Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil


Tom Mueller - 2011
    Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life-giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality.But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt? Starting with an explosive article in The New Yorker, Tom Mueller has become the world's expert on olive oil and olive oil fraud-a story of globalization, deception, and crime in the food industry from ancient times to the present, and a powerful indictment of today's lax protections against fake and even toxic food products in the United States. A rich and deliciously readable narrative, Extra Virginity is also an inspiring account of the artisanal producers, chemical analysts, chefs, and food activists who are defending the extraordinary oils that truly deserve the name "extra-virgin."

A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family


Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan - 2011
    But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations. A Tiger in the Kitchen, which includes ten authentic recipes for Singaporean classics such as pineapple tarts and Teochew braised duck, is the autobiography of a Chinese-Singaporean ex-pat who learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine


Benjamin Wallace - 2008
    Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries.

What to Eat: Food that’s good for your health, pocket and plate


Joanna Blythman - 2012
    Food should be one of life's greatest pleasures yet, increasingly, choosing it is becoming a chore. Bombarded by questions such as 'Is red meat bad for you?' and 'Is local always best?' it's difficult to know what to eat. At the same time, even the basics are becoming more and more expensive, making it essential that we choose the best foods for ourselves and the planet and make them go as far as possible. Packed with brilliant ideas for choosing lovely, wholesome meat, fish and veg and quick, easy suggestions for cooking them well, without compromising your principles or emptying your purse, this is the modern manual for eating well in the twenty-first century. About the Author Joanna Blythman is Britain's leading investigative food...

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.

The Georgian Feast: The Vibrant Culture and Savory Food of the Republic of Georgia


Darra Goldstein - 1993
    He became so involved with his meal that he inadvertently tripped over the high peaks of the Caucasus, spilling his food onto the land below. The land blessed by Heaven's table scraps was Georgia.Nestled in the Caucasus mountain range between the Black and Caspian seas, the Republic of Georgia is as beautiful as it is bountiful. The unique geography of the land, which includes both alpine and subtropical zones, has created an enviable culinary tradition. In The Georgian Feast, Darra Goldstein explores the rich and robust culture of Georgia and offers a variety of tempting recipes.The book opens with a fifty-page description of the culture and food of Georgia. Next are over one hundred recipes, often accompanied by notes on the history of the dish. Holiday menus, a glossary of Georgian culinary terms, and an annotated bibliography round out the volume.

Sweet Laurel: Recipes for Whole Food, Grain-Free Desserts: A Baking Book


Laurel Gallucci - 2018
    From the beginning, Sweet Laurel has been about making sweet things simple. The recipes here are indulgent yet healthful. They use just a few quality ingredients to create delicious desserts that benefit your body; all of these treats are paleo, and many are vegan and raw. From Matcha Sandwich Cookies to Salted Lemon Meringue Pie to Classic German Chocolate Cake, these treats are at once uncomplicated, beautiful, and satisfying, made only with wholesome ingredients such as almonds, coconut, cacao, and dates. Here, too, are basic staple recipes to keep with you, like grain-free vanilla extract and vegan caramel, and fancy finishes, like paleo sprinkles and dairy-free ice cream.Whether you're looking for simpler recipes, seeking a better approach to dessert, or struggling with an allergy that has prevented you from enjoying sweets, Sweet Laurel will change the way you bake.

wagamama Feed Your Soul: Fresh + simple recipes from the wagamama kitchen


Wagamama Limited - 2019
    Cook rapid weekday meals, watch slow-cooked ramens simmer and even learn the art of making gyoza - Feed Your Soul is packed with tips and ideas for bringing wagamama to your kitchen. Feed Your Soul encourages mindful cooking - taking the time to appreciate and enjoy creating and eating these dishes is key. Methods for preparing your own homemade ramen noodles, kimchee, sauces and stocks are shared, so your dishes can be created entirely by you. We can't always spare the time to make everything from scratch, so you'll also find speedy, nutritious and simple recipes, as well as ingredient swaps and hacks. Including the never-before-shared recipe for chicken katsu curry, the famous yaki soba and fiery bang bang cauliflower, the dishes are balanced and offer suggestions for alternatives should you not have all the ingredients at home, allowing you to be more sustainable and creative in the kitchen.With original food photography, evocative shots of Japanese food emporia and lifestyle shots of noodles, ramen and ingredients, Feed Your Soul is set to become the new classic wagamama cookbook.

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.

