Cooking, Food & Wine Books

Wine for Dummies

Mary Ewing-Mulligan, Ed McCarthy

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 62 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A better and more entertaining introduction to wine would be hard to find... Highly recommended."

--Wine & Spirits Magazine

"Wine is one of life's great pleasures... I hope more people will relax and simply enjoy wine after this book."

--Francis Ford Coppola, Proprietor, Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery

"Mulligan and McCarthy will make you smarter with every page.At the next dinner party you will impress your friends."

--Adam M. Strum, Editor and Publisher Wine Enthusiast Magazine

Do you panic when the waiter hands you the wine list because you don't know a Chardonnay from a Cabernet Sauvignon?Do you know what to do when the waiter hands you the cork?

Well you don't have to be intimidated anymore! Wine for Dummies is the down-to-earrth, one-stop wine resource that teaches you everything:

• Open , serve, and store wine properly

• Read and understand a wine label

• Distinguish good wine from bad with ease

• Tast the "elements of wine" like body, flavor, and balance

• Select wine for any meal or special occasion with confidence

• Navigate your way through a wine shop like a pro

• Enjoy fine wine without spending a lot of money

A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal

Anthony Bourdain, Bourdain Anthony

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Total reviews: 121 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Dodging minefeilds in Cambodia, diving into the icy waters outside a Russian bath, chef Bourdian travels the world over in search of the ultimate meal.

The only thing Tony Bourdain loves as much as cooking is traveling, and A Cook's Tour is the shotgun marriage of his two greatest passions. Inspired by the question, 'What would be the perfect meal?', Tony sets out on a quest for his culinary holy grail.

Our adventurous chef starts out in Japan, where he eats traditional Fugu, a poisonous blowfish which can be prepared only by specially licensed chefs. He then travels to Cambodia, up the mine-studded road to Pailin into autonomous Khmer Rouge territory and to Phnom Penh's Gun Club, where local fare is served up alongside a menu of available firearms. In Saigon, he's treated to a sustaining meal of live Cobra heart before moving on to savor a snack with the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta. Further west, Kitchen Confidential fans will recognize the Gironde of Tony's youth, the first stop on his European itinerary. And from France, it's on to Portugal, where an entire village has been fattening a pig for months in anticipation of his arrival. And we're only halfway around the globe...

A Cook's Tour recounts, in Bourdain's inimitable style, the adventures and misadventures of America's favorite chef.

The Stories from The Italian Country Table: Exploring the Culture of Italian Farmhouse Cooking

Lynne Rossetto Kasper

List Price: $13.00 By: Audioworks Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $0.92

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Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lynne Rossetto Kasper, author of The Splendid Table and host of PRI's award winning radio program of the same name, is a master at transporting her readers and listeners into the fascinating world of the Italian countryside. In Stories from The Italian Country Table, Lynne brings to life her adventures in rural Italy.

Stories from The Italian Country Table illustrates how, in Italy, eating well and coming together around the table are inseparable from the folklore, history, handmade foods, and storytelling so dear to the hearts of country people. You'll enjoy polenta with new zest after hearing "Cheater's Gold" and "Honeymooners and Corn Husk Mattresses." Step into a Sicilian shepherd's hut and practically taste the fresh-made sweet ricotta. Hear "How a Capon Became a Father," celebrate gathering "The Dew of Midsummer's Eve," and learn the art of complaining Italian-style with "Eating White."

To make your Italian experience complete, Stories from The Italian Country Table comes with the first 30-minute Italian lesson in the Pimsleur Language Program -- the revolutionary audio-only language learning system -- as an added bonus.

A perfect audio companion to the recipes featured in Kasper's book, The Italian Country Table, this unique experience will immerse you in the culture and cuisine of the Italian countryside.

INSTRUCTIONS TO THE COOK-AUDIO

Bernard Glassman

List Price: $18.00 By: Shambhala Audio Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $4.03

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Best Guide to Spirituality in the Street 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 15 people found this review helpful.

