411 replies to this topic

[daniellewiley]

I'm reading The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. I love it. And I'm very excited that I live so close to Lola.

Other food books I've read recently:
On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis - an excellent book by a cookbook author and cooking school teacher. It's is about her adventures living in Normandy, and has wonderful recipes.
Wife of the Chef by Courtney Febbroriello. I didn't love this book, because I just didn't love her writing style, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain of course. Loved it of course.
The Bobby Gold Stories also by Tony Bourdain - I read it on the plane to California. Great fun summer reading.

[bloviatrix]

I'm reading The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. I love it. And I'm very excited that I live so close to Lola.

Danielle, Michael Ruhlman participated in a fabulous Q&A last year. If you like the book, you'll love seeing him in the "eg hot seat."

Edit:typo.

Edited by bloviatrix, 31 August 2004 - 11:23 AM.

[daniellewiley]

I'm reading The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. I love it. And I'm very excited that I live so close to Lola.

Danielle, Michael Ruhlman participated in a fabulous Q&A last year. If you like the book, the love seeing him in the "eg hot seat."

Thanks! That's on my list to read. (None of us mentioned all the hours spent here, reading blogs and Q&As!!!)

He will also be a speaker at next year's Greenbriar Food Writer's Symposium. I am scrimping and saving to try and go. Big dream of mine.

[bloviatrix]

I just finished going through The Berry Bible by Janie Hibler. I took it out of the library and it is nearing it's due date.

Otherwise, I've been reading lots of fiction. The Jane Austen Book Club has lots of food references. Henning Mankell's The White Lioness does not.

[suzilightning]

carolyn - that sounds like one to go on my list, thanks!

am finishing up the last of my reading for three months(except for that tied to my real job) since we start the migrating hawk count tomorrow and i'm ususally too beat to even read

a coworker suggested peg bracken's A Window over the Sink. she remembered it as more of a mayhew man or jason and rachel experience and yes, she does redo her kitchen, but all of the chapters are really food related to her life in hawaii and in the lower 48 west and midwest growing up. as well as growing up in a more innocent and swet time and i laughed my ass off through most of this book...

[Mulcahy]

Just finished The Apprentice by Jacques Pepin.

Recently also finished Apricots on The Nile and Return to Paris by Colette Rossant, which I loved.

Am currently working on The Gotham Bar & Grill Cookbook which is really excellent. Presents very interesting ways to think about both flavor and presentation.

Edited to add egullet e-cookbooks links.

Edited by Mulcahy, 31 August 2004 - 02:48 PM.

[jgarner53]

I'm currently reading Harold McGee's On Food & Cooking. I normally have two books going at once, or a book and a magazine, particularly if one is cumbersome and difficult to lug around for lunchtime reading.

Others recently read:
I'm Just Here for the Food, Alton Brown (now signed )
The Art of Cooking, MFK Fisher (loved all of it)
It Must Have Been Something I Ate, Jeffrey Steingarten
Cookwise, Shirley Corriher, though I had to return it to the library before I finished

Up next:
How to Bake, Nick Malgieri (my textbook for pastry school)
Cookwise, gonna buy it AND finish it!
I'm Just Here for More Food, Alton Brown's baking book

I've also recently been perusing Baking Illustrated, Baking with Julia, and, of course, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I spied The Tummy Trilogies at Borders last week (picking up How to Cook Everything for a non-foodie, non-cook friend). Since I loved Tepper Isn't Going Out, I should have just picked it up. Instead, it will probably go into the same Amazon order with my other stuff after labor day.

Non-cooking books - Is there such a thing? Actually, I just started Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss, subtitled as "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," as my lunchtime tome.

Yes, I'm a geek.

Sorry, don't know how to make the Amazon link to enrich the coffers of eGullet.

[Carrot Top]

Aliza Green's Starting with Ingredients. A tome. 1055 pages. A very good book for recipe-lovers, good recipes, good concepts, commonsensical and far from dull in terms of range of recipe types and specifics. All cultures invited, so to speak.

Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections by Robert Applebaum. Looking at literary history through the eye of food. Or looking at food through the eye of literary history. Or something like that. Some fascinating stuff, but please make sure to play your "Learn to Speak Academese" tapes before you decide to approach. I, personally, ended up skimming the book.

