What food-related books are you reading? (2004 - 2015)

[Cindy Bertelsen]

What food-related books are you currently reading? Do you read more than one at a time?

If it is a cookbook, do you tend to scan it or do you thoroughly read it...

Are you enjoying the book you are reading at the moment? Any comments on it?

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I'm reading Ann Mendelson's latest, Milk. Looks like it might be interesting.

Cynthia Bertelsen

Gherkins & Tomatoes: Writing Journeys into the World (a food blog)

http://gherkinstomatoes.com

[jgm]

I've just picked up Marcella Hazan's autobiography, "Amarcord" after reading an excerpt in the latest Gourmet magazine.

It's next on my list, after I finish "The Billionaire's Vinegar." One chapter in, it's a good read.

edited to add: Within the past year, I've also read Jacques Pepin's biography, and Julia Child's "My Life in France." Both were wonderful, and I highly recommend them.

Edited October 9, 2008 by jgm (log)

[maggiethecat]

I spent all day on my tummy today (as we literary jerks say)rereading http://books.google.com/books?id=BGtehcc5Y...num=7&ct=result , the authorized biography of Elizabeth David. Its pretty frank: I can't imagine how the unaurhorized bio would read.

What a book. Our Liza had a runaway shipboard romance with a man who tied her to the mast and whipped her (she didn't complain one bit) a hideous childhood, a loveless marriage, the life of a scholar, writer and entrepreneur. Oh, let's not forget the love of her life who who strung her along for years, reveling in her beauty and talent before he kicked her to the curb.

Elizabeth David is not a sympathetic character, and like her American contemporary and fellow Beauty, MFK Fisher, the latter third of her life was miserable, and self induced. It's a great read, and I hope that people will rush out to buy her lyrical, serious and ever easy to cook from cookbooks.

Edited October 9, 2008 by maggiethecat (log)

[Shelby]

I just finished reading Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin by Kenny Shopsin and Carolynn Carreno. I loved it! He's hilariously frank. And, while the recipes that are scattered through out the book might not be for everyone, I enjoyed reading them and viewing his 900+ item menu.

[rconnelly]

just finished Marcella's memoir.

A little disappointed. She doesn't come across as very warm and her husband...well I don't think I like him one bit.

[iainpb]

Currently reading "How to cook Without Recipes" - a book that looks at tastes, flavours and a concept called "Flavour Trails".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cook-Without-Recip...24532967&sr=8-1

[violetfox]

I've tried, not very successfully, to read "Bottomfeeder." I found it pretty depressing, enough so that I quit not far into it, though it's undoubtedly important. I went back to Rick Moonen's book, and am eating the fish that he says are OK. The recipes are fine, and I'm a lot happier.

[Alex]

From one of his collections of essays, I just read Consider the Lobster, by the recently departed and sorely missed David Foster Wallace. Why this wasn't included in Holly Hughes's Best Food Writing 2004, I'll never know.

[emilyr]

Milk Eggs Vodka was on the features shelf at my library today, so I picked it up. Started reading it at work and got "shushed" because my snickering was too loud!

ETA: I finished it tonight, too. It was pretty funny, and there are recipes in the back. The author had his wife come up with a full day's worth of meals based on some of the shopping lists he found. I may try the Salmon with Leek and Jalepeno Cream recipe!

Edited October 22, 2008 by emilyr (log)

[FlourPower]

Two of the best books I've read this year are Pauline Nguyen's Secrets of the Red Lantern and Susan Pinkard's A Revolution in Taste.

Nguyen's story of her family's migration from Vietnam to Australia, as well as their back story, is a movie begging to be made. Combined with the wonderful recipes and brilliant layout and design, this deserves to be on all those best-of lists we'll be seeing in the coming weeks. I can't remember the last time a cookbook was so compulsively readable.

Pinkard's history of the evolution of French cuisine and customs sounds like a thesis and it is a little academic at times but what an education! Learning about how attitudes and preparation methods evolved was just fascinating. And if you want to recreate some of the dishes she even includes recipes. A nice in-depth study.

[Shelby]

Milk Eggs Vodka was on the features shelf at my library today, so I picked it up. Started reading it at work and got "shushed" because my snickering was too loud! 

ETA: I finished it tonight, too. It was pretty funny, and there are recipes in the back. The author had his wife come up with a full day's worth of meals based on some of the shopping lists he found. I may try the Salmon with Leek and Jalepeno Cream recipe!

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I just read this, too!! OMG I had tears rolling down my face, I was laughing so hard.

[emilyr]

Milk Eggs Vodka was on the features shelf at my library today, so I picked it up. Started reading it at work and got "shushed" because my snickering was too loud! 

ETA: I finished it tonight, too. It was pretty funny, and there are recipes in the back. The author had his wife come up with a full day's worth of meals based on some of the shopping lists he found. I may try the Salmon with Leek and Jalepeno Cream recipe!

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I just read this, too!! OMG I had tears rolling down my face, I was laughing so hard.

