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Cooking Narrative
Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but today that is beginning to change.
In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland.
Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.
Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but today that is beginning to change.
In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland.
Weaving together history, mouthwatering descriptions of food, and on-the-ground research conducted over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquet is a lively, landmark tribute to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.
From his first apprenticeship in France to his Michelin-starred restaurant empire, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's cuisine is inspired by the freshest ingredients, the simplest techniques, and the drive to make the ordinary perfect. It all started at home.
Jean-Georges was born in Alsace in eastern France to a family in the coal business. He spent his childhood watching, mesmerized, as his mother produced elaborate lunches each day at 12:30 p.m. sharp and exquisite dinners at exactly 7:30 p.m. Served rich goose stew and tender roasted local vegetables, Vongerichten's palate was forever transformed, and such were the origins of his culinary genius.
JGV is an invitation into the kitchen with a master chef. With humor and heart, Jean-Georges looks back on success and failure, sharing stories of cooking with legendary chefs Paul Bocuse and Louis Outhier, traveling in search of new and revelatory flavors, and building menus of his own in New York City, London, Singapore, São Paolo, and back in France. Every story is full of wisdom, conveyed with the magnanimity and precision that has made this chef a household name.
Anchoring this remarkable memoir are twelve recipes that have defined Jean-Georges's career: an egg caviar still on his menu forty years after his mentor taught him the simple preparation; shrimp satay with a wine-oyster reduction from his landmark Lafayette restaurant; a pea guacamole that had President Obama tweeting; and more.
Enlivened with his hand-drawn sketches and intimate photographs, JGV is a book for young chefs, as well as anyone who has ever stood at a stove and wondered what might be.
A NEW YORK TIMES-BESTSELLING PHENOMENON
"Utterly riveting, swaggering with stylish machismo." -New York magazine The bestselling breakout chef's tell-all from Anthony Bourdain, the globally beloved Emmy award-winning host of Parts Unknown and No Reservations. In the now-classic memoir that launched Anthony Bourdain's long career, the globally beloved chef took us through the swinging kitchen doors and turned the culinary trade on its head. The result was a deliciously funny, shocking banquet of wild tales that drew from "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine." Sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike, Bourdain recounts everything from his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he became hooked on chef work for life); from the stovetops of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again. Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, and Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water and your belly ache with laughter and leave you wanting more.
An updated and revised edition of Anthony Bourdain's mega-bestselling Kitchen Confidential, with new material from the original edition
Almost two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, "Don't Eat before You Read This," by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one's appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now classic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation, a megabestseller with over one million copies in print. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.
Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine--this time with never-before-published material.
In this happily-ever-after tale, author Debi Lewis learns how to feed her mysteriously unwell daughter, falling in love with food in the process.
For many parents, feeding their children is easy and instinctive, either an afterthought or a mindless task like laundry and driving the carpool. For others, though, it is on the same spectrum in which Debi Lewis found herself: part of what felt like an endless slog to move her daughter from failure-to-thrive to something that looked, if not like thriving, at least like survival. The emotional weight of not being able to feed one's child feels like a betrayal of the most basic aspect of nurturing. While every faux matzo ball, every protein-packed smoothie that tasted like a milkshake, every new lentil dish that her daughter liked made Lewis's spirit rise, every dish pushed away made it sink.
Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive tells the story of how Lewis made her way through mothering and feeding a sick child, aided by Lewis' growing confidence in front of the stove. It's about how she eventually saw her role as more than caretaker and fighter for her daughter's health and how she had to redefine what mothering--and feeding--looked like once her daughter was well. This is the story of learning to feed a child who can't seem to eat. It's the story of growing love for food, a mirror for people who cook for fuel and those who cook for love; for those who see the miracle in the growing child and in the fresh peach; for matzo-ball lovers and the gluten-intolerant; and for parents who want to feed their kids without starving their souls.
"Twitty makes the case that Blackness and Judaism coexist in beautiful harmony, and this is manifested in the foods and traditions from both cultures that Black Jews incorporate into their daily lives...Twitty wishes to start a conversation where people celebrate their differences and embrace commonalities. By drawing on personal narratives, his own and others', and exploring different cultures, Twitty's book offers important insight into the journeys of Black Jews."--Library Journal
"A fascinating, cross-cultural smorgasbord grounded in the deep emotional role food plays in two influential American communities."--Booklist
The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.
