Book picks similar to
Extreme Food by Bear Grylls


nonfiction
non-fiction
first-reads
cookbooks

Restaurant Man


Joe Bastianich - 2012
    Joe first learned the ropes from his father, Felice Bastianich, the ultrapragmatic, self-proclaimed “restaurant man.” After college and a year on Wall Street, Joe bought a one-way ticket to Italy and worked in restaurants and vineyards. Upon his return to New York, he partnered with his mother, Lidia, and soon joined forces with Mario Batali, establishing one superlative Italian restaurant after another.Writing vividly in an authentic New York style that is equal parts rock ’n’ roll and hard-ass, bottom-line business reality, Joe explains: how Babbo changed the way people think of Italian restaurants; how Lupa and Esca were born of “hedonistic, boondoggle R&D trips” through Italy; and how Del Posto managed to overcome a menu that was so ambitious that at first it could not even be executed and became the first four-star Italian restaurant in America. He lays the smackdown on the wine industry, explaining that no bottle of wine costs more than five dollars to make.Joe speaks frankly about friends and foes, but at the heart of the book is the mythical hero Restaurant Man, the old-school, bluecollar guy from Queens who once upon a time learned to sweat it out and make his money through hard work. Throughout he stays true to the real secret of his success—watching costs but being ferociously dedicated to exceeding the customer’s expectations on every level and delivering the best dining experience in the world.

The Meateater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival


Steven Rinella - 2020
    Informed by the real-life experiences of renowned outdoorsman Steven Rinella, its pages are packed with tried-and-true tips, techniques, and gear recommendations.Among other skills, readers will learn about old-school navigation and essential satellite tools, how to build a basic first-aid kit and apply tourniquets, and how to effectively purify water using everything from ancient methods to cutting-edge technologies. This essential guide delivers hard-won insights and know-how garnered from Rinella's own experiences and mistakes and from his trusted crew of expert hunters, anglers, emergency-room doctors, climbers, paddlers, and wilderness guides--with the goal of making any reader feel comfortable and competent while out in the wild.

My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story (with Recipes)


Luisa Weiss - 2012
    The Julie/Julia Project. In the early days of food blogs, these were the pioneers whose warmth and recipes turned their creators’ kitchens into beloved web destinations. Luisa Weiss was working in New York when she decided to cook her way through her massive recipe collection. The Wednesday Chef, the cooking blog she launched to document her adventures, charmed readers around the world. But Luisa never stopped longing to return to her childhood home in Berlin. A food memoir with recipes, My Berlin Kitchen deliciously chronicles how she finally took the plunge and went across the ocean in search of happiness—only to find love waiting where she least expected it.

Roberta's Cookbook


Carlo Mirarchi - 2013
    It’s still a down-the-rabbit-hole kind of place but has also become a destination for groundbreaking food, a wholly original dining experience, and a rooftop garden that marked the beginning of the urban farming movement in New York City. The forces behind Roberta’s—chef Carlo Mirarchi and co-owners Brandon Hoy and Chris Parachini—share recipes, photographs, and stories meant to capture the experience of Roberta’s for those who haven’t been, and to immortalize it for those who’ve been there since the beginning.

The Moosewood Restaurant Table: 250 Brand-New Recipes from the Natural Foods Restaurant That Revolutionized Eating in America


The Moosewood Collective - 2017
    We're just eating in it." —Christine Muhlke, The New York TimesThe creators of America’s beloved natural foods restaurant, Moosewood, are back with The Moosewood Restaurant Table, a cookbook featuring more than 250 never-before-published recipes that's a perfect gift for foodies and gourmets who want to enjoy delicious and healthy meals. With the restaurant now in its fifth decade, the Moosewood chefs continue to remain faithful to the farm-to-table philosophy that has governed the restaurant since its founding, while also keeping an eye on today's gastro-trends. As they say “We’ve gotten to know our customers and readers pretty well… their curiosity and culinary IQ have grown exponentially...We’ve been on some adventures developing this book…” Indeed, they have, working with some less common fruits and vegetables that you might find in your CSA, like Romanesco broccoli and watermelon radishes. They’ve begun cooking with a wider variety of grains like freekeh and millet. All this experimentation has led them to some great new recipes:Two Potato Tomato CurryCashew-Crusted Chickpea BurgersCuban Picadillo with TofuPot Pies for AutumnWinter and SpringButternut LatkesJamaican Jerk Tempeh Pattiesand plenty more.Of course, a Moosewood cookbook wouldn’t be complete without desserts like Turkish Coffee Brownies, Orange Pistachio Cornmeal Cake or Cherry Tomato Upside Down Cake to mention just a few. Including a healthy number of both vegan and gluten-free recipes, The Moosewood Restaurant Table is the next classic from the restaurant that revolutionized natural eating in the US.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail


