Cooking

To some, food allergies seem like fabricated cries for attention. To others, they pose a dangerous health threat. Food allergies are bound up with so many personal and ideological concerns that it is difficult to determine what is medical and what is myth.

Another Person's Poison parses the political, economic, cultural, and genuine health factors of a phenomenon that dominates our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. For most of the twentieth century, food allergies were considered a fad or junk science. While many physicians and clinicians argued that certain foods could cause a range of chronic problems, from asthma and eczema to migraines and hyperactivity, others believed that allergies were psychosomatic.

This book traces the trajectory of this debate and its effect on public-health policy and the production, manufacture, and consumption of food. Are rising allergy rates purely the result of effective lobbying and a booming industry built on self-diagnosis and expensive remedies? Or should physicians become more flexible in their approach to food allergies and more careful in their diagnoses? Exploring the issue from scientific, political, economic, social, and patient-centered perspectives, this book is the first to engage fully with the history of a major modern affliction, illuminating society's troubled relationship with food, disease, nature, and the creation of medical knowledge.

In his new history of food, acclaimed historian Massimo Montanari traces the development of medieval tastes—both culinary and cultural—from raw materials to market and captures their reflections in today's food trends. Tying the ingredients of our diet evolution to the growth of human civilization, he immerses readers in the passionate debates and bold inventions that transformed food from a simple staple to a potent factor in health and a symbol of social and ideological standing.

Montanari returns to the prestigious Salerno school of medicine, the "mother of all medical schools," to plot the theory of food that took shape in the twelfth century. He reviews the influence of the Near Eastern spice routes, which introduced new flavors and cooking techniques to European kitchens, and reads Europe's earliest cookbooks, which took cues from old Roman practices that valued artifice and mixed flavors. Dishes were largely low-fat, and meats and fish were seasoned with vinegar, citrus juices, and wine. He highlights other dishes, habits, and battles that mirror contemporary culinary identity, including the refinement of pasta, polenta, bread, and other flour-based foods; the transition to more advanced cooking tools and formal dining implements; the controversy over cooking with oil, lard, or butter; dietary regimens; and the consumption and cultural meaning of water and wine. As people became more cognizant of their physicality, individuality, and place in the cosmos, Montanari shows, they adopted a new attitude toward food, investing as much in its pleasure and possibilities as in its acquisition.

The Definitive Guide to Insects as a Sustainable Food Source

In The Insect Cookbook, two entomologists and a chef make the case for insects as a sustainable source of protein for humans and a necessary part of our future diet. They provide consumers and chefs with the essential facts about insects for culinary use, with recipes simple enough to make at home yet boasting the international flair of the world's most chic dishes.

"Invite politicians to dinner and let them tell the world how delicious it is.... They will proudly go around and say, 'I ate crickets, I ate locusts, and they were delicious.'"—Kofi Annan

The Insect Cookbook features delicious recipes and interviews with top chefs, insect farmers, political figures, and nutrition experts, including chef René Redzepi, whose establishment was elected three times as "best restaurant of the world"; Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations; and Daniella Martin of Girl Meets Bug. The book contains all you need to know about cooking with insects, where to buy them, which ones are edible, and how to store and prepare them at home and in commercial spaces.

Popularized by Michael Pollan in his best-selling In Defense of Food, Gyorgy Scrinis's concept of nutritionism refers to the reductive understanding of nutrients as the key indicators of healthy food—an approach that has dominated nutrition science, dietary advice, and food marketing. Scrinis argues this ideology has narrowed and in some cases distorted our appreciation of food quality, such that even highly processed foods may be perceived as healthful depending on their content of "good" or "bad" nutrients. Investigating the butter versus margarine debate, the battle between low-fat, low-carb, and other weight-loss diets, and the food industry's strategic promotion of nutritionally enhanced foods, Scrinis reveals the scientific, social, and economic factors driving our modern fascination with nutrition.

Scrinis develops an original framework and terminology for analyzing the characteristics and consequences of nutritionism since the late nineteenth century. He begins with the era of quantification, in which the idea of protective nutrients, caloric reductionism, and vitamins' curative effects took shape. He follows with the era of good and bad nutritionism, which set nutricentric dietary guidelines and defined the parameters of unhealthy nutrients; and concludes with our current era of functional nutritionism, in which the focus has shifted to targeted nutrients, superfoods, and optimal diets. Scrinis's research underscores the critical role of nutrition science and dietary advice in shaping our relationship to food and our bodies and in heightening our nutritional anxieties. He ultimately shows how nutritionism has aligned the demands and perceived needs of consumers with the commercial interests of food manufacturers and corporations. Scrinis also offers an alternative paradigm for assessing the healthfulness of foods—the food quality paradigm—that privileges food production and processing quality, cultural-traditional knowledge, and sensual-practical experience, and promotes less reductive forms of nutrition research and dietary advice.

Known for his entertaining investigations into culinary practice, Massimo Montanari turns his hungry eye to the phenomenon of food culture, food lore, cooking methods, and eating habits throughout history. An irresistible buffet of one hundred concise and engaging essays, this collection provides stimulating food for thought for those curious about one of life's most fundamental pleasures.

Focusing on the selection, preparation, and mythology of food, Montanari traverses such subjects as the status of the pantry over the centuries, the various strategies of cooking over time, the gastronomy of famine, the science of flavors, the changing characteristics of convivial rituals, the customs of the table, and the ever-evolving identity of food. He shows that cooking not only is a decisive part of our cultural heritage but also communicates essential information about our material and intellectual well-being.

From the invention of basic bread making to chocolate's reputation for decadence, Montanari positions food culture as a lens through which we can plot changes in historical values and social and economic trends. Even the biblical tale of Jacob buying Esau's birthright for a bowl of lentils is a text full of essential meaning, representing civilization's important shift from a hunting to an agrarian society. Readers of all backgrounds will enjoy these delectable insights and their easy consumption in one companionable volume.

One morning while reading Barron's, Kara Newman took note of a casual bit of advice offered by famed commodities trader Jim Rogers. "Buy breakfast," he told investors, referring to the increasing value of pork belly and frozen orange juice futures. The statement inspired Newman to take a closer look at agricultural commodities, from the iconic pork belly to the obscure peppercorn and nutmeg. The results of her investigation, recorded in this fascinating history, show how contracts listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange can read like a menu and how market behavior can dictate global economic and culinary practice.

The Secret Financial Life of Food reveals the economic pathways that connect food to consumer, unlocking the mysteries behind culinary trends, grocery pricing, and restaurant dining. Newman travels back to the markets of ancient Rome and medieval Europe, where vendors first distinguished between "spot sales" and "sales for delivery." She retraces the storied spice routes of Asia and recounts the spice craze that prompted Christopher Columbus's journey to North America, linking these developments to modern-day India's bustling peppercorn market.

Newman centers her history on the transformation of corn into a ubiquitous commodity and uses oats, wheat, and rye to recast America's westward expansion and the Industrial Revolution. She discusses the effects of such mega-corporations as Starbucks and McDonalds on futures markets and considers burgeoning markets, particularly "super soybeans," which could scramble the landscape of food finance. The ingredients of American power and culture, and the making of the modern world, can be found in the history of food commodities exchange, and Newman connects this unconventional story to the how and why of what we eat.

