Cookbook Finder

Kitchen confidential : adventures in the culinary underbelly

by:Bourdain, Anthony

A New York City chef who is also a novelist recounts his experiences in the restaurant business, and exposes abuses of power, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and other secrets of life behind kitchen doors.

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My life in France

by:Child, Julia

Here is the captivating story of Julia Child's years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found "her true calling." From the moment she and her husband Paul, who worked for the USIS, arrived in the fall of 1948, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn't speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu. She teamed up with two fellow gourmettes, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, to help them with a book on French cooking for Americans. Filled with her husband's beautiful black-and-white photographs as well as family snapshots, this memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so wholeheartedly. Bon appétit!--From publisher description

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Cooked : a natural history of transformation

by:Pollan, Michael

"In Cooked, Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements--fire, water, air, and earth--to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. In the course of his journey, he discovers that the cook occupies a special place in the world, standing squarely between nature and culture. Both realms are transformed by cooking, and so, in the process, is the cook"-- Provided by publisher.

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Below stairs : the classic kitchen maid's memoir that inspired Upstairs, downstairs and Downton Abbey

by:Powell, Margaret, 1907-1984

This work is a kitchen-maid's through-the-key hole memoir of life in the great houses of England. At fifteen, she arrived at the servants' entrance to begin her life as a kitchen maid in 1920s England. The lowest of the low, her world was one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and even bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5:30 am and went on until after dark. In this memoir, the author tells her tales of service with wit, warmth, and a sharp eye. From the gentleman with a penchant for stroking housemaids' curlers, to raucous tea dances with errand boys, to the heartbreaking story of Agnes the pregnant under-parlourmaid, fired for being seduced by her mistress's nephew, this book evokes the long vanished world of masters and servants portrayed in Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. This is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman, who, though her position was lowly, never stopped aiming high.

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Medium raw : a bloody valentine to the world of food and the people who cook

by:Bourdain, Anthony

Overview: The long-awaited follow-up to the megabestseller Kitchen Confidential. In the ten years since his classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, from Monday fish to the breadbasket conspiracy, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business-and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, Bourdain takes no prisoners as he dissects what he's seen, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food.

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Paula Deen : it ain't all about the cookin'

by:Deen, Paula H., 1947-

You may think you know the finger-licking, joke-cracking queen of Southern cuisine. You may have even visited her restaurant to taste for yourself the down-home delicacies that made her famous, or even heard her Cinderella story (a single mom started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant, a fairy-tale second marriage, and popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune. She talks about long childhood summers; hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom.--From publisher description.

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Blood, bones, & butter : the inadvertent education of a reluctant chef

by:Hamilton, Gabrielle

The chef of New York's East Village Prune restaurant presents an account of her search for meaning and purpose in the central rural New Jersey home of her youth, marked by a first chicken kill, an international backpacking tour, and the opening of a first restaurant.

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Julie and Julia : 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen .

by:Powell, Julie, 1973-

Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In the span of one year. At first she thinks it will be easy, but as she moves from simple potato soup into more complicated realms, she realizes there's more to Mastering the Art than meets the eye. She haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver. And somewhere along the line she realizes she has eclipsed her life's ordinariness through humor, hysteria, and perseverance.--From publisher description.

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Garlic and sapphires : the secret life of a critic in disguise

by:Reichl, Ruth

The editor-in-chief of "Gourmet," a former restaurant critic at the The New York times, recounts her visits to some of the world's most acclaimed restaurants, both as herself and as an anonymous diner in disguise, to offer insight into the differences in her dining experiences.

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Julie and Julia : my year of cooking dangerously

by:Powell, Julie, 1973-

Nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the art of French cooking. Her unexpected reward, a new life lived with gusto.

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