Saturday, January 7, 2012

Blood, Bones & Butter

blood

Over vacation I discovered that I can borrow e-books from the library and read them on my laptop using Kindle for PC. A few I titles I was interested in were already “checked out” but Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef was available and it sounded worth my time.

What a great read! I couldn’t “put it down”. It’s a memoir written by Chef Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune restaurant in New York City. She starts by reminiscing of her childhood and her family’s annual pig roasts and the imagery is just incredible. As an adult, she marries an Italian and spends a month every summer in Italy – so as you can imagine, her descriptions of her time there are fascinating.

Though I had never heard of her prior to reading this book, I am definitely a fan of her approach at cooking (and eating!) as it is much similar to mine (I’d like to think, anyway) in that she takes a “no frills” approach. She believes that food should be straight forward and that the flavors should come from the quality of the food itself and not by adding “foams” or “emulsions”.

If you are a fan of memoirs, especially ones that involve food, you will enjoy this book. The author’s journey to becoming a chef was both an accident and an adventure.

Side note: I totally recommend the e-book feature from the library – getting a book to read for free (for a 14 day rental period) without even leaving my house? Sounds good to me!

7 comments:

  1. Loved this book! It was especially great to read it knowing I'm planning a trip to Italy in the fall.

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  2. Lucky! I studied abroad in Florence... you'll LOVE Italy.

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  3. I love books like this. I'll add it to my library hold list. Have you read Trail Of Crumbs by Kim Sunee. It's very similar and includes recipes!

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  4. Oooh, I'm going to see if they have that one at the library.

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  5. I've heard about this program and that a limited number of libraries throughout the country do it. I think it's a great program and if I have a Nook or Kindle I would definitely give this a try. Which reminds me, I need to get a library card here, I miss my free books!

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  6. I'm sure one of your local libraries does it... I downloaded the kindle app for my computer to read the book. I don't own a kindle or a nook. Not sure reading a book on my laptop would be an all the time thing but this book was so good I didn't mind.

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  7. What a fantastic "borrowing" plan! I do love food memoirs but haven't read any for a while now. I've heard good things about this one though, and now your recommendation goes into the pile too! :P

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