Recent Reads

I am an avid reader, and one of my favorite genres is food writing. I’ve got a huge collection and am constantly on the lookout for new food books. Here are some I’ve enjoyed recently. (By the way, as a grad student and aspiring librarian, I am fanatical about citation, so I will list full citations for these books at the end of the post).

Heat by Bill Buford

Buford, a staff writer and former fiction editor at The New Yorker, chronicles his attempt to crossover from avid home cook to masterful professional cook. After meeting Mario Batali (of Babbo and several other restaurants in NYC, along with several shows on the Food Network), Buford talks his way into an unpaid position in the kitchen at Babbo. He continues his culinary education through stints in Italy and England.

A good read, with lots of inside info on Batali, British “bad boy of the kitchen” Marco Pierre White, and others. The most fascinating part for me, though, was “watching” Buford slip further and further into obsession with furthering his culinary obsession.

The Reach of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman

I first discovered Ruhlman about ten years with the publication of his first food-related book, The Making of a Chef, and have been a big fan ever since. In The Reach of a Chef (the third in a series of sorts, following The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef), Ruhlman explores how the role of restaurants and chefs in the United States have changed over the last ten years or so, with the advent of celebrity chefs, the Food Network, and much more.

While The Making of a Chef remains my favorite work by Ruhlman (and one of my favorite FoodBooks of all time), this is a fine addition to the “series.” Ruhlman has been given unprecedented access to chefs and restaurants, and it is interesting to read about Thomas Keller, Grant Schatz, Emeril Lagasse and Rachel Ray, among many others, from the perspective of an insider-outsider.

(Note: Michael Ruhlman has recently been serving as a guest blogger at megnut – check it out. His recent post on the foie gras and lobster controversies was inspiring!).

Extremely Pale Rose by Jamie Ivey

Though I love my cocktails and wine, I confess to not being a particular “wine woman.” I know the basics, and I try to buy decent wine, but I’m not even close to an expert (nor am I particularly interested in becoming an wine expert). For this reason, I rarely read books about wine. However, I am interested in travel writing, which drew me to this book.

One day during a summer vacation in the South of France, Ivey, his wife Tanya, and their friend Peter, through a series of misunderstandings, made a bet with a French woman whom they met in a restaurant that they could find the palest rose in France. Unfortunately, they did not realize as they made this bet that they were betting against the producer of (arguably) the palest rose in France. The following summer, Ivey, Tanya, and Peter spent their summer traveling through France, on the hunt for an extremely pale rose.

This was a fun read. I loved the “travel bits,” and reading it inspired me to try a French rose (I have never tried it – all I could think of when I saw a bottle was White Zinfandel, that horrible stuff pretending to be rose). James and I were looking for wines for our wedding. We had decided on a champagne (actually a sparkling wine) to start and a Bordeaux for the meat course), but we also needed a white or light red wine to serve during the salad and fish courses (I’ll post the menu for the wedding in case anyone’s interested). We picked up a bottle of L’Estandon Cotes de Provence Rose Vintage 2004, and it was a revelation. Who knew that rose could be crisp and dry and utterly yummy? (Yes, I know some of you knew – I’ve since read about it on your blogs). We immediately bought several cases, both for the wedding and for home. Even though I had read about French roses in a number of other food and travel books set in France, it was this book in particular that inspired me to finally try it, and I am so glad I did. Even James, who hates white wines and is quite particular even with reds (he’ll drink French reds, particularly Bordeaux, but he hates California reds), is now a huge fan of rose.

Citations

Buford, Bill. Heat: an amateur’s adventures as kitchen slave, line cook, pasta-maker, and apprentice to a Dante-quoting butcher in Tuscany. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Ruhlman, Michael. The reach of a chef: beyond the kitchen. New York: Viking, 2006.

Ivey, Jamie. Extremely pale rose: a very French adventure. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.