More than Mom's apple pie, peanut butter is the all-American food. With its rich, roasted-peanut aroma and flavor; caramel hue; and gooey, consoling texture, peanut butter is an enduring favorite, found in the pantries of at least 75 percent of American kitchens. Americans eat more than a billion pounds a year. According to the Southern Peanut Growers, a trade group, that's enough to coat the floor of the Grand Canyon (although the association doesn't say to what height).

Americans spoon it out of the jar, eat it in sandwiches by itself or with its bread-fellow jelly, and devour it with foods ranging from celery and raisins ("ants on a log") to a grilled sandwich with bacon and bananas (the classic "Elvis"). Peanut butter is used to flavor candy, ice cream, cookies, cereal, and other foods. It is a deeply ingrained staple of American childhood. Along with cheeseburgers, fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies (and apple pie), peanut butter is a consummate comfort food.

In Creamy and Crunchy are the stories of Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan; the plight of black peanut farmers; the resurgence of natural or old-fashioned peanut butter; the reasons why Americans like peanut butter better than (almost) anyone else; the five ways that today's product is different from the original; the role of peanut butter in fighting Third World hunger; and the Salmonella outbreaks of 2007 and 2009, which threatened peanut butter's sacred place in the American cupboard. To a surprising extent, the story of peanut butter is the story of twentieth-century America, and Jon Krampner writes its first popular history, rich with anecdotes and facts culled from interviews, research, travels in the peanut-growing regions of the South, personal stories, and recipes.

A companion to Andrew F. Smith's critically acclaimed and popular Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, this volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America's diverse and complex beverage scene. Smith revisits the country's major historical moments—colonization, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the temperance movement, Prohibition, and its repeal—and he tracks the growth of the American beverage industry throughout the world. The result is an intoxicating encounter with an often overlooked aspect of American culture and global influence.

Americans have invented, adopted, modified, and commercialized tens of thousands of beverages—whether alcoholic or nonalcoholic, carbonated or caffeinated, warm or frozen, watery or thick, spicy or sweet. These include uncommon cocktails, varieties of coffee and milk, and such iconic creations as Welch's Grape Juice, Coca-Cola, root beer, and Kool-Aid. Involved in their creation and promotion were entrepreneurs and environmentalists, bartenders and bottlers, politicians and lobbyists, organized and unorganized criminals, teetotalers and drunks, German and Italian immigrants, savvy advertisers and gullible consumers, prohibitionists and medical professionals, and everyday Americans in love with their brew.

Smith weaves a wild history full of surprising stories and explanations for such classic slogans as "taxation with and without representation;" "the lips that touch wine will never touch mine;" and "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." He reintroduces readers to Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the colorful John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and he rediscovers America's vast literary and cultural engagement with beverages and their relationship to politics, identity, and health.

Renowned sinologist Thomas O. Höllmann tracks the growth of food culture in China from its earliest burial rituals to today's Western fast food restaurants, mapping Chinese cuisine's geographical variations and local customs, indigenous factors and foreign influences, trade routes, and ethnic associations. Höllmann details the food practices of major Chinese religions and the significance of eating and drinking in rites of passage and popular culture. He enriches his narrative with thirty of his favorite recipes and a selection of photographs, posters, paintings, sketches, and images of clay figurines and other objects excavated from tombs.

Höllmann's award-winning history revisits the invention of noodles, the role of butchers and cooks in Chinese politics, debates over the origin of grape wines, and the causes of modern-day food contamination. He discusses local crop production, the use of herbs and spices, the relationship between Chinese food and economics, the influence of Chinese philosophy, and traditional dietary concepts and superstitions. Citing original Chinese sources, Höllmann uncovers fascinating aspects of daily Chinese life, constructing a multifaceted compendium that inspires a rich appreciation of Chinese arts and culture.

Massimo Montanari draws readers into the far-flung story of how local and global influences came to flavor Italian identity. The fusion of ancient Roman cuisine—which consisted of bread, wine, and olives—with the barbarian diet—rooted in bread, milk, and meat—first formed the basics of modern eating across Europe. From there, Montanari highlights the importance of the Italian city in the development of gastronomic taste in the Middle Ages, the role of Arab traders in positioning the country as the supreme producers of pasta, and the nation's healthful contribution of vegetables to the fifteenth-century European diet.

Italy became a receiving country with the discovery of the New World, absorbing corn, potatoes, and tomatoes into its national cuisine. As disaster dispersed Italians in the nineteenth century, new immigrant stereotypes portraying Italians as "macaroni eaters" spread. However, two world wars and globalization renewed the perception of Italy and its culture as unique in the world, and the production of food constitutes an important part of that uniqueness.

Eating is a multisensory experience, yet chefs and scientists have only recently begun to deconstruct food's components, setting the stage for science-based cooking. In this global collaboration of essays, chefs and scientists advance culinary knowledge by testing hypotheses rooted in the physical and chemical properties of food. Using traditional and cutting-edge tools, ingredients, and techniques, these pioneers create, and sometimes revamp, dishes that respond to specific desires and serve up an original encounter with gastronomic practice.

From the seemingly mundane to the food fantastic—from grilled cheese sandwiches, pizzas, and soft-boiled eggs to Turkish ice cream, sugar glasses, and jellified beads—the essays in The Kitchen as Laboratory cover a range of creations and their history and culture. They consider the significance of an eater's background and dining atmosphere and the importance of a chef's methods, as well as the strategies used to create a great diversity of foods and dishes. This collection will delight experts and amateurs alike, especially as restaurants rely more on science-based cooking and recreational cooks increasingly explore the physics and chemistry behind their art. Contributors end each essay with their personal thoughts on food, cooking, and science, offering rare insight into a professional's passion for playing with food.

When did we first serve meals at regular hours? Why did we begin using individual plates and utensils to eat? When did "cuisine" become a concept and how did we come to judge food by its method of preparation, manner of consumption, and gastronomic merit?

Food: A Culinary History explores culinary evolution and eating habits from prehistoric times to the present, offering surprising insights into our social and agricultural practices, religious beliefs, and most unreflected habits. The volume dispels myths such as the tale that Marco Polo brought pasta to Europe from China, that the original recipe for chocolate contained chili instead of sugar, and more. As it builds its history, the text also reveals the dietary rules of the ancient Hebrews, the contributions of Arabic cookery to European cuisine, the table etiquette of the Middle Ages, and the evolution of beverage styles in early America. It concludes with a discussion on the McDonaldization of food and growing popularity of foreign foods today.

Mayonnaise "takes" when a series of liquids form a semisolid consistency. Eggs, a liquid, become solid as they are heated, whereas, under the same conditions, solids melt. When meat is roasted, its surface browns and it acquires taste and texture. What accounts for these extraordinary transformations?

