Book picks similar to
Best Food Writing 2008 by Holly Hughes
food
non-fiction
essays
nonfiction
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
Ruth Reichl - 2001
Comfort Me with Apples picks up Reichl's story in 1978, when she puts down her chef's toque and embarks on a career as a restaurant critic. Her pursuit of good food and good company leads her to New York and China, France and Los Angeles, and her stories of cooking and dining with world-famous chefs range from the madcap to the sublime. Throughout it all, Reichl makes each and every course a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike. She shares some of her favorite recipes, while also sharing the intimacies of her personal life in a style so honest and warm that readers will feel they are enjoying a conversation over a meal with a friend.
What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained
Robert L. Wolke - 2002
Chemistry professor and syndicated Washington Post food columnist Robert L. Wolke provides over 100 reliable and witty explanations, while debunking misconceptions and helping you to see through confusing advertising and labeling.
My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes
Melanie Dunea - 2007
Includes recipes. Chefs have been playing the "My Last Supper" game among themselves for decades, if not centuries, but it had always been kept within the profession-until now. Melanie Dunea came up with the ingenious idea to ask fifty of the world's famous chefs to let her in on this insider's game and tell her what their final meals would be. My Last Supper showcases their fascinating answers alongside stunning Vanity Fair-style portraits. Their responses are surprising, refreshing, and as distinct from each other as the chefs themselves. The portraits-gorgeous, intimate, and playful-are informed by their answers and reveal the passions and personalities of the most respected names in the business. Lastly, one recipe from each landmark meal is included in the back of the book. With My Last Supper, Dunea found a way into the typically harried, hidden minds of the people who have turned preparing food into an art. Who wouldn't want to know where Alain Ducasse would like his last supper to be? And who would prepare Daniel Boulud's final meal? What would Anthony Bourdain's guest list look like? As the clock ticked, what album would Gordon Ramsay be listening to? And just what would Mario Batali eat for the last time? Featuring: Ferran Adrià, José Andrés, Dan Barber, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, Michelle Bernstein, Daniel Boulud, Anthony Bourdain, Scott Conant, Gary Danko, Hélène Darroze, Alain Ducasse, Wylie Dufresne, Suzanne Goin, Gabrielle Hamilton, Fergus Henderson, Thomas Keller, Giorgio Locatelli, Masa Kobayashi, Nobu, Jamie Oliver, Jacques Pépin, Gordon Ramsay, Michel Richard, Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, Charlie Trotter, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and more...
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.
Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Restaurant Reviews, Articles, Memoir, Fiction and More
Dianne Jacob - 2005
Dianne Jacob—journalist and food-writing instructor and coach—offers interviews with award-winning writers such as Jeffrey Steingarten, Calvin Trillin, Molly O'Neill, and Deborah Madison, plus well-known book and magazine editors and literary agents, give readers the tools to get started and the confidence to follow through. Comprehensive yet accessible chapters range from restaurant reviewing to cookbooks to memoirs. Focused exercises at the end of chapters stimulate creativity, help organize thought, and build practical skills. Will Write for Food is the first and ultimate ins and outs guidebook to the incredibly popular world of food writing.
A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table
Molly Wizenberg - 2009
But when she tried going back to her apartment in Seattle and returning to graduate school, she knew it wasn't possible to resume life as though nothing had happened. So she went to Paris, a city that held vivid memories of a childhood trip with her father, of early morning walks on the cobbled streets of the Latin Quarter and the taste of her first pain au chocolat. She was supposed to be doing research for her dissertation, but more often, she found herself peering through the windows of chocolate shops, trekking across town to try a new pâtisserie, or tasting cheeses at outdoor markets, until one evening when she sat in the Luxembourg Gardens reading cookbooks until it was too dark to see, she realized that her heart was not in her studies but in the kitchen.At first, it wasn't clear where this epiphany might lead. Like her long letters home describing the details of every meal and market, Molly's blog Orangette started out merely as a pleasant pastime. But it wasn't long before her writing and recipes developed an international following. Every week, devoted readers logged on to find out what Molly was cooking, eating, reading, and thinking, and it seemed she had finally found her passion. But the story wasn't over: one reader in particular, a curly-haired, food-loving composer from New York, found himself enchanted by the redhead in Seattle, and their email correspondence blossomed into a long-distance romance.In A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg recounts a life with the kitchen at its center. From her mother's pound cake, a staple of summer picnics during her childhood in Oklahoma, to the eggs she cooked for her father during the weeks before his death, food and memories are intimately entwined. You won't be able to decide whether to curl up and sink into the story or to head straight to the market to fill your basket with ingredients for Cider-Glazed Salmon and Pistachio Cake with Honeyed Apricots.