On Becoming a Zen Cook How do you go further from the top of a hundred-foot pole? The answer to this Zen koan, given on the opening page of Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master1s Lessons in Living a Life that Matters (Bell Tower Harmony Books) is simply, 3Live life more fully.2 The Zen 3cook2 writing this book is Bernard Glassman, abbot of the Zen Community of New York and the Zen Center of Los Angeles, with assistance from Rick Fields, editor of Yoga Journal and co-author of the Zen book, Chop Wood, Carry Water. When Dr. Glassman (with a Ph.D. in mathematics from U.C.L.A.) was an aeronautical engineer working on manned missions to Mars at McDonnell-Douglas in the 1970s, he felt a hunger for 3something more.2 He began his practice of Zen and soon became a teacher himself. Glassman vowed to serve the 3supreme meal2 to the world1s hungry. The supreme meal for a Zen cook is life lived to the fullest. By the time he wrote his cookbook, he had created a Zen community in New York, complete with uniquely profitable means of livelihood for its members, as well as several not-for-profit social action enterprises. How did he come to serve up such a full meal? He began by gathering the ingredients at hand at started cooking. Along the way, he didn1t worry so much about doing the 3right thing2 as simply doing the 3next thing,2 which usually proved to be correct. His cookbook, which is also an autobiography of his work, shows that a meal concocted from spirituality, livelihood and service is quite fulfilling. His story, and the teaching he makes from it, has provided me with some of the most inspiring reading I1ve encountered in a long time. I want to pass along some of his recipes here for each of five courses which make up the complete meal. The first course is spiritual practice, such as meditation (or use other methods at hand), to develop the awareness of the oneness of all things. Spirituality also helps us to realize the stillness in the center of all our activities. We need to clear our minds just as a cook cleans the kitchen prior to cooking. We don1t meditate to become enlightened, however, but because we are enlightened, we meditate to keep our stillness in the endless cycle of cooking, serving, cleaning. The second course is study or learning. We need our education to develop intelligence and skills. Rabbi Glassman--of course I should call him Roshi, not Rabbi, but he was born Jewish and his practical, down to earth approach has a Jewish flavor--teaches that we learn by doing. No need to wait until you know everything before you do anything, but you learn like a baby learns to walk, by getting up over and over again until you get going. Then you become more polished with practice. He teaches you to cook with all available ingredients, including your own faults and problems, which are always in plentiful supply. When a series of burglaries into the housing complex for the homeless, for example, began to anger the residents, he used the situation to teach them how much they cared about and wanted to protect their dwelling place. He used this problem to get them more involved in its management, and they learned valuable skills in the process. The third course is livelihood, which requires practical skills put to good use. Although we don1t live to eat, we have to eat to live. No matter how spiritual we may be, finding a way to sustain ourselves in the world is a common necessity. He calls it the meat and potatoes of the meal. Denying donations, Glassman created a self-sustaining businessÐa bakeryÐbecause good food would nourish others and because it could be quite profitable. His tales of creating that business (becoming the official supplier of baked goods to the Rain Forest brand of cookies and for Ben and Jerry1s ice cream sandwiches) is an instructional manual itself in practical spirituality. He saw to it that the employees not only earned a living, but also found spiritual nourishment in their work. He had a double bottom line that he sees as really one: profit and service to all concerned. He didn1t aim merely for profit that served, but also profit that transformed, because the forth course is social action. Creating economically self-sustaining structures that nourished the community and transformed its social landscape, he hired and trained the homeless so they could earn money to own their own shelter. Have a big vision, he counsels, but pay attention to the details. He developed, for example, an 800 number voice mail network for the homeless to communicate with each other and with potential employers. The final course is relationship and community. He and his students lived among the homeless and learned from them in designing their programs. He also engaged local business and government to participate as be began a program of refurbishing abandoned buildings. Glassman has had his critics, people who miss the traditional zendo. They ask, 3But is it Zen?2 He treats the question as a koan, and replies, 3Three pounds of fudge!2

Editorial Review:

In the tradition of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are, one of America's most provocative and celebrated Buddhist teachers presents a distillation of Zen wisdom that can be used equally well as a manual on business, spiritual practice, or cooking.

Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family, Library Edition

Patricia Volk

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In a restaurant family, you’re never just hungry—you’re starving to death. And you’re never full—you’re stuffed.
Patricia Volk’s family is as American (background: Austrian-Jewish) as “Rhapsody in Blue.” They came to these shores determined to make their mark; each of them is a piquant morsel of history. Great-grandfather Sussman Volk brought pastrami to the New World. Grandfather Jacob was known as “the Most Destructive Force on Wall Street” and was memorialized by E. B. White as “the greatest wrecker of all time” for his innovative method of demolition. Uncle Albert was the first man to stir scallions into cream cheese. The last of Grandfather Herman Morgen’s fourteen restaurants was a famous garment center hangout. One grandmother won the 1916 trophy for “Best Legs in Atlantic City.” The other was a three-hundred-pound calendar girl. Ms. Volk’s handsome, demanding restaurateur father invented the Six-color Retractable Pen and Pencil Set and the Double-sided Cigarette Lighter (so you never have to worry which end is up). For three generations, just about every Volk and Morgen (with the exception of Uncle Al, who had an eleven-year affair with Aunt Lil and then refused to marry her because she wasn’t a virgin) has, no matter what the circumstances, exhibited a terrifyingly positive attitude. With a cosmic disdain for the status quo, all of them—the tyrants, do-gooders, lovers, martyrs, and fakes—lived at full tilt.