The answer: chemistry and physics. With his trademark eloquence and wit, Hervé This launches a wry investigation into the chemical art of cooking. Unraveling the science behind common culinary technique and practice, Hervé This breaks food down to its molecular components and matches them to cooking's chemical reactions. He translates the complex processes of the oven into everyday knowledge for professional chefs and casual cooks, and he demystifies the meaning of taste and the making of flavor. He describes the properties of liquids, salts, sugars, oils, and fats and defines the principles of culinary practice, which endow food with sensual as well as nutritional value.

For fans of Hervé This's popular volumes and for those new to his celebrated approach, The Science of the Oven expertly expands the possibilities of the kitchen, fusing the physiology of taste with the molecular structure of bodies and food.

Without a uniform dietary code, Christians around the world used food in strikingly different ways, developing widely divergent practices that spread, nurtured, and strengthened their religious beliefs and communities. Featuring never-before published essays, this anthology follows the intersection of food and faith from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century, charting the complex relationship among religious eating habits and politics, culture, and social structure.

Theoretically rich and full of engaging portraits, essays consider the rise of food buying and consumerism in the fourteenth century, the Reformation ideology of fasting and its resulting sanctions against sumptuous eating, the gender and racial politics of sacramental food production in colonial America, and the struggle to define "enlightened" Lenten dietary restrictions in early modern France. Essays on the nineteenth century explore the religious implications of wheat growing and breadmaking among New Zealand's Maori population and the revival of the Agape meal, or love feast, among American brethren in Christ Church. Twentieth-century topics include the metaphysical significance of vegetarianism, the function of diet in Greek Orthodoxy, American Christian weight loss programs, and the practice of silent eating rituals among English Benedictine monks. Two introductory essays detail the key themes tying these essays together and survey food's role in developing and disseminating the teachings of Christianity, not to mention providing a tangible experience of faith.

An internationally renowned chemist, popular television personality, and bestselling author, Hervé This heads the first laboratory devoted to molecular gastronomy—the scientific exploration of cooking and eating. By testing recipes that have guided cooks for centuries, and the various dictums and maxims on which they depend, Hervé This unites the head with the hand in order to defend and transform culinary practice.

With this new book, Hervé This's scientific project enters an exciting new phase. Considering the preparation of six bistro favorites—hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise, simple consommé, leg of lamb with green beans, steak with French fries, lemon meringue pie, and chocolate mousse—he isolates the exact chemical properties that tickle our senses and stimulate our appetites. More important, he connects the mind and the stomach, identifying methods of culinary construction that appeal to our memories, intelligence, and creativity. By showing that the creation of a meal is as satisfying as its consumption, Herve This recalibrates the balance between food and our imaginations. The result is a revolutionary perspective that will tempt even the most casual cooks to greater flights of experimentation.

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts—in delicious detail—the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats.

Smith's story opens with early America, an agriculturally independent nation where most citizens grew and consumed their own food. Over the next two hundred years, however, Americans would cultivate an entirely different approach to crops and consumption. Advances in food processing, transportation, regulation, nutrition, and science introduced highly complex and mechanized methods of production. The proliferation of cookbooks, cooking shows, and professionally designed kitchens made meals more commercially, politically, and culturally potent. To better understand these trends, Smith delves deeply and humorously into their creation. Ultimately he shows how, by revisiting this history, we can reclaim the independent, locally sustainable roots of American food.

An international celebrity and founder of molecular gastronomy, or the scientific investigation of culinary practice, Hervé This is known for his ground-breaking research into the chemistry and physics behind everyday cooking. His work is consulted widely by amateur cooks and professional chefs and has changed the way food is approached and prepared all over the world.

In Kitchen Mysteries, Hervé This offers a second helping of his world-renowned insight into the science of cooking, answering such fundamental questions as what causes vegetables to change color when cooked and how to keep a soufflé from falling. He illuminates abstract concepts with practical advice and concrete examples—for instance, how sautéing in butter chemically alters the molecules of mushrooms—so that cooks of every stripe can thoroughly comprehend the scientific principles of food.

Kitchen Mysteries begins with a brief overview of molecular gastronomy and the importance of understanding the physiology of taste. A successful meal depends as much on a cook's skilled orchestration of taste, odors, colors, consistencies, and other sensations as on the delicate balance of ingredients. Hervé then dives into the main course, discussing the science behind many meals' basic components: eggs, milk, bread, sugar, fruit, yogurt, alcohol, and cheese, among other items. He also unravels the mystery of tenderizing enzymes and gelatins and the preparation of soups and stews, salads and sauces, sorbet, cakes, and pastries. Hervé explores the effects of boiling, steaming, braising, roasting, deep-frying, sautéing, grilling, salting, and microwaving, and devotes a chapter to kitchen utensils, recommending the best way to refurbish silverware and use copper.

By sharing the empirical principles chefs have valued for generations, Hervé This adds another dimension to the suggestions of cookbook authors. He shows how to adapt recipes to available ingredients and how to modify proposed methods to the utensils at hand. His revelations make difficult recipes easier to attempt and allow for even more creativity and experimentation. Promising to answer your most compelling kitchen questions, Hervé This continues to make the complex science of food digestible to the cook.

Whether you're digging into a slice of cherry cheesecake, burning your tongue on a piece of fiery Jamaican jerk chicken, or slurping the broth from a juicy soup dumpling, eating in New York City is a culinary adventure unlike any other in the world.

An irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage, Gastropolis explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food. Beginning with the origins of cuisine combinations, such as Mt. Olympus bagels and Puerto Rican lasagna, the book describes the nature of food and drink before the arrival of Europeans in 1624 and offers a history of early farming practices. Essays trace the function of place and memory in Asian cuisine, the rise of Jewish food icons, the evolution of food enterprises in Harlem, the relationship between restaurant dining and identity, and the role of peddlers and markets in guiding the ingredients of our meals. They share spice-scented recollections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and colorful vignettes of the avant-garde chefs, entrepreneurs, and patrons who continue to influence the way New Yorkers eat.

Touching on everything from religion, nutrition, and agriculture to economics, politics, and psychology, Gastropolis tells a story of immigration, amalgamation, and assimilation. This rich interplay between tradition and change, individual and society, and identity and community could happen only in New York.

More than just the beloved base ingredient of so many of our favorite dishes, the tomato has generated both profound riches and controversy in its farming, processing, exchange, and consumption. It is a crop infused with national pride and passion for those who grow it, and a symbol of Old World nostalgia for those who claim its history and legacy.

Over time, the tomato has embodied a range of values and meanings. From its domestication in Central America, it has traveled back and forth across the Atlantic, powering a story of aspiration and growth, agriculture and industry, class and identity, and global transition. In this entertaining and organic history, David Gentilcore recounts the surprising rise of the tomato from its New World origin to its Old World significance. From its inauspicious introduction into Renaissance Europe, the tomato came to dominate Italian cuisine and the food industry over the course of three centuries.

Gentilcore explores why elite and peasant cultures took so long to assimilate the tomato into Italian cooking and how it eventually triumphed. He traces the tomato's appearance in medical and agricultural treatises, travel narratives, family recipe books, kitchen accounts, and Italian art, literature, and film. He focuses on Italy's fascination with the tomato, painting a larger portrait of changing trends and habits that began with botanical practices in the sixteenth century and attitudes toward vegetables in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and concluded with the emergence of factory production in the nineteenth. Gentilcore continues with the transformation of the tomato into a national symbol during the years of Italian immigration and Fascism and examines the planetary success of the "Italian" tomato today, detailing its production, representation, and consumption.

Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas.

Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945, Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.

What we eat, how we eat, where we eat, and when we eat are deeply embedded cultural practices. Eating is also related to how we medicate. The multimillion-dollar diet industry offers advice on how to eat for a better body and longer life, and avoiding harmful foods (or choosing healthy ones) is considered separate from consuming medicine—another multimillion-dollar industry. In contrast, most traditional medical systems view food as inseparable from medicine and regard medicinal foods as the front line of healing.

Drawing on medical texts and food therapy practices from around the world and throughout history, Nancy N. Chen locates old and new crossovers between food and medicine in different social and cultural contexts. The consumption of spices, sugar, and salt was once linked to specific healing properties, and trade in these commodities transformed not just the political economy of Europe, Asia, and the New World but local tastes and food practices as well. Today's technologies are rapidly changing traditional attitudes toward food, enabling the cultivation of new admixtures, such as nutraceuticals and genetically modified food, that link food to medicine in novel ways. Chen considers these developments against the evolving food regimes of the diet industry in order to build a framework for understanding diet as individual practice, social prescription, and political formation.

Hervé This (pronounced "Teess") is an internationally renowned chemist, a popular French television personality, a bestselling cookbook author, a longtime collaborator with the famed French chef Pierre Gagnaire, and the only person to hold a doctorate in molecular gastronomy, a cutting-edge field he pioneered. Bringing the instruments and experimental techniques of the laboratory into the kitchen, This uses recent research in the chemistry, physics, and biology of food to challenge traditional ideas about cooking and eating. What he discovers will entertain, instruct, and intrigue cooks, gourmets, and scientists alike.

Molecular Gastronomy, This's first work to appear in English, is filled with practical tips, provocative suggestions, and penetrating insights. This begins by reexamining and debunking a variety of time-honored rules and dictums about cooking and presents new and improved ways of preparing a variety of dishes from quiches and quenelles to steak and hard-boiled eggs. He goes on to discuss the physiology of flavor and explores how the brain perceives tastes, how chewing affects food, and how the tongue reacts to various stimuli. Examining the molecular properties of bread, ham, foie gras, and champagne, the book analyzes what happens as they are baked, cured, cooked, and chilled.

Looking to the future, Hervé This imagines new cooking methods and proposes novel dishes. A chocolate mousse without eggs? A flourless chocolate cake baked in the microwave? Molecular Gastronomy explains how to make them. This also shows us how to cook perfect French fries, why a soufflé rises and falls, how long to cool champagne, when to season a steak, the right way to cook pasta, how the shape of a wine glass affects the taste of wine, why chocolate turns white, and how salt modifies tastes.

Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food—its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption—represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions.

Massimo Montanari begins with the "invention" of cooking which allowed humans to transform natural, edible objects into cuisine. Cooking led to the creation of the kitchen, the adaptation of raw materials into utensils, and the birth of written and oral guidelines to formalize cooking techniques like roasting, broiling, and frying.

The transmission of recipes allowed food to acquire its own language and grow into a complex cultural product shaped by climate, geography, the pursuit of pleasure, and later, the desire for health. In his history, Montanari touches on the spice trade, the first agrarian societies, Renaissance dishes that synthesized different tastes, and the analytical attitude of the Enlightenment, which insisted on the separation of flavors. Brilliantly researched and analyzed, he shows how food, once a practical necessity, evolved into an indicator of social standing and religious and political identity.

Whether he is musing on the origins of the fork, the symbolic power of meat, cultural attitudes toward hot and cold foods, the connection between cuisine and class, the symbolic significance of certain foods, or the economical consequences of religious holidays, Montanari's concise yet intellectually rich reflections add another dimension to the history of human civilization. Entertaining and surprising, Food Is Culture is a fascinating look at how food is the ultimate embodiment of our continuing attempts to tame, transform, and reinterpret nature.

Contemporary concerns about food such as those stemming from mad cow disease, salmonella, and other potential food-related dangers are hardly new-humans have long been wary of what they eat. Beyond the fundamental fear of hunger, societies have sought to protect themselves from rotten, impure, or unhealthy food. From the markets of medieval Europe to the slaughterhouses of twentieth-century Chicago, Madeleine Ferrières traces the origins of present-day behavior toward what we eat as she explores the panics, myths, and ever-shifting attitudes regarding food and its safety. She demonstrates that food fears have been inspired not only by safety concerns but also by cultural, political, and religious prejudices.

Flour from human bones and pâté from dead cats are just two of the more unappetizing recipes that have scared consumers away from certain foods. Ferrières considers the roots of these and other rumors, illuminating how societies have assessed and attempted to regulate the risks of eating. She documents the bizarre and commonsensical attempts by European towns to ensure the quality of beef and pork, ranging from tighter controls on butchers to prohibiting Jews and menstruating women from handling meat. Examining the spread of Hungarian cattle disease, which ravaged the livestock of seventeenth-century Europe, Ferrières recounts the development of safety methods that became the Western model for fighting animal diseases.

Ferrières discusses a wealth of crucial and curious food-related incidents, trends, and beliefs, including European explorers' shocked responses to the foodways of the New World; how some foods deemed unsafe for the rich were seen as perfectly suitable for the poor; the potato's negative reputation; the fierce legal battles between seventeenth-century French bread bakers and innkeepers; the role of the medical profession in food regulation; and how modern consumerism changed the way we eat. Drawing on history, folklore, agriculture, and anthropology, Ferrières tells us how our decisions about what not to eat reflect who we are.

Take a breath.... Read slowly.

How often in the course and crush of our daily lives do we afford ourselves moments to truly relish-to truly be present in-the act of preparing and eating food? For most of us, our enjoyment of food has fallen victim to the frenetic pace of our lives and to our increasing estrangement, in a complex commercial economy, from the natural processes by which food is grown and produced. Packaged, artificial, and unhealthful, fast food is only the most dramatic example of the degradation of food in our lives, and of the deeper threats to our cultural, political, and environmental well-being.

In 1986, Carlo Petrini decided to resist the steady march of fast food and all that it represents when he organized a protest against the building of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Armed with bowls of penne, Petrini and his supporters spawned a phenomenon. Three years later Petrini founded the International Slow Food Movement, renouncing not only fast food but also the overall pace of the "fast life." Issuing a manifesto, the Movement called for the safeguarding of local economies, the preservation of indigenous gastronomic traditions, and the creation of a new kind of ecologically aware consumerism committed to sustainability. On a practical level, it advocates a return to traditional recipes, locally grown foods and wines, and eating as a social event. Today, with a magazine, Web site, and over 75,000 followers organized into local "convivia," or chapters, Slow Food is poised to revolutionize the way Americans shop for groceries, prepare and consume their meals, and think about food.

Slow Food not only recalls the origins, first steps, and international expansion of the movement from the perspective of its founder, it is also a powerful expression of the organization's goal of engendering social reform through the transformation of our attitudes about food and eating. As Newsweek described it, the Slow Food movement has now become the basis for an alternative to the American rat race, the inspiration for "a kinder and gentler capitalism."

