Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World's Most Ancient Pleasures


Paul Lukacs - 2012
    Modern wine exists as the product of multiple revolutions scientific, industrial, social, even ideological. Though the same basic chemical substance as its ancient forebear, it is in every other respect very different. Contemporary wines both taste unlike those from earlier eras and are valued in novel ways. For many thousands of years, wine was a basic need. Today it is a cultural choice, and the reasons why millions of people choose it tells us as much about them as about the contents of bottle or glass. In Inventing Wine, Paul Lukacs chronicles wine s transformation from a source of sustenance to a consciously pursued pleasure, in the process offering a new way to view the present as well as the past.

Everyone Is Italian on Sunday


Rachael Ray - 2015
    It represents decades of enjoying and working with food and the people I love most in this world.” —Rachael If you’re like Rachael Ray, you’ll agree that there is something comforting and heartwarming about a heaping plate of perfectly cooked spaghetti with moist and tender meatballs covered in a luscious, dark-red tomato sauce. Now, in Everyone Is Italian on Sunday, Rachael invites you into her home to share her family’s culinary history and the recipes that have shaped her life and career.For Rachael, Italian food—spinach gnocchi, linguine puttanesca, chicken saltimbocca, pizza capricciosa—has the power to summon cherished, happy memories. In this one indispensable book, she has brought together signature recipes for the traditional Italian staples that she grew up with and still cooks for her family and friends today. From arancini to saffron gnocchetti sardi, from small bites to hearty meals, from her sister’s favorite Italian desserts to her husband’s Italian ingredient-inspired cocktails, here is a treasury of delicious dishes to prepare with love and devour with gusto. Classic Italian cooking has always been the foundation of almost every meal that Rachael prepares, and she hopes that you and your family, friends, and neighbors will love savoring everything that Italian cooking has to offer. Italian Sundays are all about bringing people together and creating wonderful memories while enjoying the pleasures of great homemade food. So pull up a chair at Rachael’s kitchen table and experience the magic of an Italian Sunday!

Sophia Loren's Recipes and Memories


Sophia Loren - 1998
    Sophia has dedicated this book to her grandmother Luisa, with whom she lived in Pozzuoli, the small city near Naples, during World War II. Watching her grandmother turn their humble wartime rations into succulent dishes left a lasting impression on Sophia, and it is this spirit of improvisation that marks the recipes in her new cookbook.Along with Nonna Luisa's specialties, Sophia's recipes come from all over Italy: a wonderful bean soup from Tuscany, Neapolitan pizzas, a risotto from Venice, fish from Sicily and, vegetable preparations from the South. Many of the recipes are variations on the classics, such as Vermicelli alia Sophia (which features her own interpretation of pesto sauce) and Luisa's Minestrone (based on her grandmother's version of the essential vegetable soup). Sophia's love of pasta is well-known, and the book includes a wonderful selection of pasta recipes, as well as dishes of risotto and polenta. Simple antipasti and recipes for meat, poultry, and fish round out this collection. Among the homey desserts are a flourless apple cake and an irresistible ricotta pie.In addition to the recipes, Sophia shares poignant anecdotes about her Neapolitan childhood and her illustrious filmmaking career. She takes us behind the scenes of some of the many movies she made in Italy with such stars and dear friends as Marcello Mastroianni and Cary Grant and shares the recipes that she discovered on location for various movies. While making Two Women, in the mountains near Rome, she learned to make Spaghetti alla Carbonara from charcoal workers.

The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World


Christy Campbell - 2005
    Jules-Émile Planchon, a botanist from Montpellier, was sent to investigate. He discovered that the vine roots were covered in microscopic yellow insects. What they were and where they had come from was a mystery. The infestation advanced with the relentlessness of an invading army and within a few years had spread across Europe, from Portugal to the Crimea. The wine industry was on the brink of disaster. The French government offered a prize of three hundred thousand gold francs for a remedy. Planchon believed he had the answer and set out to prove it. Gripping and intoxicating, The Botanist and the Vintner brings to life one of the most significant, though little-known, events in the history of wine.

Kevin Zraly's Complete Wine Course


Kevin Zraly - 2011
    Plus, he completely refreshed the tasting section with flavor profiles that also discuss winemaking; created a new Best of the Best chapter; and included more than 20 smart phone tags throughout the book that link to videos of Kevin talking about wine. As always, the book offers Wine Basics, Tasting Wine, Matching Wine and Food, Frequently Asked Questions About Wine, and a Selected Glossary. Zraly goes region-by-region, with the wines organized from simple to complex--allowing readers who follow Kevin's order to experience the finest wines and a wide diversity of tastes, styles, regions, and countries. More than ever, this is clearly the wine guide against which all others are judged.

How to Taste: A Guide to Enjoying Wine


Jancis Robinson - 2001
    With How to Taste, she's put together a unique wine-tasting course based on practical exercises that appeal to wine connoisseurs of all levels. 90 photos.

The Sweetness of Doing Nothing: Live Life the Italian Way with Dolce Far Niente


Sophie Minchilli - 2021
    The Sweetness of Doing Nothing will share this philosophy, with recipes, suggestions and advice to help you to let go of anxiety and savour life’s precious moments.

Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste


Bianca Bosker - 2017
    Until she stumbled on an alternate universe where taste reigned supreme, a world in which people could, after a single sip of wine, identify the grape it was made from, in what year, and where it was produced down to the exact location, within acres. Where she tasted wine, these people detected not only complex flavor profiles, but entire histories and geographies. Astounded by their fanatical dedication and seemingly superhuman sensory powers, Bosker abandoned her screen-centric life and set out to discover what drove their obsession, and whether she, too, could become a cork dork.Thus begins a year and a half long adventure that takes the reader inside elite tasting groups, exclusive New York City restaurants, a California winery that manipulates the flavor of its bottles with ingredients like Mega Purple, and even a neuroscientist's fMRI machine as Bosker attempts to answer the most nagging question of all: what's the big deal about wine? Funny, counter intuitive, and compulsively readable, Cork Dork illuminates not only the complex web of wine production and consumption, but how tasting better can change our brains and help us live better.

The New Wine Rules: A Genuinely Helpful Guide to Everything You Need to Know


Jon Bonne - 2017
    So why does finding and choosing one you like seem so stressful?Now, becoming a happier, more confident wine drinker is easy. The first step is to forget all the useless, needlessly complicated stuff the "experts" have been telling you. In The New Wine Rules, acclaimed wine writer Jon Bonne explains everything you need to know in simple, beautifully illustrated, easy-to-digest tidbits. And the news is good! For example: A wine's price rarely reflects its quality. You can drink rose any time of year. Don't save a great bottle for anything more than a rainy day.

Air Fry Every Day: 75 Recipes to Fry, Roast, and Bake Using Your Air Fryer


Ben Mims - 2018
    The high-powered convection heating translates to faster cook times, and with so little oil, you'll have easy clean-up too. Air Fry Every Day shows you how to use your air fryer to create healthier fresh takes on comfort food classics, crowd-pleasing snacks, and kid-friendly dishes, such as buffalo wings, coconut shrimp, shoestring fries, stuffed blooming onions with lemon aioli, and spiced sweet potato wedges with garlic yogurt dip. You'll also find deliciously unexpected ways to put your air fryer to use in recipes such as golden bread crumb-crusted cider-brined pork chops, crispy air-fried rice, and beautifully bronzed whole heads of cauliflower. An air fryer is also incredibly versatile: with its powerful convection heating, it can bake, roast, and steam at superfast speeds, so in addition to craveworthy "fried" foods, you'll find recipes for roasted meats, breads, pizzas, and even desserts and sweet baked goods--you may never turn your oven on again. With recipes that are creative, fast, and foolproof, and essential tips and techniques to maximize your air fryer's capabilities, Air Fry Every Day is the best reason why you should add this tool to your arsenal of kitchen gadgets.

Risotto with Nettles: A Memoir with Food


Anna Del Conte - 2009
    Born in Milan, she grew up in pre-war Italy in a privileged gentler time. When war came to Italy her family had to abandon their apartment and the city for the countryside, where in war-torn Italy the peasants still ate well, but life was dangerous. As a teenager, Anna became used to throwing herself into a ditch as attack planes flew over, and was imprisoned, twice. She arrived in England in 1949 when much of Britain was a culinary wasteland, married an Englishman, and stayed on to eventually launch a culinary revolution. Her memories of a life seen through food are vividly, hilarious preserved—from the joys of unrationed horse meat to bringing up her children while writing the cookbooks that would inspire a new generation of cooks.

Rick Stein’s Secret France


Rick Stein - 2019
    Now, he returns to the food and cooking he loves the most … and makes us fall in love with French food all over again. Rick’s meandering quest through the byways and back roads of rural France sees him pick up inspiration from Normandy to Provence. With characteristic passion and joie de vivre, Rick serves up incredible recipes: chicken stuffed with mushrooms and Comté, grilled bream with aioli from the Languedoc coast, a duck liver parfait bursting with flavour, and a recipe for the most perfect raspberry tart plus much, much more. Simple fare, wonderful ingredients, all perfectly assembled; Rick finds the true essence of a food so universally loved, and far easier to recreate than you think.

Summer in a Glass: The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes


Evan Dawson - 2011
    Filled with fun and likable characters, "Summer in a Glass" brings this burgeoning area to life and captures its exciting diversity--from its immigrant German winemakers to its young, technically trained connoisseurs, from classic Rieslings to up-and-coming Cabernet Francs.

The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling Through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World


Brian Doyle - 2006
    

The History of Wine in 100 Bottles: From Bacchus to Bordeaux and Beyond


Oz Clarke - 2015
    Moving from the first cork tops to screw caps, renowned wine writer Oz Clarke presents such landmarks as the introduction of the cylindrical wine bottle in the 1780s; the first estate to bottle and label its own wine (formerly sold in casks to merchants only); the most expensive bottle sold at auction and the oldest unopened bottle; the change in classifications; and the creation of numerous famous vintages. Fully illustrated with photographs of bottles, labels, and other images, this is a beautiful tribute to the "bottled poetry" that is wine.