Stuffed is a wildly funny yet unsparing look at how families work.

Queer Eye For the Straight Guy : The Fab 5's Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better

Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley, Jai Rodriguez

Amazon Price: $22.95 List Price: $22.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 26 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Imagine this: Five eminently stylish and hilariously witty gay men—authoritative experts in food and wine, grooming, decorating, fashion, and culture—invade your life, assess your strengths and weaknesses, and, in the course of a day, make you better dressed, better groomed, better mannered, and a better cook, living in a better home. All of this is painless (unless you have a really egregious body-hair situation), liberating, and downright fun.

This is what Queer Eye for the Straight Guy does each week on one of the hottest TV shows in memory, as the Fab 5—Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley, and Jai Rodriguez—turn an everyman frog into an every-girl's-dream prince. And this is what the book offers: the essential "make better" advice from each of the Fab 5. Just like the show, the book focuses on easy but lasting lifestyle transformation—the tasks, the projects, the modest purchases, and, most important, the new attitudes that immediately make a noticeable difference.

From Kyan's instructions on how often to wash your hair to Carson's explanation of why shirts are the new ties, from Ted's strategies for ordering wine and Thom's suggestions on a better bathroom to Jai's hints on shaking hands, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is filled with clear, direct advice on the issues that confront every man. But Queer Eye doesn't try to make you dress like Carson or dance like Jai; it's about teaching you how to refine your own personal style, without throwing away your entire closet and buying a whole new everything. It's about helping you realize the best expression of yourself—the real you.

Queer Eye introduces men to the rewards that women—and a lot of gay men—have long reaped by thinking about the day-to-day details that make them look better, feel better, and get more out of life. Many straight men have long felt that these subjects are not for them. Nothing could be sillier. In this book, the Fab 5 sets them straight (so to speak).

Choice Cuts: A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History (New Millennium Audio)

Mark Kurlansky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

An uneven collection of bathroom reading for foodies 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

If I were Kurlansky's publisher, I would have liked his book pitch, too: pull together several short essays of food writing into a single book. Kurlansky is an excellent author -- I've read a few of his other books and liked 'em quite well -- but this one doesn't quite make it.

When an essay works, it's a great sampler for the author's work -- which may not be a "foodie" writer. You'd expect to find Lucullus, but not Herodotus (Kurlansky includes a page from The Persian Wars, fifth century BC, with Herodotus' comments on Egyptian dining). I've read _of_ AJ Liebling more than I've read him, but I loved the four pages reproduced here about dining with his parents at Restaurant Maillabuau in Paris, followed immediately by MFK Fisher on Monsieur Paul's.

The book has thirty chapters which group the material by topic: ethnicity, such as The Americans, or food items, such as the Mystery of Eggs. A section on seasoning includes Pliny the Elder on Thyme, the Talmud on Garlic, Platina on Basil and Saffron, Karl Friedrich von Rumohr on Sorrel, and The Aobo Tu on Salt Making.

On the positive side, each of the essays is very short. Most are 2-3 pages, and few are more than 5, making them suitable to enjoy in the john (and I do mean that in a nice way). That's also a negative, however, because by the time you've gotten into an essay (or poem or song lyrics -- Kurlansky mixes 'em up), and figured out whether this one is meant to be funny, or sensual, or instructive, or whatever... it's over. When something doesn't work for me -- and it could be a matter of mood -- I find that I flip forward until I find another essay that attracts. Perhaps that's a strength, too, because there's always something to get my interest. But mostly I'm aware of how much of the book I'm skipping.

The uneven nature of the collection makes it hard for me to recommend this book without reservation. I like it; I don't love it.

Editorial Review:

This work was at least 3,000 years in the making as essays about food make your mouth water, your appetite build, and your appreciation for the art and history of cuisine grow by leaps and bounds. Mark Kurlansky, food historian and writer for Food and Wine magazine, comments about and introduces historical thoughts on everything from scrambled eggs to roast ribs of beef, souffles, and every category of food you can imagine. Some of the contributors include: Aristotle, Julia Child, James Beard, Gertrude Stein, and other famous authors, and historians. This enticing look at food is entertaining, amusing and fun.