Linger a while then, with the story of what Alice Waters in her Foreword calls "this Delicious Revolution," and rediscover the pleasures of the good life.

Ranging from the imperial palaces of ancient China and the bakeries of fourteenth-century Genoa and Naples all the way to the restaurant kitchens of today, Pasta tells a story that will forever change the way you look at your next plate of vermicelli. Pasta has become a ubiquitous food, present in regional diets around the world and available in a host of shapes, sizes, textures, and tastes. Yet, although it has become a mass-produced commodity, it remains uniquely adaptable to innumerable recipes and individual creativity. Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food shows that this enormously popular food has resulted from of a lengthy process of cultural construction and widely diverse knowledge, skills, and techniques.

Many myths are intertwined with the history of pasta, particularly the idea that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China and introduced it to Europe. That story, concocted in the early twentieth century by the trade magazine Macaroni Journal, is just one of many fictions umasked here. The true homelands of pasta have been China and Italy. Each gave rise to different but complementary culinary traditions that have spread throughout the world. From China has come pasta made with soft wheat flour, often served in broth with fresh vegetables, finely sliced meat, or chunks of fish or shellfish. Pastasciutta, the Italian style of pasta, is generally made with durum wheat semolina and presented in thick, tomato-based sauces. The history of these traditions, told here in fascinating detail, is interwoven with the legacies of expanding and contracting empires, the growth of mercantilist guilds and mass industrialization, and the rise of food as an art form.

Whether you are interested in the origins of lasagna, the strange genesis of the Chinese pasta bing or the mystique of the most magnificent pasta of all, the timballo, this is the book for you. So dig in!

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, English cuisine was known throughout Europe as extraordinarily stylish, tasteful, and contemporary, designed to satisfy sophisticated palates. So, as Colin Spencer asks, why did British food "decline so direly that it became a world-wide joke, and how is it now climbing back into eminence?" This delectable volume traces the rich variety of foods that are inescapably British—and the thousand years of history behind them.

Colin Spencer's masterful and witty account of Britain's culinary heritage explores what has influenced and changed eating in Britain—from the Black Death, the Enclosures, the Reformation, the Age of Exploration, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of capitalism to present-day threats posed by globalization, including factory farming, corporate control of food supplies, and the pervasiveness of prepackaged and fast foods. He situates the beginning of the decline in British cuisine in the Victorian age, when various social, historical, and economic factors—an emphasis on appearances, a worship of French cuisine, the rise of Nonconformism, which saw any pleasure as a sin, the alienation from rural life found in burgeoning towns, the rise and affluence of the new bourgeoisie, and much else—created a fear that simple cooking was vulgar. The Victorians also harbored suspicions that raw foods were harmful, encouraged by the publication of a key cookbook of the period, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management.

However, twenty-first century British cooking is experiencing a glorious resurgence, fueled by television gurus and innovative restaurants with firm roots in the British tradition. This new interest in and respect for good food is showing the whole world, as Spencer puts it, "that the old horror stories about British food are no longer true."

Italy, the country with a hundred cities and a thousand bell towers, is also the country with a hundred cuisines and a thousand recipes. Its great variety of culinary practices reflects a history long dominated by regionalism and political division, and has led to the common conception of Italian food as a mosaic of regional customs rather than a single tradition. Nonetheless, this magnificent new book demonstrates the development of a distinctive, unified culinary tradition throughout the Italian peninsula.

Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari uncover a network of culinary customs, food lore, and cooking practices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages, that are identifiably Italian:

o Italians used forks 300 years before other Europeans, possibly because they were needed to handle pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot.

o Italians invented the practice of chilling drinks and may have invented ice cream.

o Italian culinary practice influenced the rest of Europe to place more emphasis on vegetables and less on meat.

o Salad was a distinctive aspect of the Italian meal as early as the sixteenth century.

The authors focus on culinary developments in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, aided by a wealth of cookbooks produced throughout the early modern period. They show how Italy's culinary identities emerged over the course of the centuries through an exchange of information and techniques among geographical regions and social classes. Though temporally, spatially, and socially diverse, these cuisines refer to a common experience that can be described as Italian. Thematically organized around key issues in culinary history and beautifully illustrated, Italian Cuisine is a rich history of the ingredients, dishes, techniques, and social customs behind the Italian food we know and love today.

This we can be sure of: when a restaurant in the western world is famous for its cooking, it is the tricolor flag that hangs above the stove, opined one French magazine, and this is by no means an isolated example of such crowing. Indeed, both linguistically and conceptually, the restaurant itself is a French creation. Why are the French recognized by themselves and others the world over as the most enlightened of eaters, as the great gourmets? Why did the passion for food—gastronomy—originate in France? In French Gastronomy, geographer and food lover Jean-Robert Pitte uncovers a novel answer. The key, it turns out, is France herself. In her climate, diversity of soils, abundant resources, and varied topography lie the roots of France's food fame.

Pitte masterfully reveals the ways in which cultural phenomena surrounding food and eating in France relate to space and place. He points out that France has some six hundred regions, or microclimates, that allow different agricultures, to flourish, and fully navigable river systems leading from peripheral farmlands directly to markets in the great gastronomic centers of Paris and Lyon. With an eye to this landscape, Pitte wonders: Would the great French burgundies enjoy such prestige if the coast they came from were not situated close to the ancient capital for the dukes and a major travel route for medieval Europe?

Yet for all the shaping influence of earth and climate, Pitte demonstrates that haute cuisine, like so much that is great about France, can be traced back to the court of Louis XIV. It was the Sun King's regal gourmandise—he enacted a nightly theater of eating, dining alone but in full view of the court—that made food and fine dining a central affair of state. The Catholic Church figures prominently as well: gluttony was regarded as a "benign sin" in France, and eating well was associated with praising God, fraternal conviviality, and a respect for the body. These cultural ingredients, in combination with the bounties of the land, contributed to the full flowering of French foodways.

This is a time of paradox for French gourmandism. Never has there been so much literature published on the subject of culinary creativity, never has there been so much talk about good food, and never has so little cooking been done at home. Each day new fast-food places open. Will French cuisine lose its charm and its soul? Will discourse become a substitute for reality? French Gastronomy is a delightful celebration of what makes France unique, and a call to everyone who loves French food to rediscover its full flavor.

We know where he went, what he wrote, and even what he wore, but what in the world did Christopher Columbus eat? The Renaissance and the age of discovery introduced Europeans to exotic cultures, mores, manners, and ideas. Along with the cross-cultural exchange of Old and New World, East and West, came new foodstuffs, preparations, and flavors. That kitchen revolution led to the development of new utensils and table manners. Some of the impact is still felt—and tasted—today.

Giovanni Rebora has crafted an elegant and accessible history filled with fascinating information and illustrations. He discusses the availability of resources, how people kept from starving in the winter, how they farmed, how tastes developed and changed, what the lower classes ate, and what the aristocracy enjoyed.

