Robb Walsh is my favorite cookbook/food author. I love his work and how he blends real stories from real people into his cookbooks with recipes and the history of those recipes. I've praised the Tex-Mex cookbook on here before and I have just received an email that Robb has a new book coming out in January. I know someone might ask "how do you know its good if it hasnt come out yet?" and the answer is that all of his work is amazing.

"When Robb Walsh discovers that Texas oysters are being passed off as Blue Points and Chincoteagues in other parts of the country, he decides to investigate. Thus begins a five-year journey of discovery into the culture of one of the world's oldest foodstuffs.

Walsh gets caught between the old blue collar oyster culture of the Gulf and the new gourmet oyster renaissance taking place on the East and West Coasts. His through-the-looking-glass adventures take him from slimy Louisiana boat decks to posh Paris brasseries, and from London boardrooms to Irish bedrooms in his personal quest to understand the essence of the oyster." From the email informing of "Sex, death & oysters: a half shell lovers world tour" due in January of '09. cant wait.

Click here for a cool slide show on the upcoming book. Cant wait to get this.

LTH,

Gary Alan Fine's Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work has been reissued with a new preface outlining changes in the culture of restaurants since first released.

I've found Kitchens an interesting read, think Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential without random restaurant sex, and can't wait to dig deeper into the book.

Amazon link to Kitchens

Enjoy,
Gary

I'll second the recommendation for GAF's Kitchens, which I've really enjoyed reading.

I received several food-related books as gifts yesterday and while I haven't really tapped into too many of them yet, I'm immediately compelled by Eric Ripert's On The Line, which documents his creative and cooking processes, through the use of narrative, notes, sketches and photographs. It's one of the most unique and interesting food books I've seen in a long time.

Cookbook-wise, there are so many I use and love that it's hard to make a list but 4 that I keep going back to over and over again are Tapas by Penelope Casas, Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich and Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook.

=R=

I'll second Martha's Hors d'Oeuvres Handbook -- extremely useful for party fare, and a lot of advice on variations and basic building blocks.

One of my all-time favorites, which has never let me down, is Nicole Routhier's "Cooking Under Wraps" - link is to Paperbackswap.com -- it's out of print. Lots of diverse items from around the world, everything wrapped in something else.

FYI - Gary Fine will be talking about back-of-the-house restaurant culture at 10 AM on January 24th at Kendall College for Chicago Foodways Roundtable.

Regards,

I'm currently reading, Trail of Crumbs, by Kim Sunee, a memoir. Founding food editor of Cottage Living. I am struck at how she made amazing meals at such a young age, for not having a trained culinary background. Her recipes seem to be doable.

currently reading Julia Child's My Life in Paris. It's interesting to see how such a deep-seeded passion for food can emerge slowly but steadily when one is immersed in the right circumstances. Reading this after just having finished Hemingway's A Moveable Feast - interesting because some of the characters and places in Paris overlap, and it's weird to read what different takes the two authors have on the same things.

So tonight I got home and found a very unassuming package on my kitchen counter. The return address told me it was from an old friend mine who lives in Berkeley and who I don’t get to see often. However, this friend occasionally sends me gifts for no reason other than she’s come across something she thinks I’ll enjoy. It’s always something stupendous and brilliant. The package tonight was no different. I received the most awesomest cookbook ever, Tanaquil (“Tanny”) Le Clercq’s The Ballet Cook Book (1966). Only my love of ballet rivals my love of food. I had no idea this book existed.

Le Clercq (1929-2000) was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, who is known by non-balletomanes because she was George Balachine’s fourth and last wife and because her career ended tragically when she contracted polio and was paralyzed from the waist down. The Ballet Cook Book is a collection of recipes from and food-related stories about some of the most distinguished ballet dancers of the 20th century. It’s surprisingly well written.

In case there are other LTH-balletomanes out there, I wanted to share a few passages from the book that I’ve enjoyed already. Le Clercq had me at the preface.

Ballet dancers eat better than any other people in the world.

For one thing they have the proper appetite for it. Because of the physical nature of their art they are always hungry, they seem always to have food on their minds, and they are always talking about it.

