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...

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book


Ben Cohen - 1987
    Dastardly Mash, featuring nuts, raisins, and hunks of chocolate. The celebrated Heath Bar Crunch. New York Super Fudge Chunk. Oreo Mint. In addition to Ben & Jerry's 11 greatest hits, here are recipes for ice creams made with fresh fruit, with chocolate, with candies and cookies, and recipes for sorbets, sundaes, and baked goods.

The Vegetable Butcher: How to Select, Prep, Slice, Dice, and Masterfully Cook Vegetables from Artichokes to Zucchini


Cara Mangini - 2016
    The skills of butchery meet the world of fresh produce in this essential, inspiring guide that demystifies the world of vegetables. In step-by-step photographs, “vegetable butcher” Cara Mangini shows how to break down a butternut squash, cut a cauliflower into steaks, peel a tomato properly, chiffonade kale, turn carrots into coins and parsnips into matchsticks, and find the meaty heart of an artichoke. Additionally, more than 150 original, simple recipes put vegetables front and center, from a Kohlrabi Carpaccio to Zucchini, Sweet Corn, and Basil Penne, to a Parsnip-Ginger Layer Cake to sweeten a winter meal. It’s everything you need to know to get the best out of modern, sexy, and extraordinarily delicious vegetables.

Real Food: What to Eat and Why


Nina Planck - 2006
    The country's leading expert on farmers' markets and traditional foods tells the truth about the foods your grandmother praised but doctors call dangerous.Everyone loves real food, but they're afraid bacon and eggs will give them a heart attack--thus the culinary abomination known as the egg-white omelet. But it turns out that tossing out the yolk isn't smart. Real Food reveals why traditional foods are not only delicious--everyone knows that butter tastes better--but are actually good for you, making the nutritional case for egg, cream, butter, grass-fed beef, roast chicken with the skin, lard, cocoa butter, and more.In lively, personal chapters on produce, dairy, meat, fish, Nina explains how the foods we've eaten for thousands of years--pork, lamb, raw milk cheese, sea salt--have been falsely accused. Industrial foods like corn syrup, which lurks everywhere from fruit juice to chicken broth, are to blame for the triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, not real food.Nina Planck grew up on a vegetable farm in Virginia and learned to eat right from her no-nonsense parents: along with lots of local fruits and vegetables, the Plancks drank raw milk and ate meatloaf, bacon, and eggs with impunity. But the nutritional trends ran the other way--fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol were taboo--and in her teens and twenties, Nina tried vegan, vegetarian, low-fat, and low-cholesterol diets, with unhappy results.When she opened the first farmers' markets in London, Nina began to eat real food again--for pleasure, not health--and to her surprise she lost weight and felt great. She began to wonder about the farmhouse diet back home. Was it deadly, as the cardiologists say? Happily for people who love food, the answer is no.Real Food upends the conventional wisdom on diet and health. Prepare for pleasant surprises on whipped cream and other delights. The days of deprivation are over.(from the flap)

Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: More Than 125 Recipes for Instant, Overnight, Meal-Prepped, and Easy Comfort Foods: A Cookbook


Tieghan Gerard - 2019
    With Half Baked Harvest Super Simple, Tieghan Gerard has solved that problem.On her blog and in her debut cookbook, Tieghan is beloved for her freshly sourced, comfort-food-forward recipes that taste even better than they look. Half Baked Harvest Super Simple takes what fans loved most about Half Baked Harvest Cookbook and distills it into quicker, more manageable dishes, including options for one-pot meals, night-before meal prep, and even some Instant Pot(R) or slow cooker recipes. Using the most important cooking basics, you'll whip up everyday dishes like Cardamom Apple Fritters, Spinach and Artichoke Mac and Cheese, and Lobster Tacos to share with your family, or plan stress-free dinner parties with options like Slow Roasted Moroccan Salmon and Fresh Corn and Zucchini Summer Lasagna.Especially for home cooks who are pressed for time or just starting out, Half Baked Harvest Super Simple is your go-to for hassle-free meals that never sacrifice taste.

Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners


Rachael Ray - 2005
    without a single repeat! Based on the original 30-Minute Meal cooking classes that started it all, these recipes prove that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every night. Rachael offers dozens of recipes that, once mastered, can become entirely new dishes with just a few ingredient swaps. Learn how to make a Southwestern Pasta Bake and you’ll be able to make a Smoky Chipotle Chili Con Queso Mac the next time. Try your hand at Spring Chicken with Leeks and Peas and you’re all set to turn out a rib-sticking Rice and Chicken Stoup that looks and tastes like an entirely different dish. As a best-selling cookbook author and host of three top-rated Food Network shows, Rachael Ray believes that both cooking and eating should be fun. Drawing from her own favorite dishes as well as those of her family, friends, and celebrities, she covers the flavor spectrum from Asian to Italian and dozens of delicious stops in between. Best of all, these flavor-packed dishes will satisfy your every craving and renew your taste for cooking. With so many delicious entrees to choose from you’ll never have an excuse for being in a cooking rut again.How about a brand-new 30-minute dinner every night for an entire year? Tired of making the same old same old, week after week after week? With Rachael’s most varied and comprehensive collection of 30-minute recipes ever, you’ll have everyone at your table saying “Yummo!” all year long. It’s amazing what a half hour can do for your tastebuds … 365 days a year!

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution


Thomas McNamee - 2007
    This is what Thomas McNamee does most handily in his Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, a chronicle that begins with the seat-of-the-pants opening night of the "counterculture" venture in 1971, and ends 35 years later with Waters's restaurant an American institution--one credited with birthing California Cuisine, a style devoted to simplicity, freshness and seasonality. The book also limns, with tasty gossip, the ever-evolving Chez Panisse family, including the cook-artisans uniquely responsible for dish creation; follows the attempts, mostly failed, to put the restaurant on sound financial footing; shows how dishes and menus get made; and of course pursues Waters as she broadens her commitment to "virtuous agriculture" by establishing ventures like The Edible Schoolyard and The Yale Sustainable Food Project. The success of Chez Panisse--Gourmet magazine named it the best American restaurant in 2002--has everything to do with Waters, yet she remains an elusive protagonist. Sophisticated yet naive, professional and amateur, hard-driving but emotionally blurry, she invites reader interest but doesn't always satisfy it, as least as presented here. If McNamee cannot quite bring her to life, and if his tale lacks an insider's full conversance with his subject, he still engages readers in the considerable drama of people finding their way--blunderingly, with talented intent--to something new. With menus, narrated recipes, and photographs throughout, the book is vital reading for anyone interested in food, period. --Arthur Boehm

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook That Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats


Sally Fallon Morell - 1995
    Nutrition researcher Sally Fallon unites the wisdom of the ancients with the latest independent and accurate scientific research. The revised and updated Second Edition contains over 700 delicious recipes that will please both exacting gourmets and busy parents.

Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work


Aki Kamozawa - 2010
    Their book shares the knowledge they have gleaned from numerous cooking adventures, from why tapioca flour makes a silkier chocolate pudding than the traditional cornstarch or flour to how to cold smoke just about any ingredient you can think of to impart a new savory dimension to everyday dishes. Perfect for anyone who loves food, Ideas in Food is the ideal handbook for unleashing creativity, intensifying flavors, and pushing one’s cooking to new heights. This guide, which includes 100 recipes, explores questions both simple and complex to find the best way to make food as delicious as possible. For home cooks, Aki and Alex look at everyday ingredients and techniques in new ways—from toasting dried pasta to lend a deeper, richer taste to a simple weeknight dinner to making quick “micro stocks” or even using water to intensify the flavor of soups instead of turning to long-simmered stocks. In the book’s second part, Aki and Alex explore topics, such as working with liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide—techniques that are geared towards professional cooks but interesting and instructive for passionate foodies as well. With primers and detailed usage guides for the pantry staples of molecular gastronomy, such as transglutaminase and hydrocolloids (from xanthan gum to gellan), Ideas in Food informs readers how these ingredients can transform food in miraculous ways when used properly.  Throughout, Aki and Alex show how to apply their findings in unique and appealing recipes such as Potato Chip Pasta, Root Beer-Braised Short Ribs, and Gingerbread Soufflé. With Ideas in Food, anyone curious about food will find revelatory information, surprising techniques, and helpful tools for cooking more cleverly and creatively at home.

The Accidental Vegetarian: Delicious Food Without Meat


Simon Rimmer - 2004
    Armed with two cookbooks and heaps of enthusiasm, he and a friend created the best vegetarian restaurant in Manchester, Greens, famous for its inventive, delicious food and terrific atmosphere.  The Accidental Vegetarian is the culmination of Simon’s culinary adventure. A confirmed meat eater, Simon had to rethink his cooking style as he opened his restaurant, and in this book he presents original and easy-to-prepare vegetarian recipes that will please even the most dedicated carnivore, and win over the most intimidated would-be chef. Simon borrows cooking styles and ideas from all corners of the globe to create unique combinations of ingredients that result in flavorful and interesting dishes such as Green Papaya Salad, Eggplant Tikka, Pumpkin Enchiladas with Mole sauce, Filo Strudel with Port Wine Sauce and Red Thai Bean Curry. From his more exotic inventions to good old favorites, The Accidental Vegetarian will help forever retire the bean-sprout and tofu image of vegetarian meals from the minds of people everywhere.