Fierce Pajamas, An Anthology of Humor Writing from the New Yorker, edited by David Remick and Henry Finder. My favorite story in the collection so far is "Dusk in Fierce Pajamas" by E.B. White (from which the collection took its name, of course), a spoof where he becomes part of the pages of a glossy magazine he's looking at, with all the socialites and celebrities of the day lounging around him with their martinis and what-not's, all so very terribly elegant while at the same time seeming just a slightly bit off-balance and well . . .just wierd, because that's how he writes it without batting an eye to let you know he's doing so. I adore this book, so much that I only want to read it in small bits to savor each bite.

[suzilightning]

thank you for resurrecting this thread, Carrot Top!!

Food wise i TRIED to read Insatiable by Gael Greene but all the talk about who she was sleeping with got old after a while.

Through the ARC (advanced readers copy - uncorrected drafts) i have almost finished A Pig in Provence: Good food and simple pleasures in the South of France by Georgeanne Brennan. i love the flow of the story of adapting to the area - long before Peter Mayle. Another one from this program is Daniel Rogov's Rogues, Writers and Whores. since the chapters are so small it is in my workout bag for reading on the treadmill and bike.

rambling through Kemp's United States of Arugula. i say rambling since i really don't want it to end but am savoring the writing.

From Interlibrary Loan i just received Psyche A. Williams-Forsori's Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food and Power. i am looking forward to this book about the "gospel bird" and how it impacted slaves and black women.

other than that i am finishing up a biography of Edwina Mountbatten and have several light romances i am rereading.

[rooy1960]

i always have multiple books going at once (food related or otherwise). every room in my house is littered with books and magazines. food books currently being read:

les halles cookbook- anthony bourdain ( hilarious as all get out)
miriam's kitchen- elizabeth ehrlich ( lovely memoirs of jewish family traditons)
the fine art of cooking- philadelphia art museum (circa 1989)

as for my cookbook reading style, i skim first and then go back and read every word.
my two favorite things: cooking and reading....

[Toasted]

I just finished White House Chef by Walter Scheib and Andrew Friedman. Great book. Facinating to learn about how they do the big State dinners. Lot's of inside info about the running of the White House as well. Now I'm reading Sound Bites by Elex Kappanos. Kind of a quirky book about what Elex ate while touring the world with his band, Franz Ferdinad. This is a quick read. Short chapters, some interesting, some not. I very much recommend Climbing The Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey. Great recipes and stories.

[scottie]

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.

I like to jump around in it, reading a bit here on there while on the train. Always makes me smile.

Also, the latest issues of Gourmet and Food & Wine.

[phlawless]

What I'm reading now:

The Oldways Table--just got it in the mail yesterday
Fannie Farmer Baking Book--just discovered it really, love the pie section
The New Spanish Table--everything I've made out of it so far is fantastic

[TarteTatin]

Goose Fat & Garlic
Omnivore's Dilemma
Ruth Reichl's Paris

[enurmi]

Culinary Artistry by Dorenberg and Page, for the third time...
Gear for Your Kitchen by Brown, second time
and Working the Plate by Styler...
and those are just the food books.
Firstly, I hope I did the links right... took me long enough.
Secondly, is it a sign of addiction that I take CA and WtP with me every time I go on vacation? I NEED them, goshdarnit!

[rconnelly]

"The Man Who Ate Everything" & "60 Years of Writing - Gourmet"

Just finished "For Alice" - ah what a love story

[kristin_71]

Cooked by Jeff Henderson. Really, really good.
Belly of Paris this is of course a classic and well worth reading, but I try not to read it on an empty stomach because I get hungry.:)
I recently finished the audio of Garlic and Sapphires. It was a great way to kill time at work.

Cookbook wise I am reading and starting to try the recipes in Happy in the Kitchen. I love this cookbook, it is fantastic.

Edited by kristin_71, 16 March 2007 - 12:05 AM.

[iharrison]

Tough Cookies: Tales of Obsession, Toil and Tenacity from Britain's Culinary Heavyweights by Simon Wright

Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass by Natalie MacLean

I highly recommend both.

[Nancy HM]

I work in a public library, and we have bound issues of Gourmet going back to the '60s. I'm reading all Laurie Colwin's articles. *sigh* I love her writing - both her fiction and non-fiction has such a voice. Such a loss.

[JAZ]

Candyfreak by Steve Almond (subtitled "A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America"). Part history, part reminiscence, and lots of chocolate. This could have been a rather ordinary tribute to candy, but the author is such a good writer, it's one of those books I want to read over and over. For instance, this is his description of watching marshmallow bunnies being enrobed in chocolate:

They rode the conveyor belt three astride, looking nonchalant in profile, as curtains of milk chocolate washed down onto their white fleshy pelts and enveloped them and seeped off to reveal the dimensions of their bodies in a lustrous brown. Saborin [his guide] was saying something or other, involving, I think, starch. I was watching the bunnies.