Before going on stage, of course, they eat very little. But afterward… “I took such-and-such a ballerina out for a snack after the performance,” you sometimes hear, “and it cost me thirty dollars.” Or a bewildered matron may wonder aloud, “All I invited were a few of the principals and, my dear, they descended upon the food like a plague of locusts.”

I will surely try some of the recipes from The Ballet Cook Book soon. Others, I will continue to ponder, including: George Balanchine’s Horseradish Ice Cream; Jacques d’Amboise’s Hollandaise Astronaut I; Igor Youskevitch’s Busy Man’s Meat; Janine Charrat’s Kabbal Ourfali (A Turkish Mountaineers’ Dish); Anya Linden’s Exotic Alcoholic Ice Cream; and Suzanne Farrell’s Pâté Oscar (After a Cat).

The recipes in and of themselves are intriguing, but Le Clercq has provided some excellent stories for context. I love the history, myth, humor and personal anecdotes. From the chapter on choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton:

At the Covent Garden Theater, in 1735, there was inaugurated something called the Sublime Society of Steaks. The Sublime Society was formed when an actor named Rich cooked an impromptu steak for a Lord Peterborough. His Lordship was so enthusiastic over the steak that he proposed forming a society and repeating this gladsome event every Saturday henceforth. The Society continued to meet at Covent Garden until the fire of 1808, when things became too hot even for steaks. The beef was then removed to a new location, and it was not until many years later that the Society was dissolved. Somewhere I have read that the original grill on which Mr. Rich broiled his first steak is still in existence.

Be that as it may, were any peer of the realm to taste Sir Frederick’s Beefsteak Pudding there would be a new society formed: a Sublime Society of Beefsteak Puddings.

{Recipe follows}

From the chapter on Maria Tallchief:

Let the British have their Dames: dame Ninette de Valois, Dame Marie Rambert, Dame Alicia Markova, Dame Margot Fonteyn. We in America shall have to be content with our Commodore, Commodore Tallchief. Maria was made a Commodore of the Oklahoma Navy. True, she has no large fleet to command, no ships at all, no sea to navigate, no ocean to fish…but she does have fish, cans and cans of them. So without further ado we shall weigh anchor and sail off for Commodore Tallchief’s Tuna Fish and Sour Cream.

{Recipe follows}

From the chapter on Canadian-born dancer Patricia Wilde:

From the remainder of Pat’s recipes you may get the idea of her Canadian homeland as terrain swathed in maple syrup. Pat relates the amusing story of the golden syrup’s supposed origin.

“Once upon a time there lived a squaw who, like so many of us, was trying to do two things at the same time; in this instance: cook the dinner while sewing on her husband’s moccasins. Dinner consisted of moose meat boiled in the sweetish water of the maple tree. The squaw, becoming engrossed in her moccasin-making, let all of the water evaporate, until there remained only the piece of meat in a thick brown syrup. Luckily for this careless Indian housewife, her husband, upon tasting the repast pronounced it a ‘dish fit for a chief,’ and the squaw and her Indian brave lived happily ever after. On moose meat in maple syrup.”

{Maple Mousse recipe follows}

There are dozens more delightful stories in The Ballet Cook Book including Allegra Kent on performing the role of Gluttony and grilling technique by Jerome Robbins.

The Ballet Cook Book has instantly become my absolute favorite cookbook. It’s a fascinating take on 20th century ballet, rich with tales, recipes and some of my favorite ballet photographs. Thank you, Jenny!

i really liked the book, the grandmother's role was perfect in teaching her to cook, which later helps her in tough and difficult days. the chapters in the book are filled with actual recipes from Devil's Food Cake to real Ceasar Salad to Mohammad's Bisteeya. it is one of the finest books i have read in ages!

I, too, love ballet (or "the ballet"), I guess, but I snickered a little when I read this:

Ballet dancers eat better than any other people in the world.

For one thing they have the proper appetite for it. Because of the physical nature of their art they are always hungry, they seem always to have food on their minds, and they are always talking about it.