The book is divided into brief chapters covering the history of bread, soups, stuffed pastas, the use of salt, cheese, meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, the arrival of butter, the quest for sugar, new world foods, setting the table, and beverages, including wine and tea. A special appendix, "A Meal with Columbus," includes a mini-anthology of recipes from the countries where he lived: Italy, Portugal, Spain, and England.

Entertaining and enlightening, Culture of the Fork will interest scholars of history and gastronomy—and everyone who eats.

For the sake of salt, Rome created a system of remuneration (from which we get the word "salary"), nomads domesticated the camel, the Low Countries revolted against their Spanish oppressors, and Gandhi marched against the tyranny of the British. Through the ages, salt has conferred status, preserved foods, and mingled in the blood, sweat, and tears of humanity. Today, chefs of haute cuisine covet it in its most exotic forms—underground salt deposits, Hawaiian black lava salt, glittery African crystals, and pink Peruvian salt from the sea carried in bricks on the backs of llamas.

From proverbs to technical arguments, from anecdotes to examples of folklore, chemist and philosopher Pierre Laszlo takes us through the kingdom of "white gold." With "enthusiasm and freshness" (Le Monde) he mixes literary analysis, history, anthropology, biology, physics, economics, art history, political science, chemistry, ethnology, and linguistics to create a full body of knowledge about the everyday substance that rocked the world and brings zest to the ordinary. Laszlo explains the history behind Morton Salt's slogan "When it rains, it pours!" and looks into the plight of the salt miner, as well as spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance. Salt is a tour de force about a chemical compound that is one of the very foundations of civilization.

Cooking food is one of the activities that makes humanity unique. It’s not just about what tastes good: advances in cooking technology have been a constant part of our progress, from the ability to control fire to the emergence of agriculture to modern science’s understanding of what happens at a molecular level when we apply heat to food. Mastering new ways of feeding ourselves has resulted in leaps in longevity and explosions in population—and the potential of cooking science is still largely untapped.

In Cook, Taste, Learn, the food scientist and best-selling author Guy Crosby offers a lively tour of the history and science behind the art of cooking, with a focus on achieving a healthy daily diet. He traces the evolution of cooking from its earliest origins, recounting the innovations that have unraveled the mysteries of health and taste. Crosby explains why both home cooks and professional chefs should learn how to apply cooking science, arguing that we can improve the nutritional quality and gastronomic delight of everyday eating. Science-driven changes in the way we cook can help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases and enhance our quality of life. The book features accessible explanations of complex topics as well as a selection of recipes that illustrate scientific principles. Cook, Taste, Learn reveals the possibilities for transforming cooking from a craft into the perfect blend of art and science.

Until the early nineteenth century, political philosophy and economics were dining companions. Both took up fundamental questions of how we should feed one another. But with the rise of corporate capitalism, modern economics lost sight of its primary task and turned away from the complexities of real people’s sustenance in favor of the single-minded pursuit of money.

In Meals Matter, Michael Symons returns economics to its roots in the distribution of food and the labor required. Setting the table with vivid descriptions of conviviality, he offers a gastronomic rebuttal to the narrow worldview of mainstream economics. Engaging with a wide variety of thinkers—including Epicurus, Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the gastronomer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, and economic theorists from François Quesnay and Adam Smith through the neoliberals—Symons traces how we went astray and how we can find our way back to a more caring, sustainable way of life. He finds hope for shared “table pleasure” in institutions like community gardens, street markets, and banquets and in eating fresh, local, and “slow” food.

An innovative, historically based argument at the intersection of food history and social thought, Meals Matter challenges us to reject the economics of greed in favor of a community-based economics of sharing and gastronomic enjoyment.

Chinese cuisine without chile peppers seems unimaginable. Entranced by the fiery taste, diners worldwide have fallen for Chinese cooking. In China, chiles are everywhere, from dried peppers hanging from eaves to Mao’s boast that revolution would be impossible without chiles, from the eighteenth-century novel Dream of the Red Chamber to contemporary music videos. Indeed, they are so common that many Chinese assume they are native. Yet there were no chiles anywhere in China prior to the 1570s, when they were introduced from the Americas.

Brian R. Dott explores how the nonnative chile went from obscurity to ubiquity in China, influencing not just cuisine but also medicine, language, and cultural identity. He details how its versatility became essential to a variety of regional cuisines and swayed both elite and popular medical and healing practices. Dott tracks the cultural meaning of the chile across a wide swath of literary texts and artworks, revealing how the spread of chiles fundamentally altered the meaning of the term spicy. He emphasizes the intersection between food and gender, tracing the chile as a symbol for both male virility and female passion. Integrating food studies, the history of medicine, and Chinese cultural history, The Chile Pepper in China sheds new light on the piquant cultural impact of a potent plant and raises broader questions regarding notions of authenticity in cuisine.

Look at the back label of a bottle of wine and you may well see a reference to its terroir, the total local environment of the vineyard that grew the grapes, from its soil to the climate. Winemakers universally accept that where a grape is grown influences its chemistry, which in turn changes the flavor of the wine. A detailed system has codified the idea that place matters to wine. So why don’t we feel the same way about whiskey?

In this book, the master distiller Rob Arnold reveals how innovative whiskey producers are recapturing a sense of place to create distinctive, nuanced flavors. He takes readers on a world tour of whiskey and the science of flavor, stopping along the way at distilleries in Kentucky, New York, Texas, Ireland, and Scotland. Arnold puts the spotlight on a new generation of distillers, plant breeders, and local farmers who are bringing back long-forgotten grain flavors and creating new ones in pursuit of terroir. In the twentieth century, we inadvertently bred distinctive tastes out of grains in favor of high yields—but today’s artisans have teamed up to remove themselves from the commodity grain system, resurrect heirloom cereals, bring new varieties to life, and recapture the flavors of specific local ingredients. The Terroir of Whiskey makes the scientific and cultural cases that terroir is as important in whiskey as it is in wine.

Winner, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards - Food - Food Heritage - USA

Nominee, Book Award in Food Issues and Advocacy, James Beard Foundation

The Italian political right is outraged by halal tortellini and a pork-free lasagna served at the Vatican. In India, Hindu fundamentalists organize attacks on Muslims who sell beef. European anti-immigrant politicians denounce couscous and kebabs. In an era of nationalist and exclusionary movements, food has become a potent symbol of identity. Why has eating become so politically charged—and can the emotions surrounding food be redirected in a healthier direction?

Fabio Parasecoli identifies and defines the phenomenon of “gastronativism,” the ideological use of food to advance ideas about who belongs to a community and who does not. As globalization and neoliberalism have transformed food systems, people have responded by seeking to return to their roots. Many have embraced local ingredients and notions of cultural heritage, but this impulse can play into the hands of nationalist and xenophobic political projects. Such movements draw on the strong emotions connected with eating to stoke resentment and contempt for other people and cultures.

Parasecoli emphasizes that gastronativism is a worldwide phenomenon, even as it often purports to oppose local aspects and consequences of globalization. He also explores how to channel pride in culinary traditions toward resisting transnational corporations, uplifting marginalized and oppressed groups, and assisting people left behind by globalization. Featuring a wide array of examples from all over the world, Gastronativism is a timely, incisive, and lively analysis of how and why food has become a powerful political tool.

