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.

Oishinbo: À la Carte - Quickie Ramen

Oishinbo: À la Carte

by Kariya Testu and Hanasaki Akira

2009, VIZ Media LLC

To say that I am a fan of Japanese comics is an understatement. I wrote my thesis on them. The walls of our son’s room are lined with over two thousand manga, because we had nowhere else to put them. So it is difficult to exaggerate the pure joy that comes over me when I lose myself in a very good food-themed manga series.

Of the several culinary manga available in English, none is as long-running as Kariya Tetsu and Hanasaki Akira’s Oishinbo. The series is, in fact, exactly as old as I am, and has only recently been put on hold, in the midst of a Fukushima-related controversy. As far as food manga goes, this is a classic.

Only a handful of anthologies of Oishinbo have been translated and published in English, under the label Oishinbo: À la Carte, collecting stories revolving around themes such as sake, rice, fish, or ramen. I would honestly be hard-pressed to choose a favourite, and was very sorry when new volumes stopped coming out.

Tender at the Bone - Chicken Liver Pâté

Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table

By Ruth Reichl

289 pages, Random House, 1998

Photo by Aurélie Jouan

Ruth Reichl’s memoir Tender at the Bone ranks among my very favourite food memoirs, and among my favourite books. For many reasons. For one thing, it’s beautifully written in the kind of voice that makes me wish I were friends with the author. For another, it superbly describes the way food can shape the everyday lives and relationships of those who open themselves to it. There are many objective reasons to like this book (inasmuch as there is such a thing as objectivity in the reading experience). But many of the reasons I loved it are actually intensely personal.

Before I continue, you may notice that the photos in this post look much, much better than usual. This is because a friend of mine, the very talented Aurélie Jouan, was kind enough to come over for a photo shoot. I’m so grateful to her, especially since I made her shoot pâté, which is perhaps the least photogenic dish ever. And she still managed to make it look good! You can check out her work at www.aureliejouan.com.