The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America


Mark Kurlansky - 2009
    Award-winning New York Times-bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional. It helped form the distinct character, attitudes, and customs of those who ate it. In the 1930s, with the country gripped by the Great Depression and millions of Americans struggling to get by, FDR created the Federal Writers' Project under the New Deal as a make-work program for artists and authors. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. The project, called "America Eats," was abandoned in the early 1940s because of the World War and never completed. The Food of a Younger Land unearths this forgotten literary and historical treasure and brings it to exuberant life. Mark Kurlansky's brilliant book captures these remarkable stories, and combined with authentic recipes, anecdotes, photos, and his own musings and analysis, evokes a bygone era when Americans had never heard of fast food and the grocery superstore was a thing of the future. Kurlansky serves as a guide to this hearty and poignant look at the country's roots. From New York automats to Georgia Coca-Cola parties, from Arkansas possum-eating clubs to Puget Sound salmon feasts, from Choctaw funerals to South Carolina barbecues, the WPA writers found Americans in their regional niches and eating an enormous diversity of meals. From Mississippi chittlins to Indiana persimmon puddings, Maine lobsters, and Montana beavertails, they recorded the curiosities, commonalities, and communities of American food.

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table


Sara Roahen - 2008
    For Wisconsin native Sara Roahen, a Sazerac is also a fine accompaniment to raw oysters, a looking glass into the cocktail culture of her own family and one more way to gain a foothold in her beloved adopted city. Roahen's stories of personal discovery introduce readers to New Orleans' well-known signatures: gumbo, po-boys, red beans and rice, and its lesser-known gems: the pho of its Vietnamese immigrants, the braciolone of its Sicilians, and the ya-ka-mein of its street culture. By eating and cooking her way through a place as unique and unexpected as its infamous turducken, Roahen finds a home. And then Katrina. With humor, poignancy, and hope, she conjures up a city that reveled in its food traditions before the storm – and in many ways has been saved by them since.

In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food


Stewart Lee Allen - 2002
    Among the foods thought to encourage Lust, the love apple (now known as the tomato) was thought to possess demonic spirits until the nineteenth century. The Gluttony “course” invites the reader to an ancient Roman dinner party where nearly every dish served—from poppy-crusted rodents to “Trojan Pork”—was considered a crime against the state. While the vice known as Sloth introduces the sad story of “The Lazy Root” (the potato), whose popularity in Ireland led British moralists to claim that the Great Famine was God’s way of punishing the Irish for eating a food that bred degeneracy and idleness.Filled with incredible food history and the author’s travels to many of these exotic locales, In the Devil’s Garden also features recipes like the matzo-ball stews outlawed by the Spanish Inquisition and the forbidden “chocolate champagnes” of the Aztecs. This is truly a delectable book that will be consumed by food lovers, culinary historians, amateur anthropologists, and armchair travelers alike. Bon appétit!

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South


Michael W. Twitty - 2017
    In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes listeners to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. Twitty travels from the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields to tell of the struggles his family faced and how food enabled his ancestors' survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and visits Civil War battlefields in Virginia, synagogues in Alabama, and black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the South's past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep-the power of food to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.

Super Sushi Ramen Express: One Family's Journey Through the Belly of Japan


Michael Booth - 2009
    The Japanese go to the most extraordinary lengths and expense to eat the finest, most delectable, and downright freakiest food imaginable. Their creativity, dedication and ingenuity, not to mention courage in the face of dishes such as cod sperm, whale penis and octopus ice cream, is only now beginning to be fully appreciated in the sushi-saturated West, as are the remarkable health benefits of the traditional Japanese diet.Inspired by Shizuo Tsuji's classic book, Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art, food and travel writer Michael Booth sets off to take the culinary pulse of contemporary Japan, learning fascinating tips and recipes that few westerners have been privy to before. Accompanied by with two fussy eaters under the age of six, he and his wife travel the length of the country, from bear-infested, beer-loving Hokkaido to snake-infested, seaweed-loving Okinawa.Along the way, they dine with - and score a surprising victory over - sumos; meet the indigenous Ainu; drink coffee at the dog café; pamper the world's most expensive cows with massage and beer; discover the secret of the Okinawan people's remarkable longevity; share a seaside lunch with free-diving, female abalone hunters; and meet the greatest chefs working in Japan today. Less happily, they trash a Zen garden, witness a mass fugu slaughter, are traumatised by an encounter with giant crabs, and attempt a calamitous cooking demonstration for the lunching ladies of Kyoto. They also ask, 'Who are you?' to the most famous TV stars in Japan.What do the Japanese know about food? Perhaps more than anyone on else on earth, judging by this fascinating and funny journey through an extraordinary food-obsessed country.

The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook: 500 Vibrant, Kitchen-Tested Recipes for Living and Eating Well Every Day


America's Test Kitchen - 2016
    This thorough yet user-friendly book brings the Mediterranean into the American home kitchen, with 500 amazingly flavorful yet surprisingly approachable recipes for everyday cooking.There's a reason why people in the Mediterranean region are among the longest lived in the world--their diet, which focuses on olive oil, vegetables, healthy grains, and seafood, has been proven to be extremely beneficial for weight reduction, blood pressure control, and overall well-being. America's Test Kitchen has taken these ingredients and produced innovative, delicious, and foolproof mains, sides, and appetizers that comply with this increasingly popular way of eating.