Today, Americans are some of the world’s biggest consumers of black teas; in Japan, green tea, especially sencha, is preferred. These national partialities, Robert Hellyer reveals, are deeply entwined. Tracing the transpacific tea trade from the eighteenth century onward, Green with Milk and Sugar shows how interconnections between Japan and the United States have influenced the daily habits of people in both countries.

Hellyer explores the forgotten American penchant for Japanese green tea and how it shaped Japanese tastes. In the nineteenth century, Americans favored green teas, which were imported from China until Japan developed an export industry centered on the United States. The influx of Japanese imports democratized green tea: Americans of all classes, particularly Midwesterners, made it their daily beverage—which they drank hot, often with milk and sugar. In the 1920s, socioeconomic trends and racial prejudices pushed Americans toward black teas from Ceylon and India. Facing a glut, Japanese merchants aggressively marketed sencha on their home and imperial markets, transforming it into an icon of Japanese culture.

Featuring lively stories of the people involved in the tea trade—including samurai turned tea farmers and Hellyer’s own ancestors—Green with Milk and Sugar offers not only a social and commodity history of tea in the United States and Japan but also new insights into how national customs have profound if often hidden international dimensions.

From mass-produced lagers to craft-brewery IPAs, from beers made in Trappist monasteries according to traditional techniques to those created by innovative local brewers seeking to capture regional terroir, the world of beer boasts endless varieties. The diversity of beer does not only reflect the differences among the people and cultures who brew this beverage. It also testifies to the vast range of plants that help give different styles of beer their distinguishing flavor profiles.

This book is a comprehensive and beautifully illustrated compendium of the characteristics and properties of the plants used in making beer around the world. The botanical expert Giuseppe Caruso presents scientifically rigorous descriptions, accompanied by his own hand-drawn ink images, of more than 500 species. For each one, he gives the scientific classification, common names, and information about morphology, geographical distribution and habitat, and cultivation range. Caruso provides detailed information about each plant’s applications in beer making, including which of its parts are employed, as well as its chemical composition, its potential toxicity, and examples of beers and styles in which it is typically used. The book also considers historical uses, aiding brewers who seek to rediscover ancient and early modern concoctions.

This book will appeal to a wide audience, from beer aficionados to botany enthusiasts, providing valuable information for homebrewers and professional beer makers alike. It reveals how botanical knowledge can open new possibilities for today’s and tomorrow’s brewers.

Easy Baking Recipes and Unique Theme Party Ideas

"This is the perfect book for themed parties for the geek in all of us. There are downloadable templates and great party ideas!" —On Honeysuckle Hill Blog

Geek Sweets is the ultimate guide to creating 60 confections for the legions of geek fans of Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Minecraft, Dungeons & Dragons, The Legend of Zelda, Doctor Who, and much more!

Easy baking recipes. Geek Sweets is organized so even a beginning baker can have success. It's a baking cookbook full of beautiful photographs, with easy baking recipes for the 'truly geeky'. Geek Sweets is filled with cupcakes recipes, easy cookie recipes, and that special cake pops recipe.

Theme party ideas. Geek Sweets delivers step-by-step how-to's for every adventurer─from the squire just starting a journey, to a well-worn dragon slayer looking for a challenge. Geek Sweets also includes theme party ideas with cocktail recipes and a companion website with printables to enhance all of your geeky gatherings, including your Game of Thrones viewing parties, as well as theme party ideas with fantasy-adventure themes. There are even tips for hosting parties like TV viewings and game nights.

Readers of books such as Hello, Cupcake!; Make It Easy, Cupcake!; or American Girl Baking will love Geek Sweets.

Explore the Coast of California, Map Local Farms, and Meet a Dozen Diverse Growers

“A terrific book about some of my favorite farms.” –Michael Pollan, author, activist, and professor

“A true celebration of meaningful work and beauty—the values that are at the heart of these farmsteads are the values we all must learn.” –Alice Waters, James Beard award-winning chef

Featuring some of the most scenic farm locations in the country, Farmsteads of the California Coast introduces readers to local growers and their dynamic agricultural ventures. Paired with dozens of farm-inspired food recipes from the Golden State, this beautiful California cookbook sets out to reveal the inherent beauty in daily farm routines.

The ultimate farm-to-table cookbook celebrating organic farmers and their products. From boutique row crop farmers and coffee growers, to ranch raised water buffalo gelato and perfectly-grown ripe berries, Farmsteads of the California Coast captures each independent farm’s essential nature and philosophy. Inside, award-winning duo, Sarah Henry and Erin Scott, profile innovative farmsteads, sustainable practices, flavorful products, and the unique individuals behind their thriving success.

For fans of local cookbooks and Michael Pollan books. You don’t have to embark on a homesteading expedition to have your own farm-to-table kitchen. Farmsteads of the California Coast invites readers to taste the harvest firsthand with twenty-four recipes inspired by local farm-grown ingredients. This visually-rich book celebrates the best of farmstead bounty, including “beyond organic” greens, briny oysters, and:

• Creamy goat cheese
• Crisp heirloom apples
• Juicy u-pick strawberries
• And more!

If you enjoy farm books, farming books, farm life books, or even homestead books—like the Magnolia Table cookbook, Malibu Farm, or the Five Marys Ranch Raised Cookbook—then you’ll love Farmsteads of the California Coast.

Intimate Journey to the South of France

Discover all that awaits you in Provence France. Award-winning author Georgeanne Brennan is your ultimate travel guide to experience the foods, festivals, and inspirational people who have fueled her love for this treasured region of France.

A dream turned reality. As a young woman, Georgeanne and her husband with their small children bought a Provance farmhouse with a little land and some goats. Their goal was to realize the dream of an idyllic existence in the French countryside. Now, these precious memoires are yours to hold in her book, My Culinary Journey. Whether in the comfort of your own home, deciding the next vacation destination, or landing right in the heart of France, My Culinary Journey is your companion to all things France. In this cherished travel guide, you’ll find:

• Forty delicious French recipes
• Gorgeous personal photographs
• In-depth knowledge of cultural regional festivals (or fêtes)

In these pages find rich descriptions of warm summer meals, of the art of making goat cheese, and more. This evocative and passionate memoir weaves together personal stories of friendship, cooking, and living in the Provencal tradition. It will whet the appetite of foodies, travelers, and anyone who dreams of packing their bags and taking a delicious romp through the lavender fields and vine-covered hills of Provence.

If you enjoyed books that transport you to another country right from your kitchen like Dirt, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or Magnolia Table, then you’ll love My Culinary Journey.

FlavCity Five Ingredient Meals For Easy Weeknight Dinners and More!

#1 Bestseller in Slow Cooker Recipes, Heart Healthy Cooking, Diets & Weight Loss, Gluten-Free Diets, Budget Cooking, Green Housekeeping, and Allergies, Special Conditions, Cooking Methods, Regional & International, Soul Food, and Quick & Easy

You don’t have to be a chef to create delicious food. In fact, it only takes a handful of ingredients to make mouthwatering and easy weeknight dinners. This cookbook by Bobby and Dessi Parrish is packed full of simple, healthy dinner ideas that even newbie cooks find easy to make.