I grew up with many ballerinas-in-training who attended a local conservatory, and eat, they did not -- it was always a struggle for them to stay thin enough!

aschie30 wrote:I, too, love ballet (or "the ballet"), I guess, but I snickered a little when I read this:

Ballet dancers eat better than any other people in the world.

For one thing they have the proper appetite for it. Because of the physical nature of their art they are always hungry, they seem always to have food on their minds, and they are always talking about it.

I grew up with many ballerinas-in-training who attended a local conservatory, and eat, they did not -- it was always a struggle for them to stay thin enough!

The opening made me laugh me, too, because it sounded more like a description of LTHers than any ballet students I've known. Le Clercq in The Ballet Cook Book does address with some entertaining stories dancers' approaches to staying thin.

Here's a book that I don't believe has yet been mentioned but should be on this list:

In Memory's Kitchen : A Legacy from the Women of Terezin
Here's what the L:ibrary Journal has to say about it:

"Full of bilingual recipes translated from broken German into English, the manuscript of this book traveled from the Terezin concentration camp, which served as a way station to Auschwitz, to one of the writers' daughters in Manhattan. Cooking is this book's subject matter, but survival is its theme; it is both moving and paradoxical that this material was collected by starving internees. Those interested strictly in a cookbook may be frustrated by the European measurements ("Practical Notes" provide conversion guidelines), but for readers concerned with Holocaust history, this is an important document. . . . As noted in the foreword, "[this work] is not to be savored for its culinary offerings but for the insight it gives us in understanding the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to transcend its surroundings, to defy dehumanization, and to dream of the past and of the future."

I just finished, "Like Water for Chocolate". It is an older book...written in the 90's. Twelve chapters, twelve Novellas, twelve recipes, Mexican folklore, sex, food, romance...made me want to get out my mortar and pestle and grind chilies! Ole!

I am really enjoying "Cooking for Mr. Latte" by Amanda Hesser. Someone gave me the book as a gift several years ago and I just stuck it on my shelf and never got around to reading it. It has a pink cover with cartoon-ish drawings and I guess I thought it would be 'chick lit' which I'm not that into. I'm not sure why I thought that--I really enjoy Hesser's columns in the New York Times (in fact, her column on central Vietnam led me to my best meal on a trip there). The book is about dating someone who's not that into food (though he comes around). My favorite chapter is about a trip to Rome where she can't understand why her family members want to waste time on things like the colosseum and only want to order a primo in the restaurants. I think most of us can relate to important memories and experiences being tied to food. She describes herself as sort of a dictator in the kitchen (I'm cringing thinking of my SO reading and likely describing me similarly). Anyway, great read for a foodie. I have her earlier book (which has also been sitting on my shelf for awhile), "The Cook and the Gardener" about her year as a cook in France and I'm planning on reading that next.

jbw wrote:Here's a book that I don't believe has yet been mentioned but should be on this list:

In Memory's Kitchen : A Legacy from the Women of Terezin
Here's what the L:ibrary Journal has to say about it:

"Full of bilingual recipes translated from broken German into English, the manuscript of this book traveled from the Terezin concentration camp, which served as a way station to Auschwitz, to one of the writers' daughters in Manhattan. Cooking is this book's subject matter, but survival is its theme; it is both moving and paradoxical that this material was collected by starving internees. Those interested strictly in a cookbook may be frustrated by the European measurements ("Practical Notes" provide conversion guidelines), but for readers concerned with Holocaust history, this is an important document. . . . As noted in the foreword, "[this work] is not to be savored for its culinary offerings but for the insight it gives us in understanding the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to transcend its surroundings, to defy dehumanization, and to dream of the past and of the future."

Forgive the very late reply to this...I read this book years ago and I agree, it is a moving work. It isn't a very long book but the stories are wonderful and a glimpse into rarely documented part of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust.

thaiobsessed wrote:I am really enjoying "Cooking for Mr. Latte" by Amanda Hesser. Someone gave me the book as a gift several years ago and I just stuck it on my shelf and never got around to reading it. It has a pink cover with cartoon-ish drawings and I guess I thought it would be 'chick lit' which I'm not that into. I'm not sure why I thought that--I really enjoy Hesser's columns in the New York Times (in fact, her column on central Vietnam led me to my best meal on a trip there). The book is about dating someone who's not that into food (though he comes around).

