General Books - Page 6

Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris

A. J. Liebling

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

What a bore! One star is an over-rating! 1 out of 5 stars.
10 of 45 people found this review helpful.

Before purchasing this book, I read all the customer comments which gave nothing but praise. I just don't get it. I wish one of the reviewers would have given me tips on how to stay awake while plodding through each sentence/paragraph, along with where to find a single nugget in these pages worth remembering. Okay, I'll probably always wonder how the author's love of boxing was deemed worth inclusion, but then I wonder why the entire book was printed. I feel suckered! And can't think of anything to recommend this book. My advice is to spend your money on ANYTHING written by M.F.K. Fisher, "The Tummy Trilogy" by Calvin Trillin or "Blue Trout and Black Truffles" by Joseph Wechsberg for much more pleasurable reading.

Makes you long for the good old days... 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This is a fantastic book, but if you've never cracked The New Yorker open before, you might not like the style. Very in the moment and tongue in cheek, Liebling is a master wordsmith leaving no offense done to him by the onset of modernity unheckled. Some of the greatest tidbits come when he derrides the famous Michelin Star rating system for French restaurants, now a standard that chefs have literally killed themselves over - Liebling reminds you that its just a rating from a TIRE manufacturer and that he feels it marked the decline of real French cooking.

I read passages of this book out loud to friends and family, most notably the ones dealing with the immense amounts of food, and always got a laugh. This is not a book dealing with the upper crust of French high society, but rather a street wise, in the guts little tome that entertains and educates - though sadly, it is unlikely one can find the Paris that Liebling describes anymore.

Editorial Review:

New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling recalls his Parisian apprenticeship in the fine art of eating in this charming memoir.

Life Is Meals: A Food Lover's Book of Days

James Salter, Kay Salter

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author James Salter and his wife, Kay—amateur chefs and perfect hosts—here is a charming, beautifully illustrated tour de table: a food lover's companion that, with an entry for each day of the year, takes us from a Twelfth Night cake in January to a champagne dinner on New Year's Eve. Life Is Meals is rich with culinary wisdom, history, recipes, literary pleasures, and the authors' own memories of successes and catastrophes.

For instance:

• The menu on the Titanic on the fatal night

• Reflections on dining from Queen Victoria, JFK, Winnie-the-Pooh, Garrison Keillor, and many others

• The seductiveness of a velvety Brie or the perfect martini

• How to decide whom to invite to a dinner party—and whom not to

• John Irving's family recipe for meatballs; Balzac's love of coffee

• The greatest dinner ever given at the White House

• Where in Paris Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter had French onion soup at 4:00 a.m.

• How to cope with acts of God and man-made disasters in the kitchen

Sophisticated as well as practical, opinionated, and indispensable, Life Is Meals is a tribute to the glory of food and drink, and the joy of sharing them with others. "The meal is the emblem of civilization," the Salters observe. "What would one know of life as it should be lived, or nights as they should be spent, apart from meals?"

El Bulli 2003-2004

Ferran Adria, Juli Soler, Albert Adria

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Amazing journey 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 19 people found this review helpful.

I'll start with a disclaimer - I am a hobbyist and not a prefessionally trained chef. Even if you are a very experienced hobbyist don't expect to be able to prepare more than 5-10% (or less) of the recipes in this book. This book is not a beginner or even an advanced cookbook. While it contains recipes (on the attached CDROM), most of these recipes contain techniques that are far from standard and that may require specialized chemicals (such as Sodium Alginate and liquid nitrogen) and/or devices (such as a PacoJet, or a syphon with elBulli devised attachments). Furthermore, these recipes are far from forgiving, and most of the time you'll end up with a *really* unappetizing mess rather than a meal. Practicing before inviting friends is not an option with this one... For perspective, I own about 50 cookbooks, from the basics to celebrity chef bibles. To compare, apart from a few complex recipes, about 50% of Thomas Kellers' book is pretty doable.

Now for the good. This book is more of an inspirational journey than a cookbook. It chronicles a team of chefs journey outside of the realm of the known. Ferran Adria has reached the pinnacle of traditional cuisine, got the elusive third Michelin star, and instead of cashing in by opening cloned 3 star restaurants (like Alain Ducasse and Thomas Keller) has decided to venture out and explore.

