looking for a good food book or cookbook to read
I am a big fan of writers like Jeffrey Steingarten, Michael Pollan, and John Thorne, and cookbooks as diverse as El Bulli to Chez Panisse cooking, but I haven't stumbled across anything recently that has caught my interest. Anybody have any suggestions?
BTW, am definitely not interested in Paula Deen or Rachel Ray books.
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34 Comments:
I always like to get Best Food Writing of ----(year) to find out what good books I've missed. I read Alice Water bio recently well written about what you expect her to be. and Carlo Patrini's book on slow food (both for an article) The Patrini book is pompous and facile considering that it is his reson d'etra for the slow food movement and I am having to force my way through it despite its being very small.Would have been better as a magazine article. I always enjoy Ruth Reichels writing. Hope it helps.
inkandsausages at 5:34PM on 07/30/09
Kitchen Confidential, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, Julie and Julia, Eat, Pray Love, The End of Overeating, Fat, Fast Food Nation, Fatland, Mindless Eating....I could go on for days....
Traveller at 5:40PM on 07/30/09
I'm a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain's stuff and also Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl was a fun read. Another good book is The Art of Eating, by MFK Fisher.
laurelie at 5:43PM on 07/30/09
oh and I really liked Cooking for Mr. Latte.
laurelie at 5:51PM on 07/30/09
I recently picked up Maya Angelou's book "Hallelujah!" It's sort of a cookbook/journal of memories all rolled up into one. I didn't try any of the recipes, but it was a great read :)
chlamers at 5:58PM on 07/30/09
This is an oldie but goodie, Leone's Italian Cookbook. The recipes are amazing and the writing on how the restaurant got started and all through their heyday is a facinating read. It is available on Amazon.
finsbigfan at 6:00PM on 07/30/09
I'm reading Mark Kurlansky's Food of a Younger Land. It's a neat collection of recipes/anecdotes from the America Eats project of the 1930's. I wish there were more entries from the project though.
gingercookiewithlime at 6:22PM on 07/30/09
The Apprentice, by class act Jacques Pépin
PeanutButter at 6:36PM on 07/30/09
I like the James Cook myself the older editions are fun and they always have a story and history behind the dishes. As far as a cookbook that I always count on even though they don't have beautiful pictures in it is the Joy of Cooking.
pjracz10 at 6:37PM on 07/30/09
Ruth Reichl's wonderful autobiographical books -"Tender at the Bone," "Comfort Me With Apples," "Garlic and Gapphires," "Not Becoming My Mother" (in chronological order) are interspersed with recipes. Reichl is a multi-James Beard award winner and chief editor of Gourmet (and the editor of "The Gourmet Cookbook" and many of their other books. She was the restaurant critic of the NY Times, The LA Times and other publications, a restauranteur and caterer before that. Reichl, who started her foodie career waitressing while in college, writes about growing up with a manic depressive but highly creative and often loony mom (who couldn't cook), learning to cook and learning to write, her life as the cook in a hippie commune in the 60's in San Francisco, her relationships marriages (one disaster, one good), struggles to have family, deal with neuroses, struggles with editors, fellow journalists, neighbors, and chefs, including wonderful and lyrical food writing.
MMinNYC at 6:53PM on 07/30/09
Anything of Ruth Reichl's gets a vote from me...I also really enjoyed End of Overeating and Julie & Julia and Kitchen Confidential...I wasn't a big fan of Mindless Eating although I do usually like books of that nature. I enjoyed reading through How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, too, but I'm in general a Bittman fan--you have to like his writing to, well, like...his...writing. Duh.
littlestcapy at 6:56PM on 07/30/09
Toast and Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater.
lexophile at 7:12PM on 07/30/09
Agree with all the Reichl kudos. Also pick up The United States of Arugula, anything by Alan Richman, Heat and a few of Ruhlman's things. I didn't care for Julie&Julia, but that's just me. Also didn't care for Gael Green's Insatiable (although I thought she was a great critic).
bessfour at 7:55PM on 07/30/09
Secrets of the Red Lantern is a newish cookbook that I recently enjoyed reading. It's the story of a Vietnamese family, covering the author's parents' memories of Vietnam during and after the war and their subsequent move to Australia, as well as her experience growing up in an immigrant family and in her family's restaurant. The family story is a bit harrowing, but the writing is well done, the book is beautiful, and there are many, many recipes.
Nigel Slater is also an excellent recommendation.