Interesting. I dismissed this book because I assumed it was chick lit, too. So you're saying it isn't? Amazon's description of it as a "delightfully modern dating story" makes me very, very skeptical.

happy_stomach wrote:Interesting. I dismissed this book because I assumed it was chick lit, too. So you're saying it isn't? Amazon's description of it as a "delightfully modern dating story" makes me very, very skeptical.

O.K., so it's not Proust. But it is a great read. More than being a story about 'dating', it's a story about how being sort of obsessed by food/dining can affect a relationship (both positively and negatively). It's also interesting to hear about what life is like as a food writer. And I already made one of the recipes in it (haricots vertes with walnuts, walnut oil--nothing fancy but I was getting ready to cook dinner and it sounded good) and there are others I'm looking forward to trying. So, I guess, yes, I'm saying that it isn't. I completely understand the skepticism--that's why it sat on my shelf unread for 3 years.

ronnie_suburban wrote:I received several food-related books as gifts yesterday and while I haven't really tapped into too many of them yet, I'm immediately compelled by Eric Ripert's On The Line, which documents his creative and cooking processes, through the use of narrative, notes, sketches and photographs. It's one of the most unique and interesting food books I've seen in a long time.

I'm finally getting around to reading this and I absolutely love it. I'm fascinated by the way high-end kitchens are run, and this gives me more detail than I ever thought possible.

I just finished reading Novella Carpenter's Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. It's about her experiences growing a garden and raising animals on an abandoned lot in a bad neighborhood in Oakland. It's engaging and well-written; it doesn't gloss over the tough or unpleasant parts of farming, but still paints it in a way that makes me think, if only for a moment, "why couldn't I raise rabbits in my backyard?" The book is still pretty new and she's doing a book tour in October, with possible stops in Chicago on October 9 or 10. (according to her blog)

I recently read "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles" by Jennifer 8 Lee on a recommendation from my sister and found it to be thoroughly readable and enjoyable. Very funny and light-hearted and I didn't need to over use my brain too much reading this book. I just need a book like this once in a while. Here's a little blurb from it:

"The Fortune Cookie Chronicles on how Chinese food is all-American. There are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles is for anyone who has ever wondered who is General Tso and why are we eating his chicken; why Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas; and who really invented the fortune cookie. New York Times reporter, Jennifer 8. Lee, solves enduring mysteries of Chinese cuisine through a mix of in-depth research and entertaining personal anecdotes."

My teenage daughter also enjoyed the book.

Don't see this mentioned on this thread, but for you winos out there, I'd highly recommend Judgment of Paris. Although its theme ostensibly is the infamous blind tasting in Paris in which upstart California wines beat their French forebearers (and which victory caused shockwaves in the wine world and even made the cover of Newsweek in 1976), it is, essentially, a history of Napa valley as well as the varied personalities that made it what it is today (a Croatian immigrant, a first-generation Italian, a first-generation Pole who was a U. of C. professor, and a burnt-out lawyer, to name a few). Interesting stories about Americans with dreams and passions perservering against the odds.

thaiobsessed wrote:

happy_stomach wrote:Interesting. I dismissed this book because I assumed it was chick lit, too. So you're saying it isn't? Amazon's description of it as a "delightfully modern dating story" makes me very, very skeptical.

O.K., so it's not Proust. But it is a great read. More than being a story about 'dating', it's a story about how being sort of obsessed by food/dining can affect a relationship (both positively and negatively). It's also interesting to hear about what life is like as a food writer. And I already made one of the recipes in it (haricots vertes with walnuts, walnut oil--nothing fancy but I was getting ready to cook dinner and it sounded good) and there are others I'm looking forward to trying. So, I guess, yes, I'm saying that it isn't. I completely understand the skepticism--that's why it sat on my shelf unread for 3 years.

I read Cooking for Mr. Latte when it came out and really enjoyed it (and I generally don't like Amanda Hesser or Chick Lit).

