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.

Blood, Bones & Butter - Marrow bones

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

By Gabrielle Hamilton

320 pages, Random House, 2012

Originally posted on The Chocolate Bunny on February 8^th, 2012 and edited for context.

This may seem strange for someone who writes about food, but I am not very up-to-date on chef culture. I know who most of the culinary stars are, but I'm usually very late in finding out about them. As a result, I had barely heard of Ms. Hamilton when I purchased her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter (although, having read her book and eaten her food, I’m extremely glad I know who she is now). So I delved into the book with no particular expectations, apart from cautious optimism due to the glowing reviews the book has received.

The first chapter describes an almost idyllic childhood memory, with Gabrielle's parents having their annual lamb roast party at their rural home, with the entire neighbourhood invited. I allowed myself to dream a little, having never really known that type of universe: our family parties took place in restaurants (sometimes small manors when the occasion was really big) and we certainly never had whole lambs roasting over pit fires. But the nostalgia doesn’t last long, as Hamilton quickly jumps into the dissolution of her family, and having to survive on her own at a young age.