Showing titles in Gastronomy

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime. Now, in What I Ate In One Year Tucci records twelve months of eating, in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei. These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight.

From the citrus groves of Sicily to a taco in Mexico City, In Search of the Perfect Peach takes you on a journey in the pursuit of flavor, with Franco revealing at every step how this incredibly simple desire can lead to radical change. Throughout, he offers us a deeply optimistic vision of how we as consumers can follow flavor to fix the food system and bring joy to our every meal.

The Christmas Chronicles is the story of Nigel Slater's love for winter, for the scent of fir and spruce, for ghost stories read with a glass of sloe gin, and beeswax candles with shadows dancing on the ceiling. With recipes, decorations, fables and quick fireside suppers, Nigel guides you through the essential preparations for Christmas and the New Year, with everything you need to enjoy the winter months.

Every great drink starts with a plant. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when medieval physicians boiled juniper berries with wine to treat stomach pain. The Drunken Botanist uncovers the surprising botanical history and fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even a few fungi).

The UK's most influential food and drink journalist shoots a few sacred cows of food culture. The doctrine of local food is dead. Farmers' markets are merely a lifestyle choice for the affluent middle classes. And 'organic' has become little more than a marketing label that is way past its sell-by date. That may be a little hard to swallow for the ethically aware food shopper, but it doesn't make it any less true. And now the UK's most outspoken and entertaining food writer is ready to explain why.

Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."

Rachel Herz uncovers the fascinating and surprising facts that affect food consumption. Why You Eat What You Eat mixes the social with the scientific to uncover how psychology, neurology, and physiology shape our relationship with food and how food alters the relationships we have with ourselves and with one another.

In this engaging, anecdotal history of food, world conquest, and desire, a chef-turned-journalist tells the story of three legendary cities, Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam, that transformed the globe in the quest for spice.

When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful microbes. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses.

America is more than just a fast food nation. Food Americana is the inside story of how generations of Americans have formed a national cuisine with tastes from all over the world. Fried chicken was a distinctly Southern dish - now it's the Sunday night special at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood. A Utah restaurant won Maine's annual Best Lobster Roll competition. And perhaps the ultimate all-American dish, pizza, is served up in 30 different styles, a total of three billion pies a year, an average of 23 pounds for each of us.

This is a revised and updated edition of an award-winning book, recognized as the authoritative work on the subject of British food. It is a breathtaking attempt to trace the changes to and influences on food in Britain from the Black Death through the Enclosures, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of Capitalism to the present day.

Love & Whiskey is the true story of Jack Daniel, Nearest Green, the man, and Uncle Nearest, the whiskey company Fawn Weaver founded to honor and amplify Green's legacy. But it’s not the whole story. A bonus chapter in the audiobook edition centers on Weaver's commitment to right the wrongs of history by cementing one man’s legacy for generations to come. It represents a living promise to give a family back the dream that was denied them in a place and time where dreams were not permitted for all.

The Apple: A Delicious History tells the engrossing and richly informative story of a fruit with a unique attachment to the human story. The 10,000-year tale of the round and pleasantly crunchy products of the trees of the genus Malus embraces not only culinary, horticultural, social and commercial history but also age-old traditions in mythology, folklore and religion.

Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola.

The spatter of sauce in a pan, a cook's subtle deviation from a recipe, the careful labour of cooking for loved ones: these are not often the subjects of critical enquiry. Cooking, we are told, has nothing to do with serious thought; the path to freedom and fulfilment, especially for women, leads directly out of the kitchen. In this invigorating, revelatory book, Rebecca May Johnson rewrites the kitchen as a space of infinite variety and infinite potential.

A true celebration of food in all its forms, The Food Book follows the human quest for sustenance through the stories of individual ingredients, and examines our millenia-long relationship with nearly 200 foods - from nuts and seeds to noodles and meat - with the help of tales from all over the world. Packed with glorious stories that surprise and enthral, this is the ultimate feast for foodies, a global smorgasbord packed with unforgettable tales and eye-opening facts.

Here is Anthony Bourdain's long-awaited sequel to Kitchen Confidential, the worldwide best seller. A lot has changed since then - 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.

Today’s optimistic farm-to-table food culture has a dark secret: The local food movement has failed to change how we eat. It has also offered a false promise for the future of food. In his visionary New York Times best-selling book, chef Dan Barber, recently showcased on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, offers a radical new way of thinking about food that will heal the land and taste good, too. Looking to the detrimental cooking of our past, and the misguided dining of our present, Barber points to a future “third plate”.

Si King and Dave Myers, aka The Hairy Bikers, have lived life to the fullest. They had fantastically rich northern childhoods laced with food and fun, but of course with some tragedy too. But we also get to know the early Bikers - we find out how their friendship developed and all of the mad capers and round-the-world trips they went on. Perfect for their fans, heavily seasoned with warmth, food, love, bikes and bro-mance, the Hairies never fail to entertain.