eMusic’s Most Delectable Food Books
Take a break, diet books. As the holiday season gets underway, it’s time for indulgence. In honor of Thanksgiving and the impending party season where being decadent is almost as important as being thankful, here’s a list of our favorite culinary literature. From top chefs to restaurant critics and food historians, the authors of these savory books might just offer inspiration for your own feasts. So pull up a chair and dig in.
THE CHEFS
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There are no easy miracles in professional cooking. Gruff, growling, misanthropic Anthony Bourdain, the antithesis of Rachael Ray and her chipper Food Network colleagues, reveals that restaurant work is hard, dirty and performed by sordid characters who can barely talk, let alone flash toothy grins as they plate steak au poivre. A supreme storyteller, Bourdain recounts his own early discoveries in a Provincetown kitchen during a college summer, and the career passion... that led him to his post as executive chef at Les Halles in New York City. Along the way he shares his own adventures in the back of restaurants, his tussles with drug abuse and some of the naughtier goings-on between kitchen staff, plus some grim facts about food handling. Now a television personality, Bourdain has built a following on his caustic wit and searing judgments - all evidenced here in this early memoir.
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New York chef Hamilton has built a career on feeding people small, meaningful meals at her beloved eatery Prune, and this bittersweet memoir doles out her unusual life experiences in equally compelling, well-paced morsels. After a magical, party-filled childhood in rural Pennsylvania with an exacting French ballet dancer mom, a whimsical set designer dad and four wild siblings, Hamilton's fairy tale ended when her parents divorced. Abandoned and broke, the young teen... found work in restaurants to support herself - and her precocious habits. Later on, the waitressing and catering jobs got her through a few failed runs at college, and finally, a graduate writing program. Despite her intention to become a published author, Hamilton's passion for food - and for the ways food could convey emotion - drew her back to kitchens time and again. When she finally had the opportunity to open her own restaurant, she eagerly set about trying to recreate the cozy enclave of her lost youth, replete with bone marrow and sardine and Triscuit snacks. Her single-minded commitment brought in the crowds while alienating those closest to her. As a narrator, Hamilton is an alternately tough and vulnerable character whose difficult family life has led to ongoing personal disappointments, yet these very losses have also inspired culinary greatness. Her candid confessions, her obvious love for food and the sheer expressive force of her writing make Blood Bones & Butter a book to savor.
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Married to her high-school sweetheart, but childless and staring down her thirtieth birthday, disgruntled outer-borough secretary Julie Powell was in a serious funk. To pull herself out of it, she decided to devote a year to cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The author later admitted that the life-changing project was "like doing Thanksgiving every day for a year", especially if your idea... of Thanksgiving involves many pounds of butter. Powell risks her marriage, her job and her sanity as she tackles omelets and offal in her tiny kitchen, and chronicles her successes and failures in a blog that eventually became this book. Listening to the frequently foul-mouthed author describe sweating over broken mayonnaise - all the while staying well-lubricated with cocktails or red wine - is a tonic, the perfect soundtrack for any stressed-out cook short of time with company on the way.
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THE FOOD WRITERS
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Warning: do not listen to Born Round on an empty stomach. Frank Bruni's memoir about growing up in a family where cooking is both an expression of love and a competition is bound to whet your appetite, from the descriptions of his grandmother's homemade pasta to the details of his father setting up to watch a baseball game with a pile of ice cream bars at the ready. Bruni both celebrates and... bemoans the role of food in his life, as eating was the cause of large amounts of physical and emotional stress: that's right, obsessing about pants size is not just for ladies. While the eventual New York Times restaurant critic's book bears some resemblance to David Sedaris' works, with colorful tales of a large family, it has the added bonus of being written from the perspective of a person who has also enjoyed a good life. While Bruni lays bare the effects of his yo-yo-ing weight on his self-esteem, it never gets too dire as he also describes his parents' beautiful homes, his fascinating experiences in journalism, and parties with "two dozen of my closest friends in Detroit." The juicy little details of what it takes to be a high-profile restaurant critic (wigs, fake credit cards, fake telephone numbers) is an additional dollop of fun on this sweet, enjoyable autobiography.
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There are two editions of Ruth Reichl's latest memoir, but only the abridged one offers the warm, wry, concentrated flavor of the writer narrating her own story of life in the culinary trenches. Eating for a living sounds like a sweet gig, but for every bit of good-guy treatment she receives when she's recognized as the New York Times restaurant critic - in one memorable episode, Le Cirque's Sirio Maccioni leaves the... king of Spain waiting at the bar while wafting Reichl to a prime table and plying her with foie gras - there are plenty of grim slogs through less-than-memorable meals and lackluster service when she dines out undercover in a variety of disguises. Each chapter follows Reichl as she assumes another persona in service of her mission as a "spy in the house of food," while her reviews let the listener taste not only the food, but the anxiety that accompanies a critic's decision to bestow those all-important stars - or take them away.
