Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. It's about a young woman who spends a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". It is the book version of a blog she kept of the experience. Very funny!
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin. Laurie Colwin wrote in a way that makes you want to cook something. She was a columnist for Gourmet, and she died young at 48.
Speaking of Gourmet, I loved everything Ruth Reichl has written, especially
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table . It describes her coming of age with food and love and motherhood. She now edits Gourmet.
Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook by John Thorne and Matt Lewis Thorne. They can really write beautifully about simple foods.
Books about food I wanted to like more than I actually did:
"Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" by Bill Buford is about working in a restaurant and it was really whiny and uninspiring. I think that Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain covers the subject of working in a restaurant better.
The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison. I don't know why I didn't like it, but I didn't. He is a Michigander and an excellent writer. Anyone like it?
Just discovered your blog through arborparents and thought I would comment, since I just finished Buford (liked it but didn't love it, and agree that Bourdain was more fun, though Buford's historic stuff was good). I haven't read the Raw & Cooked, but will put it on my library request list.
ReplyDeleteHave you read Steven Rinella's The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine? It's by a former Michigander, and parts take place here. Well, near Traverse.