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You can get a daily fix! Here's the website on which the book was based.

[Shelby]

Milk Eggs Vodka was on the features shelf at my library today, so I picked it up. Started reading it at work and got "shushed" because my snickering was too loud! 

ETA: I finished it tonight, too. It was pretty funny, and there are recipes in the back. The author had his wife come up with a full day's worth of meals based on some of the shopping lists he found. I may try the Salmon with Leek and Jalepeno Cream recipe!

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I just read this, too!! OMG I had tears rolling down my face, I was laughing so hard.

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You can get a daily fix! Here's the website on which the book was based.

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cool!

[chefjgates]

Currently reading the Mike Ruhlman's seris on chefs "the making of a chef" "The Reach of a Chef", and "The Soul of a Chef" as well as "The Professional Chef" the last version of the CIA Textbook. reading all four of these at the sametime.

Anythoughts on some more good titles (read all of Bourdain and LOVED it)

[maggiethecat]

I'm reading Steven Shaw's Asian Dining Rules. It's a terrifically engaging book. About half of it is composed of clever sidebars, and the remainder is a dissection of Asian cuisines, what to look for, what to know about, what to expect.

Sure, I knew about lots of it (including the kimchi fridges at HMart) but his explanation of why there are so few Filipino restaurants is truly instructive. That, and lots more.

Major plus: it's fun.

[Peter the eater]

I'm halfway through Harold McGee's 2004 On Food and Cooking - The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, page 497 specifically, The Delightful Physics of Miso Soup. Where has this book been all my life? Mandatory.

The greatest cook I've ever known, my dear grandmother Anita, was science illiterate to say the least and wasn't really interested in the Lore. She was all about taking care of family -- the book would've been of little interest to her. What does that tell me?

[maggiethecat]

The greatest cook I've ever known, my dear grandmother Anita, was science illiterate to say the least and wasn't really interested in the Lore. She was all about taking care of family -- the book would've been of little interest to her. What does that tell me?

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It tells you that Anita had learned from experience what St. Harold parses for us, his eager and grateful disciples.

[gfweb]

James Villas' memoir, In Search of the Green Fairy. Entertaining, well written recollections of one of the last of the bon vivant of the old school.

Edited November 3, 2008 by gfweb (log)

[maggiethecat]

James Villas' memoir, In Search of the Green Fairy.  Entertaining, well written recollections of one of the last of the bon vivant of the old school.

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How lucky you are to be reading this fresh and new. It's a minor masterpiece, but nonetheless a masterpiece. A great, great book and indispensable food reading,

Seriously, I heart this book. If you haven't read it, you're in for a big surprise. He's got magic in his eyes.

[gfweb]

His other one, Between Bites, is as good.

[Peter the eater]

The greatest cook I've ever known, my dear grandmother Anita, was science illiterate to say the least and wasn't really interested in the Lore. She was all about taking care of family -- the book would've been of little interest to her. What does that tell me?

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It tells you that Anita had learned from experience what St. Harold parses for us, his eager and grateful disciples.

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Yes it does.

It also reminds me why I love to cook. Unlike, say, Neurosurgery, you can become a self-taught star. Or you can choose to be a Cordon Bleu CIA Ph.d. highly schooled egghead star.

[Priscilla]

Coming very late to Bill Buford's Heat, and then only because Ivan and the 17-year-old read it; truly surprised to like it! I love Mario, and was fearing his being used as a platform for a slavering overwritten Bourdainesque midlife self-indulgencefest.

But Buford is a great writer, deceptively dispassionate, not quite dry. Off-dry? The ethnography of the Babbo kitchen culture is very very well done.

I am finding the much-ballyhooed Italian butcher segment not as engaging, however. But then he brings the pig-breaking-down skills back to his NY apartment and I get interested again.

Not quite finished yet.

[Special K]

James Villas' memoir, In Search of the Green Fairy.

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Wait, isn't it "Stalking the Green Fairy"? With a forward by Jeremiah Tower? That's on my wish list. I did love "Between Bites."

[violetfox]

"Waiter Rant" by "The Waiter." I definitely recommend it. I'm also reading and cooking from the Shelburne Farms cookbook. Mac and cheese with ham and horseradish is great.

[pam claughton]

Just finished Roasting in Hell's Kitchen, which is an interesting biography on Gordon Ramsay. Picked up three books last night and have already started in on two of them, one that was meant to be a gift that I'll now have to buy another copy of because I'm keeping this one. It's a memoir by Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry, about when she was laid off from a corporate job at age 36, and decided to follow her dream of attending The Cordon Bleu cooking school.

Started reading the other last night, Letters to a Young Chef, by Daniel Boulard and am enjoying it immensely. The third book is The Soul of a Chef, by Michael Ruhlman.

These books are research for a novel I'm planning, where a main character is world famous chef who owns a restaurant with three michelin stars.

I'd love to learn more about the process for earning three stars, any suggestions for additional reading?

Edited November 23, 2008 by pam claughton (log)