Making Sense of Wine

Matt Kramer

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

Intelligent intro to wine 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 13 people found this review helpful.

The wine writer for the Portland Oregonian presents a truly intelligent introduction to wine, an excellent starting point for a novice who wants to ramp up his knowledge quickly and well, and a good read even for those who think they know it all

Stop making sense 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 25 people found this review helpful.

The title of the book is amusing given the numerous times the author refutes his own arguments on one point or another. Self-consistency, one imagines, is essential to "making sense."

For instance, he waxes eloquent in his novelistic style about how critical maintaining the cork was to the evolution of the bottle shape: "...there couldn't have been much laying down or cellaring of wines, at least to judge from the shape of the bottle...The bulbous base of the Globe and Spike made laying it sideways quite difficult and the long neck made it that much harder for the wine to neslte against a cork, keeping it moist and swollen, the seal intact." (p128)

This is followed soon after by: "There is even serious doubt as to whether it is necessary to lay the bottles on their sides to keep the cork moist...I can attest from personal experience that the corks and the wines appear no different from old wines stored horizontally." (along with further arguments and examples, p139)

So if we bought the book hoping to "make sense" of all this, should we infer that laying bottles on their side is better or not?

The author, who doesn't include a single illustration save one of himself, appears to be on a search for "truth in wine," which he argues in his first chapter is in fact reachable in the form of "standards." He then proceeds to demonstrate how such standards are indeed beyond the reach of objective truth in practice.

Nonsense.

However, I think everyone truly interested in wine should read this, if only to deepen the delicious enigma.

Editorial Review:

This new edition of Matt Kramer's classic guide to wine features a new preface and an all-new chapter that covers changes and advances in winemaking since first publication in 1989. The superbly written text explains everything an oenophile needs to know, including the creation and naming of wines, wine cellars, presentation and glassware, pairing wine with food, and much more. Kramer explores connoisseurship through the practical devices of "thinking wine" and "drinking wine," making for a most enjoyable and engrossing journey through one of life's most dependable pleasures.

A Guide to Wine

List Price: $22.98 By: Naxos Audio Books Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $22.52

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Actor and wine buff, Julian Curry, has devised this unique audiobook guide to wine, which takes the listener to the heart of winemaking and wine drinking in a clear but light-hearted manner. However rich and complex the subject of wine may be, he insists it is also hugely rewarding and great fun. Curry's informative and entertaining program begins with a description of work in vineyard and cellar. It outlines the many choices faced-by grape-grower and winemaker, resulting in the variety of different styles of wine produced. It continues with wine's journey from winery to gullet, with advice on cellaring, buying, serving, food-matching and tasting. It then moves on to thumbnail sketches of the grape varieties most commonly used, their natural habitats and related styles of wine. And it continues with a lengthy section devoted to all major wine regions, in the Old World and the New. Written and recorded especially for Naxos AudioBooks, and enhanced by the music of Beethoven, De Falla, Godard, Gershwin, Granados, Mascagni, Offenbach, Paterson, Piazzolla, Rossini, Strauss and Verdi, A Guide to Wine is the perfect gift for wine aficionados and those with just a passing interest in the subject alike!

Everyday Cooking WIth Dr. Dean Ornish

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Do youthink you have to choose between good food and good health? Between foodsthat might help you live longer -- or just make it seem longer? Betweenfast, high-fat foods and time-consuming, low-fat meals?

Now you don't. In Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Ornishteaches you that you don't have to make compromises in your diet. You canenjoy fast, easy-to-prepare meals that are delicious and nutritious, madewith familiar, inexpensive, and easy-to-find ingredients.

Dr. Ornish and his colleagues present simpleyet extraordinary recipes for making fresh, delicious, everyday meals. Thesetime-saving recipes are organized into seasonal menus to take advantageof the freshest ingredients.

In addition to offering a tempting selection of recipes,Dr. Ornish gives clear, detailed instructions that interweave techniques, and helpful sidebars; advice on using leftovers, suggestions foralternative ways to season or serve a dish, how to keep a plentiful pantry,a shop-smart guide with supermarket tips and traps, how to equip your low-fatkitchen, how to cook legumes and grains, how to pack a better lunch box,how to choose better bread, and scores of other helpful tips.

For the millions who were inspired by Dr. Ornish's previous books, thiscompanion audio makes his way of eating fast and fun, easy and extraordinary.Drawing on his work training others to adopt his program, Dr. Ornish presentsrecipes that are extremely low in fat and cholesterol and high in flavor.These simple choices may result in powerful changes in your health and well-being.