Last Dinner On the Titanic: Menus and Recipes From the Great Liner


Rick Archbold - 1997
    A cookbook designed to recreate the atmosphere of dining on the famous, doomed luxury liner serves up such recipes as Lobster Thermidor, Quail's Eggs in Aspic with Caviar, and Poached Salmon with Dilled Mousseline Sauce and Cucumber.

Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager


Max Mccalman - 2009
    In Mastering Cheese, he shares the wealth of his expertise to help cheese lovers on their path to connoisseurship. After years of teaching courses for amateurs at the Artisanal Premium Cheese Center, where he is Dean of Curriculum, McCalman has developed a compelling set of classes for understanding and ex-periencing cheese. A full master's course in a book, Mastering Cheese covers the world of cheese in twenty-two distinct lessons, featuring tasting plates that deliciously demonstrate key topics. For example, a chapter titled "Stunning Stinkers" explains why some of the strongest-smelling cheeses can be among the best tasting and then recommends several stars of this category. Learn about the issues facing real raw-milk cheeses and then go out and taste the differences between these cheeses and those made with pasteurized milk.  For the first time in any of his books, McCalman includes extensive information on the modern artisanal cheese revolution in the United States and prominently features these artisans and their products alongside the famous cheeses of Italy, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Complete with helpful charts and an invaluable index of more than 300 cheeses, Mastering Cheese is the definitive course that you can use in your own home to pursue your passion for cheese.

Flavors


Donna Hay - 2000
    With photography that is as fresh and lively as the food and ideas Donna Hay is acclaimed for, this book begins with the basics, adds some inspiration and delivers dishes that you will want to cook and savor the flavor of again and again.

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris


A.J. Liebling - 1959
    Liebling recalls his Parisian apprenticeship in the fine art of eating in this charming memoir.No writer has written more enthusiastically about food than A. J. Liebling. Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, the great New Yorker writer's last book, is a wholly appealing account of his éducation sentimentale in French cuisine during 1926 and 1927, when American expatriates like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein made café life the stuff of legends. A native New Yorker who had gone abroad to study, Liebling shunned his coursework and applied himself instead to the fine art of eating – or “feeding,” as he called it. The neighborhood restaurants of the Left Bank became his homes away from home, the fragrant wines his constant companions, the rich French dishes a test of his formidable appetite. is a classic account of the pleasures of good eating, and a matchless evocation of a now-vanished Paris.

Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World


Andrew Rimas - 2008
    Fraser have joined together to tell the remarkable story of the noble cow in Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle Shaped the World. In the bestselling tradition of Cod and Salt comes a lively history of our ongoing relationship with an animal that we have worked alongside, consumed, and even worshipped for thousands of years. The history of the cow is both surprising and fascinating, and Beef offers a unique overview of cattle yesterday, today, and tomorrow—from adoration to breeding to braising; from ancient Mediterranean bullfight rings to African villages to American stockyards—complete with amazing facts and trivia, wonderful recipes, and an important warning for the future of beef production.

Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking


Kate Colquhoun - 2007
    It encompasses royal feasts and street food, the skinning of eels and the making of strawberry jelly, mixing tales of culinary stars with those of the invisible hordes cooking in kitchens across the land. Beginning before Roman times, the book journeys through the ingredients, equipment, kitchens, feasts, fads, and famines of the British. It covers the piquancy of Norman cuisine, the influx of undreamed-of spices and new foods from the East and the New World, the Tudor pumpkin pie that journeyed with the founding fathers to become America's national dish, the austerity of rationing during World War II, and the birth of convenience foods and take-away, right up to the age of Nigella Lawson, Heston Blumenthal, and Jamie Oliver. The first trade book to tell the story of British cooking-which is, of course, the history that led up to American colonial cooking as well-Taste shows that kitchens are not only places of steam, oil, and sweat, but of politics, invention, cultural exchange, commerce, conflict, and play.