Cheryl Strayed - 2012
    In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone.Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

Cook's Illustrated Baking Book


America's Test Kitchen - 2018
    Recipes range from easy (drop cookies and no-knead bread) to more ambitious (authentic croissants and dacquoise) and the trademark test kitchen expertise shines through each one. Discover why spreading the dough and then sprinkling the berries leads to better Blueberry Scones, why cubed versus shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese makes all the difference in our irresistible Cheese Bread, how we found three ways to squeeze more lemon flavor into our Lemon Bundt Cake, and how to keep the best Buttermilk Waffles your family will ever taste warm and crispy. An illustrated Baking Basics chapter at the front of the book provides information on key ingredients and equipment and lays the groundwork for a lifetime of baking success. A shopping guide at the back recommends our favorite brands. The recipes in this book represent all the wisdom of the bakers that came before us as well as all we've learned through literally thousands of trial-and-error sessions in our kitchens.

In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain


Tom Vitale - 2021
    His passion for and genuine curiosity about the people and cultures he visited made the world feel smaller and more connected. Despite his affable, confident, and trademark snarky TV persona, the real Tony was intensely private, deeply conflicted about his fame, and an enigma even to those close to him. Tony’s devoted crew knew him best, and no one else had a front-row seat for as long as his director and producer, Tom Vitale.Over the course of more than a decade traveling together, Tony became a boss, a friend, a hero and, sometimes, a tormentor.In the Weeds takes readers behind the scenes to reveal not just the insanity that went into filming in some of the most far-flung and volatile parts of the world, but what Tony was like unedited and off-camera. From the outside, the job looked like an all-expenses-paid adventure to places like Borneo, Vietnam, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya. What happened off-camera was far more interesting than what made it to air. The more things went wrong, the better it was for the show. Fortunately, everything fell apart constantly.

Sicily, It's Not Quite Tuscany


Shamus Sillar - 2012
    There, any romantic visions they'd had of restoring a villa or stamping their entwined feet in vats of Chianti grapes disappeared faster than the chief witness in a Cosa Nostra trial. Shamus and Gill's tiny apartment in Catania was located in a grim neighborhood opposite a triple-X cinema and a shop selling coffins, nearby Mount Etna erupted soon after their arrival, a mystery ailment left Shamus in a neck brace, they crashed a Vespa, and they had regular dealings with at least one Mafioso. This, then, is an Italian sea change with grit. But it's also a story of optimism, endurance, and acceptance; an exploration of the minutiae of Sicilian culture, history, food, and religion; and an example of how to find beauty—and humor—in the most unexpected of places.

Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture


Matt Goulding - 2015
    In this 5000-mile journey through the noodle shops, tempura temples, and teahouses of Japan, Matt Goulding, co-creator of the enormously popular Eat This, Not That! book series, navigates the intersection between food, history, and culture, creating one of the most ambitious and complete books ever written about Japanese culinary culture from the Western perspective.Written in the same evocative voice that drives the award-winning magazine Roads & Kingdoms, Rice, Noodle, Fish explores Japan's most intriguing culinary disciplines in seven key regions, from the kaiseki tradition of Kyoto and the sushi masters of Tokyo to the street food of Osaka and the ramen culture of Fukuoka. You won't find hotel recommendations or bus schedules; you will find a brilliant narrative that interweaves immersive food journalism with intimate portraits of the cities and the people who shape Japan's food culture.This is not your typical guidebook. Rice, Noodle, Fish is a rare blend of inspiration and information, perfect for the intrepid and armchair traveler alike. Combining literary storytelling, indispensable insider information, and world-class design and photography, the end result is the first ever guidebook for the new age of culinary tourism.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing


