Books about Food

Hi! Please forgive me if this has been asked before.

I'm currently going through a phase where I love reading about anything dealing with food. Right now I'm reading Julia Child: Appetite for Life by Noel Riley Fitch and surprisingly for me, Cast Iron Cooking for Dummies by Tracy Barr.

What are some other suggestions if there are other foodies out in Book Talk Land?

Thanks so much!

Tender at the Bone is the first of Ruth Reichl's autobiographies and has recipes as well.

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adler is a great collection of essays about cooking for one and eating alone.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister is fiction about a cooking class, but is some of the best food description I've ever read.

There's also always stuff like Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel that is fiction that deals heavily with the power of food and cooking... The Book of Unholy Mischief by Elle Newmark is another more recent example of this.

My favorite food book is Heat: An Amateur's Adventures . . . by Bill Buford. Wonderfully descriptive book in which the author works in a famous kitchen (Mario's), then goes to Italy to learn about pasta making and sausage making. Even my husband loved this book, and he is most definitely not a foodie. Buford is a great writer, too.

Another good one is Julia Child's sort-of autobiography My Life In France - put together from letters and reminiscences by Julia's nephew Alex Prud'Homme. Follows Child as she goes to Le Cordon Bleu and writes Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn recounts one year at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris - interestingly, her experience is pretty similar to Child's experience 50+ years earlier.

Some people like Anthony Bourdain, some don't. I'm in the "like" camp, so I'd recommend Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour.

Julie and Julia was enjoyed by many, and the new movie is getting good pre-reviews. I didn't like this book as well as other people, but I also read it while in the hospital right after shoulder surgery - I'm not sure I would've liked any book I read under those circumstances. ;-) (Added: I guess the movie combines Julie and Julia and Child's My Life in France, so it's not strictly an adaptation of just Julie and Julia).

Then there is Michael Pollan. I strongly recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma, about where our food comes from. I also liked In Defense of Food, which is good, but not as good as Omnivore.

I have Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle on my TBR pile - I plan to read it this summer. It's gotten good reviews here on LT.

And I keep hearing that Reichl's Tender at the Bone is great, so I need to move it off my TBR pile and start reading it, too!

Edited to add a few things.

"Books about food" covers a lot of ground. ;)

Presently I'm reading Beans: A History by Ken Albala, and liking it very much. I recently read Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice, by Michael Krondl, and found it very enjoyable -- I like history (especially that period(s)), and Krondl has an adventurous and engaging style.

I've heard good things about Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes by Colette Rossant, a memoir of Jewish Egypt that includes plenty of recipes and discussions of food.

Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews is a recipe collection that also serves up beautiful food photography plus a lot of discussion on history, culture, and food in the Jewish communities of Syria.

Not necessarily about food, by I liked Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky as well as Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, also by Mark Kurlansky. Food figures prominently in the histories.

I like Anthony Bourdain's books too, but like Talbin said, they're not for everyone.

Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires is about her time as a food critic for the NY times and is mouth-watering as well as funny.

Another favorite of mine is Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs in which various chefs describe some of the craziest things that ever happened to them in a kitchen.

Also, Maria Balinska's The Bagel: A Cultural History is very interesting, but it's a bit dry.

It just needs a schmear of cream cheese.

#8: LOL - I just saw how that read! :)

Also by Michael Pollan and dealing with food is The Botany of Desire.

From my TBR pile: The Sex Life of Food and Eat, Pray, Love. I've heard good things about The Ethics of What We Eat and The Way We Eat,

As far as fiction goes, The Book of Salt is lovely.

The premier American food writer is Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. Her best books are not the ones solely about food, but the ones that combine travel, autobiography and food, e.g., Two Towns In Provence. Reichl is good but cannot hold a candle to her.

11> nemoman, I agree wholeheartedly. I combed my memory for her name and tried to find it backwards but couldn't remember, apparently, any titles correctly. It might be important to say that she used M.F.K. Fisher as her pen name.

Robert

#8 - and some smoked salmon and fresh dill!

Are contributors here aware that cookery books have been identified as 'the only socially acceptable form of pornography'?

The Food Taster and pretty much anything by Anthony Capella. And Chocolat, which always has me licking my lips.

On of my favorites is Can You Trust a Tomato in January?, an entertaining look at the American food industry and our super markets.

the big fat duck cookbook It is nominally a cookbook, but the recipes are so convoluted, and he spends so much more time talking about the ingrediants, how he finds them and why they are right for the dish, that it is more a tour de force of gastronomy than a cookbook.

