Fork It over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater
Author: Alan Richman
A hilarious series of culinary adventures from GQ's award-winning food critic, ranging from flunking out of the Paul Bocuse school in Lyon to dining and whining with Sharon Stone.
Alan Richman has dined in more unlikely locations and devoured more tasting menus than any other restaurant critic alive. He has reviewed restaurants in almost every Communist country (China, Vietnam, Cuba, East Germany) and has recklessly indulged his enduring passion for eight-course dinners (plus cheese). All of this attests to his herculean constitution, and to his dedication to food writing.
In Fork It Over, the eight-time winner of the James Beard Award retraces decades of culinary adventuring. In one episode, he reviews a Chicago restaurant owned and operated by Louis Farrakhan (not known to be a fan of Jewish restaurant critics) and completes the assignment by sneaking into services at the Nation of Islam mosque, where no whites are allowed. In Cuba, he defies government regulations by interviewing starving political dissidents, and then he rewards himself with a lobster lunch at the most expensive restaurant in Havana. He chiffonades his way to a failing grade at the Paul Bocuse school in Lyon, politely endures Sharon Stone's notions of fine dining, and explains why you can't get a good meal in Boston, spurred on by the reckless passion for food that made him "the only soldier he knows who gained weight while in Vietnam" and carried him from his neighborhood burger joint to Le Bernardin.
Alan Richman, once described as the "Indiana Jones of food writers," has won more major awards than any other food writer alive, including a National Magazine Award, eight JamesBeard Awards for restaurant reviewing, and two James Beard M.F.K. Fisher distinguished writing awards.
The all new cover will emphasize Richman's globetrotting persona and attract a wide audience
Food Life: Inside the World of Food with Fairway Market's Grocer Extraordinaire
Author: Steven Jenkins
From Fairway Market's master buyer and author of the hugely successful Cheese Primer comes a celebration of the store's extravagant food collection and the stories surrounding its culture.
Fairway, a local institution in New York City for more than fifty years, is the busiest food store in the world. There shoppers can find innumerable artisanal food products, which, for three decades, Steven Jenkins has traveled the world to find. With a wonderful narrative and anecdotes from the man who personally brought so many of the world's greatest foods to New York and the United States, readers will become more enthusiastic shoppers and better cooks. Jenkins's longtime associate, Mitchel London, provides recipes that will attract not only Fairway customers but any home cook who has access to great ingredients.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.
This enormously enjoyable meditation on subjects like Spanish olive oil, bagels "boiled in city tap water" and the varieties of Italian pork products was penned by the cheese guru behind New York City's Fairway Market, who published in 1996 a definitive cheese encyclopedia (Cheese Primer). Less didactic, but written in the same hard-bitten but friendly style, Jenkins brings wry good humor to his chronicle of the Fairway grocery empire, following his progress from a single, smallish outlet on Manhattan's Upper West Side to a four-warehouses-and-counting institution. Along the way, he introduces readers to the countless characters, headaches and small pleasures that constitute life in the grocery business. Who knew how much work went into creating the perfect olive display? Or how much aggravation is involved in importing raw-milk cheese? Or how hard it is to maneuver cases of dairy products, especially at four in the morning? A handful of terrifically appealing recipes accompany the text, nailing just about every specialty a food lover could crave: Sauteed Veal Chop with Arugula Salad, Classic Creamy Mashed Potatoes, Lentils with Garlic Sausage, and a heavenly Rustic Apple Tart with Crème Fraiche. Among the recipes, the charming photographs, and the detailed Fairway lore, this book may convince some foodies to move to New York City-or least to do all their grocery shopping there.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
86 - Library Journal
Jenkins is the author of the authoritative Cheese Primer, now a classic, and is well known as "the cheese guy" of Fairway Market, the always-crowded gourmet market on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He started working there in 1980, and from the beginning, his cheese counter was more like a French fromagerie than anything ever seen in other markets here. Jenkins's passion for cheese remains, but he has acquired other food passions as well, and he is now a partner in Fairway. His latest book presents Fairway's story as well as his own, in chapters such as "The Deli and Appetizing Counter: A Grand Old New York Tradition" and "Olives Are Beautiful," along with appealing recipes from the chef of the market's café/steakhouse. Jenkins is opinionated but knowledgeable, and his behind-the-scenes account of the market is both informative and entertaining. Recommended for all area libraries (there are now Fairways in New York in Harlem, Plainview, and Brooklyn) and most other collections.
No comments:
Post a Comment