The Food Lover's Companion (Barron's Cooking Guide)


Sharon Tyler Herbst - 1990
    Hailed by Bon App(c)tit magazine as "one of the best reference books we've seen, a must for every cook's library," it's the ultimate kitchen tool. Here are answers to questions about cooking techniques, meat cuts, kitchen utensils, food, wine, cocktail terms, and much more. Readers will also find a completely revised and expanded appendix containing a pasta glossary, a pan substitution chart, consumer information contacts, ingredient equivalents and substitutions, and more. A million readers can't be wrong--and they've found previous editions of this book invaluable. For anybody who cooks--or who simply loves food--here's a terrific reference source and an outstanding cookbook supplement.

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.

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany


Bill Buford - 2006
    Heat is the chronicle—sharp, funny, wonderfully exuberant—of his time spent as Batali’s “slave” and of his far-flung apprenticeships with culinary masters in Italy.In a fast-paced, candid narrative, Buford describes the frenetic experience of working in Babbo’s kitchen: the trials and errors (and more errors), humiliations and hopes, disappointments and triumphs as he worked his way up the ladder from slave to cook. He talks about his relationships with his kitchen colleagues and with the larger-than-life, hard-living Batali, whose story he learns as their friendship grows through (and sometimes despite) kitchen encounters and after-work all-nighters. Buford takes us to the restaurant in a remote Appennine village where Batali first apprenticed in Italy and where Buford learns the intricacies of handmade pasta . . . the hill town in Chianti where he is tutored in the art of butchery by Italy’s most famous butcher, a man who insists that his meat is an expression of the Italian soul . . . to London, where he is instructed in the preparation of game by Marco Pierre White, one of England’s most celebrated (or perhaps notorious) chefs. And throughout, we follow the thread of Buford’s fascinating reflections on food as a bearer of culture, on the history and development of a few special dishes (Is the shape of tortellini really based on a woman’s navel? And just what is a short rib?), and on the what and why of the foods we eat today.Heat is a marvelous hybrid: a richly evocative memoir of Buford’s kitchen adventure, the story of Batali’s amazing rise to culinary (and extra-culinary) fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in—and to savor.

Butter: A Rich History


Elaine Khosrova - 2016
    Ubiquitous in the world’s most fabulous cuisines, butter is boss. Here, it finally gets its due. After traveling across three continents to stalk the modern story of butter, award-winning food writer and former pastry chef Elaine Khosrova serves up a story as rich, textured, and culturally relevant as butter itself. From its humble agrarian origins to its present-day artisanal glory, butter has a fascinating story to tell, and Khosrova is the perfect person to tell it. With tales about the ancient butter bogs of Ireland, the pleasure dairies of France, and the sacred butter sculptures of Tibet, Khosrova details butter’s role in history, politics, economics, nutrition, and even spirituality and art. Readers will also find the essential collection of core butter recipes, including beurre manié, croissants, pâte brisée, and the only buttercream frosting anyone will ever need, as well as practical how-tos for making various types of butter at home--or shopping for the best.

Dinner: Changing the Game: A Cookbook


Melissa Clark - 2017
    With more than 200 all-new recipes, Dinner is about options: inherently simple recipes that you can make any night of the week.Each recipe in this book is meant to be dinner--one fantastic dish that is so satisfying and flavor-forward it can stand alone--maybe with a little salad or some bread on the side. This is what Melissa Clark means by changing the game. Organized by main ingredient--chicken, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, pasta and noodles, tofu, vegetable dinners, grains, pizza, soups, and salads that mean it--Dinner covers an astonishing breadth of ideas about just what dinner can be. There is something for every mood, season, and the amount of time you have: sheet pan chicken laced with spicy harissa, burgers amped with chorizo, curried lentils with poached eggs, to name just a few dishes in this indispensable collection. Here, too, are easy flourishes that make dinner exceptional: stir charred lemon into pasta, toss creamy Caesar-like dressing on a grain bowl.Melissa Clark's mission is to help anyone, whether a novice or an experienced home cook, figure out what to have for dinner without ever settling on fallbacks.