The book is part of a series of books obssessivly annotating this journey. As an example of the depth of the obssession lies the tools the team created: To the young team yet unaware of the rigorous language of food science - mere words seemed inadequate to describe the products and procedures they had invented. So with a semi-deranged, Tolkien like fastidiousness, a philosophy, a methodology, an alternative supportive language (along with rune like icons)and even a map were created.

This tome is obssessive compulsive creativeness at its best. Like a Peter Greenaway film, it attempts to establish its place in a made-up chronology of food evolution. But just as cinema will never resemble a Greenaway Film, haute cuisine, while taking up some of Ferran's creation, will never become elBulli.

As for the recipes? These techniques, while (somewhat) annotated, are difficult to master for the home cook. As an example, I am still waiting for my Airs to emulsify properly. I'll get there, but it will take time and lots of thrown away food. But I'll keep trying. As for my pasta less raviolos? They are getting much better thanks!

Editorial Review:

Ferran Adria is widely considered to be the most innovative, most influential, and indeed the greatest chef in the world today. Culinary giants like Thomas Keller venerate him. El Bulli, the restaurant where he creates his masterpieces, has become a pilgrimage site of sorts; food connoisseurs from around the world journey down a dizzying coastal road to Roses, Spain to experience his unconventional tasting menu -- often consisting of 25 or more courses. But if you want a reservation, get in line.

The Gastronomical Me

M. F. K. Fisher

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great book for readers of all backgrounds! 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 29 people found this review helpful.

Do the former critics not read Tolstoy because he was a Count? I was born into a working class neighborhood in New York, and this is one of my favorite books. Being a gourmand is an enlightened point of view, a matter of personal taste. In my opinion this is Ms. Fisher's very best book. The writing, and the personality, are exquisite. Especially in the chapter about her Father and a childhood journey, and the discovery of her crush on a fellow boarding school student (female) and her love of oysters, at the same time! Am I the only one who feels that I've shared all of those wonderful meals with her when I put down this book? Great to pack along when you are traveling, even if you've read it before!

Editorial Review:

In 1929, a newly married M.F.K. Fisher said goodbye to a milquetoast American culinary upbringing and sailed with her husband to Dijon, where she tasted real French cooking for the first time. The Gastronomical Me is a chronicle of her passionate embrace of a whole new way of eating, drinking, and celebrating the senses. As she recounts memorable meals shared with an assortment of eccentric and fascinating characters, set against a backdrop of mounting pre-war tensions, we witness the formation not only of her taste but of her character and her prodigious talent.

The Physiology of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

Brillat-Savarin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The standard English edition of a landmark eccentric classic 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 23 people found this review helpful.

The standard edition of this work in the US, and a lively one. Jean-Anthelme de Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) is known for this book and for pithy maxims like "Adam and Eve sold themselves for an apple. What would they have done for a truffled fowl?" (That of course in the days when the truffles that most people heard of were real ones, not chocolate candies that look like them; and also when the real ones were much more plentiful and less expensive.) Memorable are the wonderful anecdotes of the kindly old priest and his "austere" meatless menu ("The Curé's Omelet," with "theoretical notes" afterwards) and of Brillat's scheme at a country inn to enhance a humble dish. This wide-ranging book established its author as an original and knowledgeable voice in French food writing, to be compared with Carême and Grimod de la Reynière.

Brillat-Savarin, among other roles, was the basis of Marcell Rouff's _The Passionate Epicure,_ a fictional book gently combining food and sex (naturally, as a friend of mine remarked, since it's French), which was widely read in English when the translation appeared in 1962. Marcella Hazan and (I believe) Julia Child cited it in their cookbooks. In his preface to the 1962 Rouff, Lawrence Durrell (himself a fashionable author at that time) explained that many in the Brillat-Savarin family "died at the dinner table, fork in hand" and that Brillat's sister Pierrette, two months before her hundredth birthday, spoke at table what are to food fanatics easily the most famous last words ever: "Vite! Apportez-moi le dessert -- je sens que je vais passer!"