In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them.
The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty's own passage to and within Judaism.
As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul.
Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.
From the reinvention of French food through the fine dining revolution in America, Daniel Boulud has been a witness to and a creator of today's food culture. A modern improviser with a classical foundation (a little rock 'n' roll and a lot of Mozart, he'd say), he speaks with the authority that comes from a lifetime of preparing, presenting, and thinking about food-an ancient calling with universal resonance. In Letters to a Young Chef, Boulud speaks not only of how to make a career as a chef in today's world, but also of why one should want to do so in the first place. As he himself puts it, it is "a tasty life." The love of food and the obsession with flavors, ingredients, and techniques are the chef's source of strength, helping the young chef to survive and flourish during the long years of apprenticeship and their necessary sacrifices. Part memoir, part advice book, part cookbook, part reverie, this delicious new book will delight and enlighten chefs of all kinds, from passionate amateurs to serious professionals.
Whether you call them franks, wieners, or red hots, hot dogs are as American as apple pie, but how did these little links become icons of American culture? Man Bites Dog explores the transformation of hot dogs from unassuming street fare to paradigms of regional expression, social mobility, and democracy. World-renowned hot dog scholar Bruce Kraig investigates the history, people, décor, and venues that make up hot dog culture and what it says about our country.
These humble sausages cross ethnic and regional boundaries and have provided the means for plucky entrepreneurs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Hot dogs, and the ways we enjoy them, are part of the American dream. Man Bites Dog celebratesthe power of the hot dogthrough a historical survey and profiles of notable hot dog purveyors. Loaded with stunning color photos by Patty Carroll, descriptions of neighborhood venues and flashy pushcarts from New York to Los Angeles, and recipes for cooking up hot dog heaven at home, this book is the ultimate source--informative, fun, and tasty--on the role of hot dogs in American culture. It's a must-have for the dog fan, the foodie, the pop culture maven, and the street-cart obsessed.
"A vast, thoroughly wonderful assortment of poetry, memoirs and stories . . . that defines today's female Italian-American experience" (Publishers Weekly). Often stereotyped as nurturing others through food, Italian-American women have often struggled against this simplistic image to express the realities of their lives. In this unique collection, over 50 Italian-American female writers speak in voices that are loud, boisterous, sweet, savvy, and often subversively funny. Drawing on personal and cultural memories rooted in experiences of food, they dissolve conventional images, replacing them with a sumptuous, communal feast of poetry, stories, and memoir. This collection also delves into unexpected, sometimes shocking terrain as these courageous authors bear witness to aspects of the Italian American experience that normally go unspoken-mental illness, family violence, incest, drug addiction, AIDS, and environmental degradation. As provocative as it is appetizing, "this collection of verse and prose pieces . . . reveals the evocative and provocative power of food as event and as symbol, as well as the diversity of these women's lives and their ambivalence regarding the role of nurturer" (Library Journal).
ONE OF TIME 100'S MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2024 - A DEBUTIFUL BEST BOOK OF 2024 - FEATURED IN NYLON - W MAGAZINE - GLAMOUR - BOOK RIOT - HEYALMA - BUSTLE - ELECTRIC LITERATURE - ROMPER - AND MORE!
"Tender, funny, angry, and sharp as hell. This is an essential book for anyone with a body, anyone with a heart." --Helen Rosner, James Beard Award-winning food journalist and New Yorker staff writer
An unflinching and deeply reported look at the realities of binge-eating disorder from a rising culture commentator and writer for Vogue.
Millions of us use restrictive diets, intermittent fasting, IV therapies, and Ozempic abuse to shrink until we are sample-size acceptable. But for the 30 million Americans who live with eating disorders, it isn't just about less. More, Please is a chronicle of a lifelong fixation with food--its power to soothe, to comfort, to offer a fleeting escape from the outside world--as well as an examination of the ways in which compulsory thinness, diet culture, and the seductive promise of "wellness" have resulted in warping countless Americans' relationship with healthy eating.
Melding memoir, reportage, and in-depth interviews with some of the most prominent and knowledgeable commentators currently writing about food, fatness, and disordered eating--Virginia Sole-Smith, Virgie Tovar, Aiyana Ishmael, Leslie Jamison, and others--Emma Specter explores binge-eating disorder as both a personal problem and a societal one. In More, Please, she provides a context, a history, and a language for what it means to always want more than you'll allow yourself to have.