In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food is a popular history of food taboos and traditions. I wasn't crazy about the organization (each chapter focuses on one of the seven deadly sins) but thought the individual taboos, their history, and their consequences were often fascinating.

I'll leave it to you to decide if booze (and other beverages) are food, but if it is I'm very fond of A History of the World in Six Glasses. It covers 6 eras of history by exploring the development and culture of a single drink. The author has a new book An Edible History of Humanity which I look forward to reading.

I just started reading Diet for a New America by John Robbins. It's already made me sad for animals, and I just began the book. :(

Seeds of Change is one of my favorite history books, it deals with 5, 6 in the newest edition, crops, such as tea and sugar, that have changed the course of history.

I read Good to Eat by Marvin Harris years ago. It's a fascinating discussion of what foods different cultures consider fit to eat.

Thank you for starting this thread, quillmenow. As a member of a CSA, I've started a small free lending library for its members, so I'm particularly interested in seeing which books all of you suggest.

The books I've already collected, many of which were mentioned above are:
Diet for new America - John Robbins
Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser
The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
Jewish Cooking in America - Joan Nathan (my CSA operates out of a synagogue)
Miriam's Kitchen - Elizabeth Ehrlich
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver
Don't Eat This Book - Morgan Spurlock (which is the book that started me in changing my eating habits

Other book suggestions are listed here:
http://jcarrot.org/resources/books-films-and-cool-stuff

ETA: I've copied down many of the suggestions noted by others above to see if I can find those books and add them to our CSA library. Thanks so much!

the supper of the lamb Robert Capon.

Good humor, meditations on food and faith, and, oh yeah, some very, very good recipes, or, really, Meals. And yes, there are recipes for lamb - but it assumes you're having good friends over for dinner as well - "Lamb for 8 times 4".

Wash hands after prep, (author and reader) and now it's time to let him introduce himself and his qualifications.
1. He's an amateur (go back to Latin,) "the world may not need more cookbook, but it needs all the lovers it can get....to look the world back to grace...Or peel an orange. Do it lovingly-in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one ling spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than orange rind; but as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.

2. I like food.

3. "I like drink. W.out any exceptions of time, place or circumstance, man and boy, I have never tasted wine or spirit for which i could not find a kind word or at least an hour's culinary employment." (as much garlick as needed in those instance when the bottle is not to taste)

Anyway, Robt Capon is an Episcopal priest - preparing, dining and fellowship are participating in God's grace inherent in the world. If this up front (but very weill written Christian exegesis on the nature of dining seems likely to offend - do at least flip though the book @ the library or bookstore. The 2 serious cooks I know who loved the book were Jews: my mom and a long time good friend who whenever we can weasel our way over to his home, usually provides Thanksgiving meals that, for which we are most thankful. This isn't "faith based cooking" - you're not hit over the head w/ exhortations to pray; it's cooking grounded in the belief that cooking and eating are yet another of the ways to appreciate the world (whether or not one believes that "god Classic, west variations, created the world.
--
bob mcconnaughey

"She is at the brink of never being hurt again
but pauses to say, All of us. Every blade of grass."
from Kuan Yin, Laura Fargas

The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef are excellent books about Chefs, about cooking professionally. Michael Ruhlman lends an insight that is equal to Bourdain and Kitchen Confidential

At Borders on Sunday I discovered The Manga Cookbook which looks like it has some interesting foods in it.

I will second The Supper of the Lamb. I was trying my hand at cooking to my taste, appreciating the product of my kitchen, and sharing my food when I read it. I was also an atheist. I don't remember that he brought the supernatural into it much at all no matter how transcendent his appreciation.

I was glad to be reminded of the book.

Robert

I would also recommend Mort Rosenblum's books: Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light, Olives and A Goose In Toulouse. His non-food book: The Secret Life Of The Seine chronicles his life aboard a Parisian houseboat while working as editor of the International Herald TYribune.

I enjoyed American Food Writing. It's a nice anthology of brief writings from Colonial times to the present, good for summer beach reading (though my edition is quite a large hardback).

Combinig food with regional history history:
"EATS...A Folk History of Texas Foods" by Ernestine Sewell Linck & Jayce Gibson Roach

Better Homes and Gardens' "Heritage Cookbook" combines stories of food in American life with recipes (some of my personal favorites are in this book).

This is going to sound funny because these books are not about food, but my favorite part of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard were James Frey's descriptions of the meals he ate. I was hungry the entire time.

Also I just finished A Year in Provence which is pretty meal based. Mmm.

I've been reading A Year in Provence also but I didn't get that the same way some of the other books discuss things. I get that Mayle just highlights food that it is different then what he grew up on in England. Maybe I am not far enough along yet.