Gastronaut: Adventures in Food for the Romantic, the Foolhardy, and the Brave
Stefan Gates - 2005
For your bedside or your stoveside, this hilarious and captivating journey through some of the strangest food experiences, past and present, is divided into three levels of escalating difficulty. Whether you're ready to gild your breakfast sausages with gold, re-create the Last Supper, or cook a whole pig in an underground fire pit, this book takes it all on with gusto and little regard for what one might call decency.Gastronaut answers questions like: • what foods make us fart? • how do you make your own moonshine? • is it possible to teach grandmas to suck eggs? • how would you stage a bacchanalian orgy in the comfort of your own home? Here is the perfect book for people who are fascinated by the wilder side of food and who, every now and then, want to show off their penchant for the extreme.
THE GASTRONAUT'S CREED
Food will consume 16 percent of my life. That life is too precious to waste; therefore: • I resolve, whenever possible, to transform food from fuel into love, power, adventure, poetry, sex, or drama. • I will never turn down the opportunity to taste or cook something new. • I will never forget: canapés are evil. • I will remember that culinary disaster does not necessarily equal failure. • I will always keep a jar of pesto to hand in case of the latter.
32 Yolks: From My Mother's Table to Working the Line
Eric Ripert - 2016
The winner of four James Beard Awards, co-owner and chef of a world-renowned restaurant, and recipient of countless Michelin stars, Ripert embodies elegance and culinary perfection. But before the accolades, before he even knew how to make a proper hollandaise sauce, Eric Ripert was a lonely young boy in the south of France whose life was falling apart.Ripert's parents divorced when he was six, separating him from the father he idolized and replacing him with a cold, bullying stepfather who insisted that Ripert be sent away to boarding school. A few years later, Ripert's father died on a hiking trip. Through these tough times, the one thing that gave Ripert comfort was food. Told that boys had no place in the kitchen, Ripert would instead watch from the doorway as his mother rolled couscous by hand or his grandmother pressed out the buttery dough for the treat he loved above all others, tarte aux pommes. When an eccentric local chef took him under his wing, an eleven-year-old Ripert realized that food was more than just an escape: It was his calling. That passion would carry him through the drudgery of culinary school and into the high-pressure world of Paris's most elite restaurants, where Ripert discovered that learning to cook was the easy part--surviving the line was the battle.Taking us from Eric Ripert's childhood in the south of France and the mountains of Andorra into the demanding kitchens of such legendary Parisian chefs as Joel Robuchon and Dominique Bouchet, until, at the age of twenty-four, Ripert made his way to the United States, 32 Yolks is the tender and richly told story of how one of our greatest living chefs found himself--and his home--in the kitchen.Praise for Eric Ripert's 32 Yolks"Passionate, poetical . . . What makes 32 Yolks compelling is the honesty and laudable humility Ripert brings to the telling."--Chicago Tribune"With a vulnerability and honesty that is breathtaking . . . Ripert takes us into the mind of a boy with thoughts so sweet they will cause you to weep. He also lets us into the mind of the man he is today, revealing all the golden cracks and chips that made him more valuable to those around him."--The Wall Street Journal"Eric Ripert makes magic with 32 Yolks."--Vanity Fair"32 Yolks may not be what you'd expect from a charming, Emmy-winning cooking show host and cookbook author. In the book, there are, of course, scenes of elaborate meals both eaten and prepared. . . . But Ripert's story is, for the most part, one of profound loss."--Los Angeles Times "This book demonstrates just how amazing Eric's life has been both inside and outside of the kitchen. It makes total sense now to see him become one of the greatest chefs in the world today. This is a portrait of a chef as a young man."--David Chang
Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater
Matthew Amster-Burton - 2009
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.