Fisher's translation and notes are a lively part of this edition of Brillat-Savarin (happily reprinted recently). Some booksellers offer newer editions by different English translators; I don't know why. This semi-scholarly translation and editing, executed in France during the post-war period described in her autobiographical _Two Towns in Provence,_ was the work that established Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher among US gastronomic writers. Her later status as Official Food Celebrity encouraged journalists to cite her automatically (whether they had read her work or not), but at least this time, publicity and merit coincide.

Editorial Review:

Brillat-Savarin's unique, exuberant collection of dishes, experiences, reflections, history and philosophy raised gastronomy to an art form. First published in France in 1825, this remarkable book reflected a new era in French cuisine: the advent of the restaurant, which gave the bourgeoisie the opportunity to select their dishes with precision and anticipation. Yet the author also gives his views on taste, diet and maintaining a healthy weight, on digestion, sleep, dreams and being a gourmand. Witty, shrewd and anecdotal, "The Physiology of Taste" not only contains some remarkable recipes, it is an elegant argument for the pleasures of good food and a hearty appetite.

A Revolution in Taste: The Rise of French Cuisine, 1650-1800

Susan Pinkard

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Editorial Review:

This book traces the development of modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking from their roots in the Ancien Regime. Pinkard examines the interplay of material culture, social developments, medical theory, and Enlightenment thought in the development of French cooking, which culminated in the creation of a distinct culture of food and drink.

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess

Gael Greene

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

FLIES IN THIS SOUP 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

THERE IS GOOD SCHMUTZ AND BAD SCHMUTZ. THIS BOOK IS EITHER FICTIONAL, OR BAD SCHMUTZ. THERE ARE GLARING ERRORS TO BOOT. CONTRARY TO THE AUTHOR'S HUGE MISTAKE, THE WIDOW OF THE FAMOUS RESTAURATEUR HENRI SOULE WAS UNSUCCESSFUL IN ALL OF HER LAWSUITS TO GET PART OF HIS ESTATE. AND WHY WOULD THE AUTHOR INCESSANTLY REFER TO SOULE'S LIFE PARTNER, MRS SPALTER, AS HIS "MISTRESS", OVER AND OVER? THIS ELDERLY COUPLE SHARED THEIR LIFE AND WORK 24 HOURS A DAY EVERY YEAR. ONE REFERENCE WAS BAD ENOUGH, WHY HAMMER IT OVER AND OVER?

AND THE WORD IS NOT "MATERIZED", IT IS "MADERIZED", THAT IS, WINE THAT IS OXIDIZED DUE HEAT AND TURNED CARMEL COLORED. EVERYONE WHO DRINKS OR READS ABOUT WINES KNOWS THAT.

THE CONCENSUS OF ALL REVIEWS TO DATE ALL ECHO THE SAME BASIC SUMMARY, THIS IS SCHMUTZY WITHOUT BEING FUN.

Editorial Review:

With her passion for fine food and, above all, her appetite for love and life, Gael Greene traces her rise from a Velveeta cocoon in the Midwest to powerful critic of New York magazine. Love and food, foreplay and fork play, haute cuisine and social history--all become inextricably linked as the author lifts the lid on her most provocative subject yet--herself. Along the way there are tales of her saucy erotic adventures and intimate portraits of the culinary icons of our time--Julia Child, André Soltner, James Beard, among others--and revealing dissections of New York's legendary "in" spots, including Elaine's, Le Bernardin, Le Cirque, Odeon, and Balthazar.

The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand

Jim Harrison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Jim Harrison is one of this country's most beloved writers, a muscular stylist with a salty wisdom. For over twenty years, he has also been writing some of the best food criticism around -- in fact, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), in a review of The Beast God Forgot to Invent, praised its "great helpings of Harrison's expert, lush writing on food and wine." Now, for the first time, all of Harrison's food writing is available in one volume. Any reader of Harrison's fiction is struck by the love for food, wine, and other sensual pleasures that permeates it -- and anyone who has read his essays and journalism has encountered a food critic unlike any other: unpretentious, witty, and unabashedly passionate. The Raw and the Cooked delivers the long-awaited complete collection, from his Smart and Esquire columns, to present-day pieces including a lengthy correspondence with French gourmet Gerard Oberle and fabulous pieces on food in France and America for Men's Journal. "Where is the food book?" is a question that never fails to come up at Harrison's readings. The Raw and the Cooked answers that question with a nine-course meal that will satisfy every appetite.

