Dirt Candy: Roasted Carrot Buns

Dirt Candy: A Cookbook. Flavor-forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant

By Amanda Cohen and Ryan Dunley, with Grady Hendrix

Charlotte Potter Publishers, 2012, 224 pages

I don't normally review cookbooks here, but I made an exception for Amanda Cohen's Dirt Candy, because it is absolutely unique: part recipe book, part graphic novel, part vegetarian manifesto, it doesn't apologize for its hybridity, but instead embraces it. The result is both fun and invigorating.

I am not a vegetarian, and neither is anyone in my family. But, like many, I am trying to reduce the amount of meat we eat. I limit red meat, trying to feature chicken or fish when possible, which is easy enough. But doing without animal flesh altogether is more of a challenge. I personally like beans and pulses, but not everyone at home does. Once you eliminate those, it's hard for me to think of filling vegetarian dishes that aren't pizza, pasta, risotto, or some sort of root vegetable gratin. Which I guess isn't too bad, but it gets to be a lot of carbs and/or cheese.

Skirt Steak - Fried Apple Pie

Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen

By Charlotte Druckman

320 pages, Chronicle Books, 2012

It was necessary to write Skirt Steak. Reading it will make you realize just how necessary it was.

The book is as straightforward as its title suggests: food writer Charlotte Druckman interviewed 73 American women chefs on multiple aspects of their profession, and organized her findings by topic to paint a picture of the situation of women in the professional kitchen. While she does not quite manage to weave everything into a smooth narrative, Skirt Steak is a gold mine of information. The thoroughness and girth of the research accomplished by the author are commendable.

Perhaps inevitably, it sometimes feels a bit dry. There are sections where multiple direct quotes are dumped on us in succession. There are so many names dropped that, unless you are very familiar with the restaurant industry, you are likely to feel quite lost. Thankfully, there is a very useful index you can turn to, should you ever need to look up a specific chef. In this manner, this book can serve as a reference for future use.

Medium Raw - Chicken Laksa

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

By Anthony Bourdain

281 pages, HarperCollins, 2010

It’s hard to not want to dislike Anthony Bourdain a lot of the time, but it’s harder to actually dislike him – and Medium Raw makes the latter even harder.

There were definitely things to dislike about Kitchen Confidential, the 2000 tell-all, no-holding-back, warts-and-all, *insert your own cliché* memoir/essay that made Bourdain a star. It was crude, it was arrogant, its tone often spiteful and vindictive. But it was also vigorous, playful and unapologetically, gleefully, loudly entertaining. It exposed the restaurant business as the rowdy, raucous, chaotic, macho environment we now all know it to be. Another of the book's saving graces was that, no matter how harsh Bourdain was about his peers and acquaintance­s in the business, he never set himself up to be any better. No matter what you think of his attitude and tone, the man is lucid about most things, including himself.

This trend continues in Medium Raw, a fairly disjointed series of essays about the world of food and Bourdain's journey through it. If anything, the tone is more measured, the author more humbled, more conciliatory. He explains the angry, frantic state of mind he was in when he wrote Kitchen Confidential. He addresses (and largely admits to) charges that he is no longer really a chef, and that he has been, overall, damn lucky in life. He nuances his much publicized hatred of the Food Network. He even finishes a biting chapter on Alice Waters, whom he clearly has no love for, with the concession that the lady is really probably right about most things that matter, and that she basically just annoys him. You want to know how much Bourdain has changed in ten years? There's an entire chapter devoted to how he is raising his two-year-old daughter.

Yes, Chef - Gravlax

Yes, Chef: A Memoir

By Marcus Samuelsson and Veronica Chambers

336 pages, Random House, 2013

Chef memoirs can get repetitive after a while. The chef-to-be is initiated to the pleasures of cooking at a young age, either by an untrained yet gifted older relative, or through a multitude of influences. They go on to study in some culinary institution, where at some point they are yelled at, then do grunt work in a kitchen, where they get yelled at some more and learn to deal with the gruelling physical labour and surrounding machismo that come with the job. Then comes the reward, in some form or another, for all their hard work and daring.

I am, of course, exaggerating. Yet the chef’s journey, by this point, has become familiar to most readers interested in the genre. How, then, can one stand out? After all, not everyone has Gabrielle Hamilton’s insight and talent, or Anthony Bourdain’s bravado. Marcus Samuelsson’s memoir, Yes, Chef, stands out through the sheer uniqueness of its author’s personal journey, as well as the warmth and family love that pervades it.

Delicious! - Gingerbread Cake

Delicious! A Novel

By Ruth Reichl

400 pages, Random House, 2014

I have mentioned previously that I am a great fan of Ruth Reichl’s work. I was deeply moved by her first memoir, Tender at the Bone, and very much enjoyed Garlic and Sapphires, in which she reveals her backstage adventures as a food critic. I like her as an author and as a narrator, the way her voice strikes a balance between kindness and no-nonsense. I have tucked away her other two memoirs for a rainy day, and look forward to reading them.

So I was very excited about her first novel, Delicious!, which came out last year. I was prepared to love it. I wanted to love it.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry- Fish in Fragrant Coconut Sauce

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School in Paris

By Kathleen Flinn

304 pages, Penguin Books, 2007

I have always known I could never cook professionally. I lack the drive and the discipline, not to mention the palate. More importantly, I have no wish to turn yet another hobby into a job, because jobs can turn into chores, and I have enough chores in my life. 

And yet… Who, among those of us who love to cook, hasn’t daydreamed about going to a culinary academy, of learning how to really do things properly, and eventually earning one’s living brightening people’s day thanks to bold flavours and luscious textures? Even though we’ve read Kitchen Confidential and know how tough cooking professionally is, we still hold on to that vision of the radiant, fulfilled culinary student, happily whisking meringue in her luminous kitchen.

Kathleen Flinn turned her daydreams into reality in 2005, when she lost her job and made the spontaneous decision to attend Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. Predictably enough, reality turned out to be much harsher, but The Sharper Your Knife is ultimately more fond reminiscence than cautionary tale.

Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger - Jam Tarts

Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger

By Nigel Slater

247 pages, Fourth Estate, 2003

If there is one thing Nigel Slater’s memoir makes clear from the beginning, it is that we do not necessarily love the foods of our childhood because they tasted good objectively, or were well prepared. Case in point: his mother, described as “not much of a cook,” served him burnt toast every morning. Despite that, Slater writes:

“It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you. People’s failings, even major ones […], fall into insignificance as your teeth break through the rough, toasted crust and sink into the doughy cushion of white bread underneath. Once the warm, salty butter has reached your tongue, you are smitten. Putty in their hands.”

This opening page sets the tone for the remainder of this beautiful memoir. Slater, a British food writer and journalist, recounts his childhood in 1960s England through the prism of food. The book is organized into vignettes, most of which revolve around a specific item of food, from tinned ham to prawn cocktail. But food, however central it is to the book, also works as both a backdrop to Slater’s mostly unhappy childhood and as a path into the most intimate nooks of his memories.