I picked up Cooking for Mr. Latte and got about 2/3 of the way through and decided I didn't care enough to finish it. Nothing terribly wrong with the book, but I didn't find Hesser an interesting writer. The stories all ran together. My lukewarm experience with this book could be because earlier this year, I read Molly Wizenberg's (blogger Orangette) A Homemade Life which I found genuinely moving, rich in detail and populated with folks I'd like to meet.

Hellodali wrote: earlier this year, I read Molly Wizenberg's (blogger Orangette) A Homemade Life which I found genuinely moving, rich in detail and populated with folks I'd like to meet.

Funny, Dimitra, I picked up Wizenberg's book earlier this year and got only 2/3 of the way through. I found it genuinely unmoving, rich in details I didn't care about, and populated with folks I didn't care to meet.

(I should add that I never cared for Wizenberg's blog, either. To me, she suffers from the malady suffered by some Gen-Xers in which she's too self-absorbed, falsely modest and fancies herself to be more on the fringes and intellectual than she probably is.)

aschie30 wrote:Funny, Dimitra, I picked up Wizenberg's book earlier this year and got only 2/3 of the way through. I found it genuinely unmoving, rich in details I didn't care about, and populated with folks I didn't care to meet

Phew - now we know to disregard each other's book recommendations! Food and drink yes. Books, no.

The translation of Muriel Barbery's (author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog) first novel Gourmandise, is now available as Gourmet Rhapsody:

http://www.amazon.com/Gourmet-Rhapsody- ... 830&sr=8-1

It's the story of a food critic (who makes the critic in Ratatouille seem like a teddy bear) on his death bed rummaging through his memory to find the one taste/savor/experience that will give his life meaning. Structured through a variety of points of view (from his children--who detest him--through his mistresses--who really, really detest him--to his cat--who kind of likes him), it's really a book about food (and food-writing!) as art, the kind of intellectual and philosophical adventuring that the French have mastered. But with long expositions (rhapsodies) over such things as bread, sardines, sorbets, and mayonnaise (it's like sex), the novel should be a treat to read for anyone stimulated by literary gastronomy.

Here's one you can read in an evening. Not great in the sense of literature, but I found it to a helpful little guide.
Instant Bargains 600+ Ways to Shrink Your Grocery Bills and Eat Well for Less
Much might be common knowledge, but I gleaned a few tips. I knew about Restaurant.com, to keep my coupons in the car and creative uses for my crock pot, but I didn't know the shelf life of lentils or that March is a great time to stock up on frozen foods.
Chapters include Shopping Strategies, Eating Healthy for Less and Stocking Your Kitchen. Even if you know all the tips outlined from the author
(Kimberly Danger, founder of MommySavers.com), it's still fun to flip through this hand-sized book.

This note might be better placed in one of several threads about noise, music and talking in restaurants, but those interested in sound as it relates to food and eating (ahem, David Hammond) might want to check out George Prochnik's book In Pursuit of Silence. As a Vipassana meditator, the topic of silence is infinitely interesting to me and therefore In Pursuit has been hard to put down. Prochnik in chapter 4, "Retail: The Soundtrack," addresses briefly the effects of sound on food consumption--a teaser for anyone curious about the topic.

Thx for the rec, Sharon.

I'm taking a break from food-related reading with City of the Century, a spectacular work about my hometown, from its founding until the Colombian Exposition, a very engaging read that fills in lots of knowledge gaps and paints fascinating portraits of Hubbard, Yerkes, Palmer, Ogden and others.

Frank Bruni’s Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite helped ease me through the construction during my commute. (I listened to his recording of the book). I enjoyed his sometimes funny, sometimes painful story of his lifelong affair with food. His relationship with food is an uneasy one that includes both fear and passion. He shares intimate details of his struggle with weight and how it affected his relationships.

His history includes growing up in an Italian family in New York. Meals were not to nourish, but competitive events. He struggles through his teen and early-adult years and eventually lands his job as restaurant critic for the New York Times. I enjoyed listening to Bruni tell his story of food and family. His style reminds me of David Sedaris, but in addition to humor, Bruni shrares gut-wrenching details with candor.

I enjoyed listening to Bruni read his work (and it eased a bit of the pain of construction season in Chicagoland).