This unflinching memoir and cultural critique explores:
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 TASTE CANADA AWARDS* NOMINATED FOR THE 2023 HERITAGE TORONTO AWARDS For fans of The Measure of My Powers and Notes from a Young Black Chef, a memoir about food, family, and the recipes that brought one woman home when she needed it the most. Suzanne Barr's journey to become a chef started when she was 30. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer and she moved home to Florida to take care of her. Suzanne escorted her mother to doctor's appointments, bathed her, and kept her company, but the hardest part of the experience was that she didn't know how to cook for her. She didn't even know where to begin. Fast-forward to the summer of 2017 when Suzanne became the inaugural Chef-in-Residence at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. She wanted to create a menu that represented who she was as a chef and it emerged as a love letter to her mother. Her Rite of Passage Menu, as she called it, changed her. It started her on a journey that has brought her closer to her mother, to her ancestors, and to her Jamaican heritage. But a lot has happened before and since. My Ackee Tree tells the story of a woman who is always on the move, always seeking; who battles the stereotypes of being a Black female cook to become a culinary star in an industry beset by dated practices and landlords with too much power. From the ackee tree in front of her childhood home, through New York City, Atlanta, Hawaii, the Hamptons, and France, Suzanne takes us on her unpredictable journey, and at every turn, she finds light and comfort in the kitchen. Told in a voice as fresh and honest as her cooking, My Ackee Tree is a celebration of creativity, soul searching, and motherhood that asks, "How can I keep the things I love?"
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Julia's story of her transformative years in France in her own words is "captivating ... her marvelously distinctive voice is present on every page." (San Francisco Chronicle).
Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.
Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.
"In this outstanding memoir, chef and restaurateur Matsuhisa...shares lessons in humility, gratitude, and empathy that will stick with readers long after they've finished the final chapter." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) A fascinating and unique memoir by the acclaimed celebrity chef and international restaurateur, Nobu, as he divulges both his dramatic life story and reflects on the philosophy and passion that has made him one of the world's most widely respected Japanese fusion culinary artists. Nobu needs no introduction. One of the world's most widely acclaimed restaurateurs, his influence on food and hospitality can be found at the highest levels of haute-cuisine to the food trucks you frequent during the work week--this is the Nobu that the public knows. But now, we are finally introduced to the private Nobu: the man who failed three times before starting the restaurant that would grow into an empire; the man who credits the love and support of his wife and children as the only thing keeping him from committing suicide when his first restaurant burned down; and the man who values the busboy who makes sure each glass is crystal clear as highly as the chef who slices the fish for Omakase perfectly. What makes Nobu special, and what made him famous, is the spirit of what exists on these pages. He has the traditional Japanese perspective that there is great pride to be found in every element of doing a job well--no matter how humble that job is. Furthermore, he shows us repeatedly that success is as much about perseverance in the face of adversity as it is about innate talent. Not just for serious foodies, this inspiring memoir is perfect for fans of Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Danny Meyer's Setting the Table. Nobu's writing does what he does best--it marries the philosophies of East and West to create something entirely new and remarkable.
Baja California is extreme. It is a strip of desert and cacti more than a thousand miles long, with the Pacific on one side and the Sea of Cortez on the other. Swept by strong winds, battered by giant waves, seared by the blistering summers, and surrounded by a sea rich in fish, it is nothing if not unique. This gastronomic and photographic adventure enables us to explore Baja California and its cuisine, a synthesis of traditional Mexican cooking and powerful influences coming from the American Southwest. For those who love pungent dishes, with chili packing a powerful punch, there is no place in the world better than Mexico. Burritos, huevos rancheros, guacamole, and tacos are dishes that everyone craves; and revisited in a Southern Californian key they become the cornerstones of a frontier region often neglected and, for this very reason, all the more authentic.
A memoir from "the most important chef in America" (San Francisco Chronicle) and chef of Tatiana, the New York Times #1 Restaurant in New York City 2023. "Kwame Onwuachi's story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world." --Questlove By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened--and closed--one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to "learn respect." He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef. Through it all, Onwuachi's love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams--even when they don't turn out as you expected.