[Nina C.]

JAZ I LOVED Candyfreak - I found it so funny and entertaining yet educational. I read it all in one sitting.

[Multiwagon]

Just finished Soul of a Chef, reading Reach of a Chef, and attempting to find a copy of Making of a Chef.

[Toasted]

Tough Cookies: Tales of Obsession, Toil and Tenacity from Britain's Culinary Heavyweights by Simon Wright

Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass by Natalie MacLean

I highly recommend both.

Loved Red, White and Drunk all Over. A great book for anyone who wants to learn about wine. Funny at times and always interesting.

[rconnelly]

Candyfreak by Steve Almond (subtitled "A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America"). Part history, part reminiscence, and lots of chocolate. This could have been a rather ordinary tribute to candy, but the author is such a good writer, it's one of those books I want to read over and over. For instance, this is his description of watching marshmallow bunnies being enrobed in chocolate:

They rode the conveyor belt three astride, looking nonchalant in profile, as curtains of milk chocolate washed down onto their white fleshy pelts and enveloped them and seeped off to reveal the dimensions of their bodies in a lustrous brown. Saborin [his guide] was saying something or other, involving, I think, starch. I was watching the bunnies.

Thank you JAZ for the turn on to this book. I've jsut started it and I laughed with the very first sentence! Can't wait to dig in.

[suzilightning]

lately i have been on a sephardic kick. recipes of course but also interested in the whole history of the sephardic diaspora. can't remember all the names(they were interlibrary loan) but was reading one that incorporated research into testimony before the Inquisition tribunal that many times was about food, food prepartion and sabbath ritual and medieval cookery. at the same time there was on our local pbs station a program about the Inquistion, the conversos and the ultimate expulsion of the Jews from spain and portugal. really fascinating stuff.

other than that i have now become hooked on NASCAR harlequin romances - which many times include a lot of good food...

edited to add that i just finished Walter Scheib's book about being the White House chef during the Clinton and first Bush administrations. the recipes were ok but the story itself was riveting - especially his recounting of 9/11 and what went on at the "People's house" that day. i wish i could see him speak sometime. i am sure his spoken voice is as strong as his written one.

Edited by suzilightning, 30 May 2007 - 02:02 PM.

[jess mebane]

The Picayune's Creole Cook Book is a great summer transport back to that week you spent every year or so at your grandmother/great aunt/tante's house. Originally published in 1900, Mmselle Bienvenu updated it for the Times-Picayune in 1987 and it retains all the charm you'd expect.
So far I've made blackberry jelly, and a jar of bberry wine percolates at the bottom of the pantry. I have ruined a good number of table and kitchen linens, there's chicory in the afternoon coffee pot, and my teeth are turning strange colors about the edges, but the kids seem to enjoy all the rusticity.
I might pickle!

[kristin_71]

Last Chinese Chef and Climbng The Mango Trees. Both really good, although I will not be able to finish Last Chinese Chef before it has to go back, someone else wants to read it so I can't renew.:(

Climbing the Mango Tree is Madhar Joffrey's story about growing up in India. Even has recipes in the back. It is a good look at some India's history and culinary traditions.

[oneidaone]

I'm greatly enjoying Chez Jacque by Jacque Pepin. I'm still reading Heat, somehow I keep reading the same things because I forget where I left off, I really like it so it's
a shame I can't keep focused! I must admit, I read Paula Deen's autobiography and really enjoyed it. I know, I know, everyone hates the FN but this was a very good read for me anyway, entertaining and moved quickly, what a life she's had. Completely un food like but a James Patterson novel that I can't seem to focus on and finish either.
I want to re-read Angele Pellegrini's "The Unpredjudiced Palate" and I think I'll take that to Kapalua this month to read in between wine tastings and cooking demos at the festival.

[tsquare]

Last Chinese Chef and Climbng The Mango Trees. Both really good, although I will not be able to finish Last Chinese Chef before it has to go back, someone else wants to read it so I can't renew.:(

Don't think of it as a late fee - just as a rental, supporting your library. It got me over due dates.

[tsquare]

Finishing up "The Reach of a Chef". Still seems very current. Nice life you got there Ruhlman. How's your house?