One of my favorite cookbooks to read is Nigella Lawson's How to Eat.
renzata at 8:09PM on 07/30/09
I really enjoyed Michael Ruhlman's "The Soul of a Chef" which is broken into three sections. His writing is compelling and he tells the stories of the chefs well (Michael Symon and Thomas Keller among others).
anneliesz at 8:23PM on 07/30/09
i agree with all the suggestions above, and add passion on the vine by sergio esposito and the lost ravioli recipes of hoboken by laura schenone.
cybercita at 8:59PM on 07/30/09
I absolutely HATED Gael Greene's "Insatiable" and Tom Parker-Bowles's "Year of Eating Dangerously." Awful. I loved United States of Arugula, Animal Vegetable Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver) and Jeffrey Steingarten's "Must Have Been Something I Ate" and "The Man Who Ate Everything".
For cookbooks, David Rosengarten's "It's All American Food" is fascinating and I love the Mennonite "More-With-Less." Both good cookbooks and good reads.
FoodieSearching at 9:14PM on 07/30/09
Definetly all of Ruhlman's books. And Kitchen Confidential is a must read. I'd add Bill Buford's Heat, also.
sailordave at 9:23PM on 07/30/09
Try the Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating.
shoneyjoe at 4:10AM on 07/31/09
The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones is a lovely way to spend an afternoon - I like John Thorne and there's Many Beautiful Things - a book about travel in Sicily by Vincent Schiavelli. It's hard to find a better read that Pepin's autobiography and I enjoy Elizabith David and MFK Fisher and read and re-read both authors often.
suegsf at 6:35AM on 07/31/09
Cross Creek Cookery By Majorie Kennan Rawlings (the writer of the classics The Yearling and Cross Creek). Its obiviously an old book, but the stories she tells of how a recipe came to her are wonderful.
katiedid at 7:58AM on 07/31/09
I second the Apprentice by Jacques Pepin suggestion, I thought it was absolutely wonderful.
misterhee at 8:12AM on 07/31/09
This one's different: Take This Bread by Sara Miles: "The story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert, TAKE THIS BREAD is not only a spiritual memoir but a call to action. Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and writer" before her conversion. She then convinced her San Francisco church to start a food pantry and to feed people at the church. It's an interesting reflection on the meaning of food.
lemonfair at 9:18AM on 07/31/09
Edna Lewis; Laurie Colwin. Both sadly, gone
Lilla at 10:27AM on 07/31/09
Have you read Gastropolis Edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch? Highly recommend!
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13653-2/gastropolis
CornflakeGirl at 10:51AM on 07/31/09
Hidden Kitchens by Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson....
sqtip at 11:09AM on 07/31/09
I'll put in another vote for Garlic and Sapphires and Kitchen Confidential. I enjoyed both of those.
Skythe at 11:21AM on 07/31/09
my recommendation is, 'hometown appetites: the story of clementine paddleford' it's simply a remarkable book. also, 'appetite for life' is a wonderfully absorbing bio of julia child. (read it instead of 'julie & julia' which is a fat waste of time.) i personally find jeffery steingarten to be a pompous ass & have never dug his books-try as i might to read them. however, i fully support the other suggestions-particularly: ruhlman, pepin, riechl, and bourdain. if you're looking for something quick & amusing, then 'don't try this at home: culinary catastrophes from the world's greatest chefs' is pretty funny, as is 'alone in the kitchen with an eggplant'. 'my last supper: 50 great chefs & their final meals' is quite interesting too.
gastronomeg at 11:34AM on 07/31/09
Bakewise by Shirley Corriher
How to Eat by Nigella Lawson
Fast Food by Nigel Slater
AnnieNT at 2:27PM on 07/31/09
garlic, wine, and olive oil by Thomas Pellechia
joeqboo at 3:41PM on 07/31/09
Have you read "Roast Chicken and Other Stories" by Simon Hopkinson? I love it! :)
Chew on That at 4:22PM on 07/31/09
Ruhlman (anything but "elements of cooking", sorry Michael)
Bourdain- Kitchen Confidential
Pepin- The Apprentice
Marco Pierre White- White Heat
Buford's Heat was a fun read as well.
Pavlov at 10:42AM on 08/03/09
I see on abebooks.com that there's one reasonably priced ($19.95) copy of my favorite book on food, Digby Anderson's "The Spectator Book of Imperative Cooking."
If you want to get an idea of his writing style, here's a link to one of the later articles he did.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n19_v46/ai_16294526/
Ortolan at 3:50PM on 08/03/09
You must read The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steve Rinella -- fantastic!!! One of my favorites.
From the PW review:
It's the account of how Rinella, an Outside correspondent, set off on a quixotic year-long adventure in the wild with the end goal of preparing a three-day, 45-course banquet chosen from master chef Escoffier's classic 1903 Le Guide Culinaire, now considered (by most people) an exotic historical document rather than a working cookbook. Rinella intended to shoot, fish, slaughter, raise (as in pigeon husbandry), gather and otherwise procure the ingredients for these dishes himself, with help from his fishing and hunting buddies (also with the aid of freezers, which Escoffier would no doubt have envied).
CookiePie at 5:39PM on 08/10/09