garlic Bread Crust, the recipes in Carla Hall’s Soul Food deliver her distinctive Southern flavors using farm-fresh ingredients. The results are light, healthy, seasonal dishes with big, satisfying tastes—the mouthwatering soul food everyone will want a taste of.Recipes include:Cracked Shrimp with Comeback SauceGhanaian Peanut Beef Stew with Onions and CeleryCaribbean Smothered Chicken with Coconut, Lime, and ChilesRoasted Cauliflower with Raisins and Lemon-Pepper MilletField Peas with Country HamChunky Tomato Soup with Roasted Okra RoundsSweet Potato Pudding with ClementinesPoured Caramel CakeWith Carla Hall’s Soul Food, you can indulge in rich celebration foods, such as deviled eggs, buttermilk biscuits, Carla’s famous take on Nashville hot fried chicken, and a decadent coconut cream layer cake.Featuring 145 original recipes, 120 color photographs, and a whole lotta love, Carla Hall’s Soul Food is a wonderful blend of the modern and the traditional—honoring soul food’s heritage and personalizing it with Carla’s signature fresh style. The result is an irresistible and open-hearted collection of recipes and stories that share love and joy, identity, and memory.

    Even as Victoria was selling bottles worth hundreds and thousands of dollars during the day, passing sommelier certification exams with flying colors, and receiving distinction from all kinds of press, there were still groping patrons, bosses who abused their role and status, and a trip to the hospital emergency room.It would take hitting bottom at a new restaurant and restorative trips to the vineyards where she could feel closest to the wine she loved for Victoria to re-emerge, clear-eyed and passionate, and a proud “wine girl” of her own Michelin-starred restaurant.Exhilarating and inspiring, Wine Girl is the memoir of a young woman breaking free from an abusive and traumatic childhood on her own terms; an ethnography of the glittering, high-octane, but notoriously corrosive restaurant industry; and above all, a love letter to the restorative and life-changing effects of good wine and good hospitality.

    Within a few months of its first appearance in 1986 it was hailed as a modern classic. Fiona MacCarthy wrote in The Times that, ‘the book is a large and grandiose life history, a passionate narrative of extremes of experience.’ Jeremy Round called Patience Gray ‘the high priestess of cooking’, whose book ‘pushes the form of the cookery book as far as it can go.’ Angela Carter remarked that ‘it was less a cookery book that a summing-up of the genre of the late-modern British cookery book.’ The work has attracted a cult following in the United States, where passages have been read out at great length on the radio; and it has been anthologized by Paul Levy in The Penguin Book of Food and Drink. It was given a special award by the André Simon Book Prize committee in 1987.

    From hiring a blind line cook to flooding the room with meringue to being terrorized by a French owl, these behind-the-scenes accounts are as wildly entertaining as they are revealing. A delicious reminder that even the chefs we most admire aren't always perfect, Don't Try This at Home is a must-have for anyone who loves food or is fascinated by those who masterfully prepare it.