Anya von Bremzen - 2013
    Anya von Bremzen has vobla-rock-hard, salt-cured dried Caspian roach fish. Lovers of vobla risk breaking a tooth or puncturing a gum on the once-popular snack, but for Anya it's transporting. Like kotleti (Soviet burgers) or the festive Salat Olivier, it summons up the complex, bittersweet flavors of life in that vanished Atlantis called the USSR. There, born in 1963 in a Kafkaesque communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, Anya grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at her school, and, like most Soviet citizens, longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy-and, finally, intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother. When she was ten, the two of them fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return.These days Anya lives in two parallel food universes: one in which she writes about four-star restaurants, the other in which a simple banana-a once a year treat back in the USSR-still holds an almost talismanic sway over her psyche. To make sense of that past, she and her mother decided to eat and cook their way through seven decades of the Soviet experience. Through the meals she and her mother re-create, Anya tells the story of three generations-her grandparents', her mother's, and her own. Her family's stories are embedded in a larger historical epic: of Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning, World War II hunger and survival, Stalin's table manners, Khrushchev's kitchen debates, Gorbachev's anti-alcohol policies, and the ultimate collapse of the USSR. And all of it is bound together by Anya's sardonic wit, passionate nostalgia, and piercing observations.This is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses.

The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People


Dan Buettner - 2014
    In The Blue Zones Solution, readers can be inspired by the specific stories of the people, foods, and routines of our healthy elders; understand the role community, family, and naturally healthy habits can play in improving our diet and health; and learn the exact foods-including the 50 superfoods of longevity and dozens of recipes adapted for Western tastes and markets-that offer delicious ways to eat your way to optimum health. Throughout the book are lifestyle recommendations, checklists, and stories to help you create your own personal Blue Zones solution. Readers will learn and apply the 80/20 rule, the plant slant diet, social aspects of eating that lead to weight loss and great health naturally, cultivating your "tribe" of friends and family, and your greater purpose as part of your daily routine. Filled with moving personal stories, delicious recipes, checklists, and useful tips that will transform any home into a miniature blue zone, The Blue Zones Solution is the ultimate blueprint for a healthy, happy life.

Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France


Craig Carlson - 2016
    He came from humble beginnings in a working-class town in Connecticut, had never worked in a restaurant, and didn't know anything about starting a brand-new business. But from his first visit to Paris, Craig knew he had found the city of his dreams, although one thing was still missing-the good ol' American breakfast he loved so much.Pancakes in Paris is the story of Craig tackling the impossible-from raising the money to fund his dream to tracking down international suppliers for "exotic" American ingredients... and even finding love along the way. His diner, Breakfast In America, is now a renowned tourist destination, and the story of how it came to be is just as delicious and satisfying as the classic breakfast that tops its menu.

Kitchen Confidence: Essential Recipes and Tips That Will Help You Cook Anything


Kelsey Nixon - 2014
    Her recipes, which are broken down into simple steps, teach readers how to cook, highlighting key tools and basic techniques everyone should know. And yet her flavors are anything but basic; Kelsey gives everyone the confidence to start with the 2.0 version of a recipe instead of the boring standards. For example, she makes her house pilaf with quinoa instead of rice, and her addictive fruit salad is a savory first course instead of a lackluster dessert.      With 100 recipes and 60 color photographs, Kitchen Confidence brings home all of the energy and spirit of the Cooking Channel show of the same name, making it an excellent handbook for newlyweds, recent college graduates, and those discovering their kitchens for the first time.

Persiana: Recipes from the Middle East & Beyond


Sabrina Ghayour - 2014
    A celebration of the food and flavours from the regions near the Southern and Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, with over 100 recipes for modern and accessible Middle Eastern dishes, including Lamb & Sour Cherry Meatballs; Chicken, Preserved Lemon & Olive Tagine; Blood Orange & Radicchio Salad; Persian Flatbread; and Spiced Carrot, Pistachio & Coconut Cake with Rosewater Cream.