More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen

Laurie Colwin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great food writing by Laurie Colwin (sigh, how we miss her) 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

Laurie Colwin was a talented writer and had a real feel for the essential qualities of great food. Though not a chef or professional cook, she used her writing skills to delve into the mysteries of what makes good food great. And she did that with some of the funniest, sharpest, best writing since M.F.K. Fisher.

Alas, Laurie died in 1992, much too young, so you have to savor every scrap of writing she left us, in essays for Gourmet Magazine, and these, in her Home Cooking volumes. Colwin wrote some novels as well, but really, her food writing is what I appreciate the most.as

Colwin's writing is opinionated and passionate: she goes into raptures over things most 7 year olds (and quite a few adults) would gag over; succotash, beets, goat's milk yogurt. Yet her sense of what makes food essentially wonderful will have even the most confirmed vegetable-a-phobe at least thinking about trying her succotash recipe or maybe even looking at a raw beetroot with calm impartiality. In case you are certain you will still shun beets and lima beans, at least read her description of how to roast a duck. It's splendid.

Editorial Review:

More Home Cooking, like its predecessor, Home Cooking, is an expression of Laurie Colwin's lifelong passion for cuisine. In this delightful mix of recipes, advice, and anecdotes, she writes about often overlooked food items such as beets, pears, black beans, and chutney. With down-to-earth charm and wit, Colwin also discusses the many pleasures and problems of cooking at home in essays such as "Desserts That Quiver," "Turkey Angst," and "Catering on One Dollar a Head." As informative as it is entertaining, More Home Cooking is a delicious treat for anyone who loves to spend time in the kitchen.

1,001 Foods To Die For

Andrews McMeel Publishing, Madison Books

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Ultimate Food Bible 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

I browse at cookbooks in bookstores as a hobby. I am the proud owner of some titles among the bestsellers' list of Amazon's food, cooking, and wine category but I have never encountered something like this before. I received an email from Amazon offering me to pre-order this item a few months ago. I am so glad that I had stuck it out since its release has been postponed again and again. When the book arrived, I didn't know what to expect besides its cover. I was amazed. This hefty book is the compendium of all delicious foods from all over the world. As I flipped through the pages, it felt like I was touring the world and experiencing the different exotic food each country has to offer. Majority of the foods are foreign sounding. However, there are some as basic as crab cakes, lemon chicken, short ribs, angel food cake, baked cheesecake, lentil soup, etc. The list is broken down into these food groups:
appetizers and small food
soups and salads
noodles and rice
fish and seafood
poultry and game
meats
beans, cheese, and vegetables
desserts
bread, cookies, and patries
beverages
I don't own the other book entitled "1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die", so I am curious if they contain more or less the same things. I am very satisfied with this one I have though and I intend to use it as a check list. I will try to taste as many of these foods as I can in my lifetime.

Now, a more critical perspective. I would like to have bigger and more number of photographs... but I suppose the book will be thicker than its 960 pages if that is the case.Hmmm! There are a few foods enlisted that don't have photographs to support them but overall, the book is fine for a visual person like me. It's hard to believe that this is the work of one single person. It's an encyclopedia for an adventurous foodie like me. Imagine how exciting it'll be to have some fantastic food for the first time in one's life and to be informed of its history. Each food has its story of how it came to be.

Editorial Review:

Every epicure seeks the very best-of-the-best foods the world has to offer, from extra-virgin olive oil and artisanal cheeses to rich, dark chocolate. 1,001 Foods To Die For is an essential list for food lovers, featuring luscious photographs and descriptions of must-eat foods from soup to nuts and from all over the world. This food bible includes everything from simple classics like foie gras and aged aceto balsamico to more exotic fare such as blowfish sushi or gratin Dauphinois. The book's contributors include more than eighty renowned culinary professionals--chefs, writers, critics, and historians--share their expert opinions on the delicious dishes and cuisines that must be experienced at least once in a lifetime. With lots of informational sidebars, and recipes for some of the featured dishes, 1,001 Foods To Die For is the ultimate culinary catalog for foodies everywhere.