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THE HISTORIES
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When you think of locales famous for fresh seafood, New York City might not be the first place to come to mind; but author Kurlansky shows that oysters have played a pivotal role in the metropolis' culture, economy and political development throughout its early history. At once an haute cuisine luxury and a poor man's staple, the oyster was a highly versatile and at onetime naturally plentiful food, as Kurlansky demonstrates with... recipes from as far back as the 15th century. Between the Lenape Indians who left behind enormous middens (shell piles) through the Dutch settlers who built a mercantile empire on the bivalves and finally the English settlers who made them an important part of the local cuisine, it was widely acknowledged that oysters were one of the region's great natural resources. And like any great resource, the oyster beds would be exploited and depleted with subsequent overfishing and increasing water pollution. Like Kurlansky's previous food-themed tomes, Salt and Cod, The Big Oyster is an exhaustively researched history that reveals much about its edible subject, and even more about the people who valued it. Though Stechschulte's reading is a bit mannerly and dry, the material is juicy enough to stand on its own.
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CELEBRATIONS
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When a kid at your child's birthday party spills punch on his shirt, you can turn to Martha Stewart for stain-busting advice. When a kid at your child's birthday party catches on fire, however, Amy Sedaris has got you covered. In I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, Sedaris goes where Stewart fears to tread, covering both the eventualities and the unlikelihoods that throwing a party entails. Entertaining the elderly or... infirm? Check. Quarantining a mentally instable partygoer? Check. Tip-toeing around a guest's alcoholism? Check. Martha Stewart can help you get out punch, but Sedaris will lead you through removing blood, urine, and mud. It would be reasonable to assume that I Like You is simply a send-up or novelty. After all, Sedaris is most well-known as Strangers with Candy's 46-year-old high schooler Jerri Blank, whom any host would be wise to keep away from the medicine cabinet. The odd thing about I Like You is that, when she's not giving tips on feeding lumberjacks and unsolicited advice on genital maintenance, Sedaris proffers some shockingly practical and original insight. Her chapter on hosting or being an out-of-town guest is dead-on, as is the observation, "The moment someone says, 'Hey everyone, listen to the lyrics of this song!' your party is over." Sedaris calls herself "clinically simple," and though her humor sometimes verges on the juvenile, potty variety, I Like You is far from the disposable pulp that many comics try to pass off as reading material. This audiobook version wins extra points for taking advantage of the medium to add texture and humor to the text.
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It's hard to avoid cracking wise about "And still I rise," when writing about Maya Angelou's celebration of food, family and fellowship. But this audiobook is no joke. The poet's savory memoir reveals that she's a dab hand in the kitchen, having even worked for a stretch as a cook at San Francisco's Creole Cafe. The Arkansas native filters a lifetime of memories through 73 mouthwatering family recipes, sumptuous-sounding down-home dishes like... her grandmother's (known as Momma) baked lemon meringue pie and chicken and dumplings and her brother's smothered pork chops. She even invited famed food writer M.F.K. Fisher home for cassoulet. But the rich voice of the poet reading her own words is the tastiest treat by far. This is not the book to listen to while grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Better to save it for dessert after a rich, satisfying meal. Like Angelou, you will long for a larger stomach, so you can eat two more helpings.
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DON’T FORGET THE WINE
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his guy loves wine. I'm not calling Julian Curry a drunk, but it's pretty obvious from the opening moments of A Guide to Wine that this is no mere hobby or intellectual pursuit. "No discussion of wine should stray far from the glass in your hand and the experience of drinking it," he asserts in a playful British accent that could charm the label off a cabernet. His point? He's gonna pour... himself a glass right now, and recommends you do the same. From there he leads the listener from seed to grape to barrel to bottle in a parade of international names, regions and time-tested traditions. In the unlikely event you find yourself the sudden proprietor of a vineyard, Curry offers step-by-step directions for producing, say, a "roset wine with aspirations to quality." Seriously. There are tips on hiring help, choosing corks and bottles, cooling your barrels, even pruning and picking should you decide to get your hands dirty ("protect your knees with pads, darlings!"). It's noteworthy that at no point does Curry come off like some snobby five-star sommelier. His goal is more practical: The more skilled you become at discerning a Rioja from a Blaufrnkisch or a Sauvignon Blanc, the better drinking partner you will make for Lord Curry should he come knockin'.
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