On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta


Jen Lin-Liu - 2008
    Feasting her way through an Italian honeymoon, Jen Lin-Liu was struck by culinary echoes of the delicacies she ate and cooked back in China, where she’d lived for more than a decade. Who really invented the noodle? she wondered, like many before her. But also: How had food and culture moved along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking Asia to Europe—and what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations? With her new husband’s blessing, she set out to discover the connections, both historical and personal, eating a path through western China and on into Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and across the Mediterranean. The journey takes Lin-Liu into the private kitchens where the headscarves come off and women not only knead and simmer but also confess and confide. The thin rounds of dough stuffed with meat that are dumplings in Beijing evolve into manti in Turkey—their tiny size the measure of a bride’s worth—and end as tortellini in Italy. And as she stirs and samples, listening to the women talk about their lives and longings, Lin-Liu gains a new appreciation of her own marriage, learning to savor the sweetness of love freely chosen.

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 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.

My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories


David Lebovitz - 2014
    In that time, the culinary culture of France has shifted as a new generation of chefs and home cooks—most notably in Paris—incorporates ingredients and techniques from around the world into traditional French dishes.      In My Paris Kitchen, David remasters the classics, introduces lesser-known fare, and presents 100 sweet and savory recipes that reflect the way modern Parisians eat today. You’ll find Soupe à l’oignon, Cassoulet, Coq au vin, and Croque-monsieur, as well as Smoky barbecue-style pork, Lamb shank tagine, Dukkah-roasted cauliflower, Salt cod fritters with tartar sauce, and Wheat berry salad with radicchio, root vegetables, and pomegranate. And of course, there’s dessert: Warm chocolate cake with salted butter caramel sauce, Duck fat cookies, Bay leaf poundcake with orange glaze, French cheesecake...and the list goes on. David also shares stories told with his trademark wit and humor, and lush photography taken on location around Paris and in David’s kitchen reveals the quirks, trials, beauty, and joys of life in the culinary capital of the world.

Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time


Adrian Miller - 2013
    Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity.Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.

Memories of a Cuban Kitchen


Mary Urrutia Randelman - 1992
    Authentic Cuban recipes offer a mixture of Spanish, Indian, African, Chinese, and Portuguese cuisine, from appetizers like Green Plantain Chips, to such entrees as Roast Pork Creole, to tropical rum-based drinks and desserts.Filled with reminiscences and evocative halftone photos of Randelman's childhood in pre-Castro Cuba, this book presents more than 200 traditional recipes for Cuban dishes, a cuisine that lusciously combines Spanish, Indian, African, Chinese, and Portuguese influences.

As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto: Food, Friendship, and the Making of a Masterpiece


Joan Reardon - 2010
    But despite that familiarity, how much do we really know of the inner Julia?   Now more than 200 letters exchanged between Julia and Avis DeVoto, her friend and unofficial literary agent memorably introduced in the hit movie Julie & Julia, open the window on Julia’s deepest thoughts and feelings. This riveting correspondence, in print for the first time, chronicles the blossoming of a unique and lifelong friendship between the two women and the turbulent process of Julia’s creation of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, one of the most influential cookbooks ever written.Frank, bawdy, funny, exuberant, and occasionally agonized, these letters show Julia, first as a new bride in Paris, then becoming increasingly worldly and adventuresome as she follows her diplomat husband in his postings to Nice, Germany, and Norway.   With commentary by the noted food historian Joan Reardon, and covering topics as diverse as the lack of good wine in the United States, McCarthyism, and sexual mores, these astonishing letters show America on the verge of political, social, and gastronomic transformation.

The Home Barista: How to Bring Out the Best in Every Coffee Bean


Simone Egger - 2015
    Now, in The Home Barista, two professionals reveal the secrets to brewing coffee worthy of the priciest cafés right in your own kitchen. Connoisseurs Simone Egger and Ruby Ashby Orr enlighten readers with insights and advice from crop to cup and beyond. Savvy, smart, and charmingly designed, The Home Barista guides you through the essentials—from understanding your bean’s origins and establishing your palate to perfecting your technique. It’s the essential coffee-lover’s guide to turning a simple bean into a sensational beverage:Roast your own beans. (Is it worth it? How not to burn them!)Learn all the lingo you need to talk coffee like a pro.Master the elusive espresso (by refining tamp, time, and temperature).Create barista-worthy milk texture and foam designs.Try seven different ways to brew—from the French press to the Turkish ibrik.

Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors


Lizzie Collingham - 2005
    An authoritative history of the foods of India, complete with delicious recipes, ranges from the imperial kitchen of the Mughal invader Babur to the smoky cookhouse of the British Raj and includes information on the influence of various food traditions on the evolution of Indian specialties.