The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater
Nigel Slater - 2005
It is my belief?and the point of this book?that this is the best recipe of all. A crab sandwich by the sea on a June afternoon; a slice of roast goose with apple sauce and roast potatoes on Christmas Day; hot sausages and a chunk of roast pumpkin on a frost-sparkling night in November. These are meals whose success relies not on the expertise of the cook but on the more basic premise that this is the food of the moment--something eaten at a time when it is most appropriate, when the ingredients are at their peak of perfection, when the food, the cook and the time of year are at one with each other.? ?Nigel Slater, "The Kitchen Diaries" Nigel Slater writes about food in a way that stimulates the imagination, the heart, and the palate all at once. "The Kitchen Diaries" brings an especially personal ingredient to the mix, letting us glimpse his pantry, tour local farmers? markets with him, and savor even the simplest meals at his table. Recording twelve months in his culinary life, Slater shares seasonal dishes and the intriguing elements behind them. As someone who celebrates each visit to the cheese shop or butcher, he enthusiastically conveys the brilliant array of choices and encourages his view of food shopping as an adventure rather than a chore. A rainy day in February calls for a hearty stew; summertime finds him feasting on a lunch as simple as baked tomatoes with grated Parmesan. If an exotic mood strikes him, slow-roasted duck with star anise and ginger is in order. In "The Kitchen Diaries," Nigel interweaves his meditations on how food should be enjoyed and prepared with his delicious recipes. No matter the season, "The Kitchen Diaries" offers a year-round invitation to cook and dine with the world's most irresistible lover of food. BACKCOVER: Praise for Nigel Slater ?His writing could not be more palate-cleansing? his acidic riffs put you in mind of Nick Hornby, Martin Amis and Philip Larkin all at the same time.? ?"The New York Times" ?Nigel is a genius.? ?Jamie Oliver, author of "Jamie's Kitchen, The Naked Chef," and "Happy Days with the Naked Chef" ?unpretentious, delicious? ?Nigella Lawson, author of "How to Be a Domestic Goddess" ?The recipes sound uniformly delicious, rustic and tasty...but they?re also straight forward: easy to follow, easy to cook.? ?Independent on Sunday ?joyous? ?Guardian Weekend ?Slater wants his food, above all, to be uplifting. As a cookbook, "The Kitchen Diaries" succeeds brilliantly.? ?William Leith, "Observer" (London) ?it's a collection of scrumptious recipes, somehow written in such a way as to make your mouth genuinely water.? ?Rebecca Seal, "Observer" (London)
The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
David Kamp - 2006
Kamp, a writer and editor for GQ and Vanity Fair, chronicles the amazing transformation from the overcooked vegetables and scary gelatin salads of yore to the current heyday of free-range chickens, extra-virgin olive oil, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and that breed of human known as the foodie.
Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness
Sasha Martin - 2015
As cooking unlocked the memories of her rough-and-tumble childhood and the loss and heartbreak that came with it, Martin became more determined than ever to find peace and elevate her life through the prism of food and world cultures. From the tiny, makeshift kitchen of her eccentric, creative mother to a string of foster homes to the house from which she launches her own cooking adventure, Martin’s heartfelt, brutally honest memoir reveals the power of cooking to bond, to empower, and to heal—and celebrates the simple truth that happiness is created from within.
Women Who Eat: A New Generation on the Glory of Food
Leslie Miller - 2003
Women are reclaiming their pots and pans, but it's a new era in the kitchen. Today’s generation of women is putting a fresh spin on the "joy of cooking" — and eating and entertaining. Women both in and out of the culinary profession share their stories about the many ways food shapes and enhances their lives. New York Times columnist Amanda Hesser praises the joys of simple food, and Food and Wine editor Kate Sekules discusses the importance of having a restaurant where you’re recognized. Theresa Lust, author of Pass the Polenta, vividly remembers a childhood making sauerkraut with her grandmother, and Michelle Tea describes her working-class Polish family's meals as "tripe, kielbasa, shellfish and beer." One woman owns up to her culinary ineptitude in an era when being a gourmet cook is all the rage, while another remembers preferring chicken nuggets from the cafeteria to mom's homemade vegetable biryani. Women Who Eat not only presents an illuminating look at food today, but dishes out generous helpings of great prose that are sure to titillate the palate. Recipes are included.
The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life
Angelo M. Pellegrini - 1948
Written by a food-loving immigrant from Tuscany, this memoir-cum-cookbook articulates the Italian American vision of the good life: a backyard garden, a well-cooked meal shared with family and friends, and a passion for ingredients and cooking that nourish the body and the soul.
52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust
William Alexander - 2010
He tasted it long ago, in a restaurant, and has been trying to reproduce it ever since. Without success. Now, on the theory that practice makes perfect, he sets out to bake peasant bread every week until he gets it right. He bakes his loaf from scratch. And because Alexander is nothing if not thorough, he really means from scratch: growing, harvesting, winnowing, threshing, and milling his own wheat. An original take on the six-thousand-year-old staple of life, 52 Loaves explores the nature of obsession, the meditative quality of ritual, the futility of trying to re-create something perfect, our deep connection to the earth, and the mysterious instinct that makes all of us respond to the aroma of baking bread.