Showing titles in Gastronomy

How did the Old-Fashioned get its name, and why has the drink endured? What drinks were invented by Sam Ross? What was the Pegu Club, and who bartended there? In The Encyclopedia of Cocktails, Robert Simonson catalogues all the essential people, places, and drinks that make up our cocktail history in a refreshing take on the conventional reference book. New York Times cocktail and spirits writer Robert Simonson's witty and opinionated presentation of the bar world is a refreshing look at all things cocktail-related.

A powerful memoir of resilience, friendship, family, and food from the acclaimed chefs behind the award-winning Hy Vong Vietnamese restaurant in Miami. In 1975, after narrowly escaping the fall of Saigon, pregnant refugee and gifted cook Tung Nguyen ended up in the Miami home of Kathy Manning, a graduate student and waitress who was taking in displaced Vietnamese refugees. This serendipitous meeting evolved into a decades-long partnership, one that eventually turned strangers into family and a tiny, no-frills eatery into one of the most lauded restaurants in the country.

In Drinking in America, best-selling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the 17th to the 20th century.

Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country.

Chefs at top restaurants face competing pressures to deliver complex and creative dishes, and navigate market forces to run a profitable business in an industry with exceptionally high costs and low profit margins. Creating a distinctive and original culinary style allows them to stand out in the market, but making the familiar food that many customers want ensures that they can stay in business.

Throughout a career spanning 30 years, well-known food critic and writer (and little-known collector of spice grinders of eclectic origin) Marryam H. Reshii has had a relentless love affair with spices. Such has been her passion that she has travelled across the country and to various corners of the world - crushing, grinding, frying and tasting - in a bid to understand every aspect of these magnificent ingredients.

Most people don’t expect wood to flavor their food beyond the barbecue, if at all, and gastronomists rarely discuss the significance that wood has on ultimate taste. But trees and wood have a far greater influence over our plate and palate than you might think. A world trip brimming with fascinating encounters, unexpected turns, beautiful landscapes, scientific discoveries, and historic connections, The Flavor of Wood is the story of a passionate flavor hunter, and offers listeners unparalleled access to some of the world’s highest quality cuisine and unknown tree flavors.

Psyche A. Williams-Forson is one of our leading thinkers about food in America. In Eating While Black, she offers her knowledge and experience to illuminate how anti-Black racism operates in the practice and culture of eating. She shows how mass media, nutrition science, economics, and public policy drive entrenched opinions among both Black and non-Black Americans about what is healthful and right to eat. Distorted views of how and what Black people eat are pervasive, bolstering the belief that they must be corrected and regulated.

James Beard award - winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who played remarkable roles in unforgettable events in the nation's history.

In this engrossing memoir, Marion Nestle reflects on how she achieved late-in-life success as a leading advocate for healthier and more sustainable diets. Slow Cooked recounts of how she built an unparalleled career at a time when few women worked in the sciences, and how she came to recognize and reveal the enormous influence of the food industry on our dietary choices.

A collection of the year’s top food and travel writing, selected by the trailblazing New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated host of Taste the Nation and Top Chef Padma Lakshmi. Author and host Padma Lakshmi selects the best twenty articles published in 2023 that celebrate food and travel.

In this wildly funny and charming memoir, Patricia Volk entertains with a unique perspective of New York in the mid- to late-twentieth century and of a bigger-than-life family that owned fourteen restaurants, including Morgen's in the garment district....

How we eat, farm and shop for food is not only a matter of taste. Our choices regarding what we eat involve every essential aspect of our human nature: the animal, the sensuous, the social, the cultural, the creative, the emotional and the intellectual. Thinking seriously about food requires us to consider our relationship to nature, to our fellow animals, to each other and to ourselves. So can thinking about food teach us about being virtuous, and can what we eat help us to decide how to live?

For centuries, skeptical foreigners - and even millions of Americans - have believed there was no such thing as American cuisine. In recent decades, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza have been thought to define the nation's palate. Not so, says food historian Paul Freedman, who demonstrates that there is an exuberant and diverse, if not always coherent, American cuisine that reflects the history of the nation itself.

Amatriciana, pesto, ragù alla bolognese, lasagne, pasta ripiena, gnocchi. Siamo tutti convinti di conoscere alla perfezione come si preparano questi piatti, e cosa prevede “la tradizione”. Ma se scoprissimo che l'italianissima carbonara è nata negli Stati Uniti e che la ricetta “tradizionale" (guanciale, uova, pecorino, niente panna) è apparsa solo alla fine degli anni sessanta? E che invece le fettuccine Alfredo, considerate simbolo di posticcia cucina italoamericana, sono in realtà nate nella Roma dell'Ottocento?

Cider is the quintessential American beverage. Drank by early settlers and founding fathers, it was ubiquitous and pervasive, but following Prohibition when orchards were destroyed and neglected, cider all but disappeared. In The Cider Revival, Jason Wilson chronicles what is happening now, an extraordinary rebirth that is less than a decade old.

The food world has long kept a big secret: that everything is possible in this industry. Big dreams? You can achieve them here. No degree or connections? No problem. The scale of opportunity to earn a fantastic income, live a life of creativity and freedom, and even change the world is staggering. And all you need to get started is yourself.

Every wine has a story. In this collection of elegantly written essays from the past 30 years, updated with a new introduction and endnotes, renowned author Gerald Asher informs wine enthusiasts with insightful, engrossing accounts of wines from Europe and America that offer just as much for those who simply enjoy vivid evocations of people and places. Asher puts wine in its context by taking the reader on a series of discursive journeys that start with the carafe at his elbow.

A nutritional whodunit that takes readers from Greenland to Africa to Israel, The Queen of Fats gives a fascinating account of how we have become deficient in a nutrient that is essential for good health: the fatty acids know as omega-3s.

Elaine's was a world-famous New York restaurant that became home to writers and celebrities. Owner Elaine Kaufman was known to be "New York feisty", controversial, often rude, always blunt, with the flare of Gertrude Stein and Dorothy Parker. Elaine was highly respected and frequently feared, and Elaine's the restaurant received the public's love and praise time and time again. Woody Allen held a regular table there, and Elaine's was even featured in Allen's Manhattan and Billy Joel's song "Big Shot".