An introduction to easy meals and cooking. Cooking doesn’t have to be complicated. Food Network champion Bobby Parrish shares the ins and outs of their 5-ingredient meals and assures us his quick and easy dinner recipes are doable for all. By keeping the recipes to five ingredients, Bobby demonstrates just how easy cooking can be. From savory snacks to easy weeknight dinners packed with flavor, this easy (and healthy!) recipe book is just what your kitchen needs. But Bobby and Dessi’s tips don’t stop there―they know that a key aspect of these simple healthy recipes is the prep work at the grocery store beforehand.

Hacks for smarter grocery shopping. Going to the grocery store can be a bit overwhelming, especially if your list is long! Fortunately, these five-ingredient recipes make grocery shopping and picking the right ingredients for easy weeknight dinners far less daunting. But smarter grocery shopping is about more than what’s on your list. It’s about knowing how to pick the “best in class” products. 

Inside find:

• 50 easy healthy meals that only take five ingredients
• Advice for cooking with a combination of store-bought and fresh items
• Essential insight into smarter grocery shopping

If you enjoyed books like Keto Meal Prep by FlavCity, 5 Ingredients, The Well Plated Cookbook, or The Easy 5-Ingredient Healthy Cookbook, you’ll love FlavCity’s 5 Ingredient Meals.

Learn Pastry Recipes from Professional Cook Baker Bettie

“I wish I had this book when I started baking! It’s not only a collection of amazing recipes, but it answers the ‘why’ to your baking questions.”―Gemma Stafford, chef, author, and host of Bigger Bolder Baking

#1 Bestseller in Professional Cooking, Pastry Baking, Cake Baking, Pies, Desserts, and Cookies

Do you find baking difficult, or are you just not sure how it works? This cookbook is your new go-to baking book full of pastry recipes and more. 

Baking from scratch can be hard. The science of baking is a particular science that requires precise measurements and steps. But with professional cook Kristin Hoffman, aka Baker Bettie, the science behind baking becomes second nature! Baker Bettie’s Better Baking Book is like a lifetime’s worth of baking classes. This baking book lays a foundation of basic baking skills and tools for mastering cake, cookie, pie, and pastry recipes that are sure to boost your baking confidence.

Learn top tips from a professional cook. Consider Baker Bettie’s Better Baking Book your at-home culinary and baking classes guide. This baking book goes beyond the recipe by teaching the science behind baking, from measurements, techniques, and step-by-step processes, to directions on how to use base recipes to create endless drool-worthy baked goods. This book ensures that you are able to tackle any baking task, such as pastry recipes, making cakes, baking pies, making cookies, and cake decorating with confidence!

In this baking book, learn more about:

• The science of baking from a professional cook
• Foundational baking techniques and mixing methods
• How to bake from scratch 
• How master formulas are used to bake a ton of delicious and easy recipes!

If you enjoyed books like Beginner's Baking Bible, Small Batch Baking, or Nadiya Bakes, you’ll love Baker Bettie’s Better Baking Book!

How to Cook That Dessert Cookbook: Pastries, Cakes and Sweet Creations

“How to Cook That is the most popular Australian cooking channel in all the world, and it’s not hard to see why.” ―PopSugar

Editors' pick: Best Cookbooks, Food & Wine
#1 Best Seller in Chocolate Baking, Confectionary Desserts, Pastry Baking, Garnishing Meals, Holiday Cooking, Main Courses & Side Dishes, Cookies, Cooking by Ingredient, and Pie Baking

Offering a fun-filled step-by-step dessert cookbook, Ann Reardon teaches you how to create delicious and impressive pastries, cakes and sweet creations.

Join food scientist Ann Reardon, host of the award-winning YouTube series How to Cook That, as she explores Crazy Sweet Creations. An accomplished pastry chef, Reardon draws millions of baking fans together each week, eager to learn the secrets of her extravagant cakes, chocolates, and eye-popping desserts. Her warmth and sense of fun in the kitchen shines through on every page as she reveals the science behind recreating your own culinary masterpieces.

For home cooks and fans who love their desserts, cakes, and ice creams to look amazing and taste even better. Take your culinary creations to influencer status.

You’ll also:

• Learn to make treats that get the whole family cooking
• Create baked goods that tap into beloved pop culture trends
• Impress guests with beautiful desserts

Readers of dessert cookbooks like Dessert Person, Sally's Cookie Addiction, Tartine, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Joshua Weissman: An Unapologetic Cookbook, or 100 Cookies will love How to Cook That: Crazy Sweet Creations.

Botany for Bartenders

“Cocktails, Mocktails and Garnishes from the Garden is perfect for stirring things up and taking your drinks to a new level.” —The Two Classy Chics

#1 New release in Garnishing Meals, and Food Science

Step inside a bartender’s apothecary, forage for garnishes, and craft some of the most popular cocktails, mocktails, and beverages. This beautifully photographed compendium of craft cocktails includes examples of garnishes and interesting ingredients to give any drink a botanical twist.

The go-to reference for classic and modern cocktail recipes. Whether it’s adding a basil sprig or infusing gin with peaches; Cocktails, Mocktails and Garnishes from the Garden gives you the ability to make classic cocktails and the confidence to craft innovative concoctions. Alongside recipes of some of the most popular cocktails come new-fangled libations, non-alcoholic equivalents, and instructions to create gorgeous garnishes.

Creating your very own herb bar and garnish garden for craft cocktails. A cocktail recipe book from the wild; Cocktails, Mocktails and Garnishes from the Garden features examples of garnishes and general know-how. With a reference guide of herbal and floral flavors that complement different spirits, and details about what to plant and how to grow your very own herb bar, you can craft cocktail recipes alongside nature.

Inside, learn about herbs and their uses as well as:

• General instructions on creating a garnish garden
• The difference between a high ball and a coupe glass
• Which bar tools are “must haves” for a home cocktail set-up

If you enjoyed books like The Drunken Botanist, The Wildcrafting Brewer, Shrubs, or Beautiful Booze, then you’ll love Cocktails, Mocktails and Garnishes from the Garden.

Gourmet Grazing for the Great Outdoors—Picnic Ideas For Your Picnic Basket

“Full of fun tips to bring gatherings outside; the recipes, practical tips, and styling inspiration makes me want to make every meal a picnic.” —Elizabeth Minchilli, author of The Italian Table

#1 New Release in Salads

What could be the hidden key to health and happiness? It may just be tucked away in your picnic basket. The Art of Picnics encourages you to take a break from your fast-paced life to pick up a picnic basket, and reconnect with nature.

Find perfect picnic ideas for seasonal eating.There’s nothing more satisfying than yummy picnic foods and fun outdoor activities. If you’re yearning for tranquility and the charm of nature, make your backyard your own special retreat! With a bounty of family-style food recipes for foodies of all skill levels, The Art of Picnics offers a new perspective on traditional picnics.

Easy to follow recipes for outdoor entertaining. The Art of Picnics is a beautiful accessible guide to create a fun outdoor gathering. Whether it’s cooking during the day for an upcountry lunch or preparing for a twilight gathering, you’ll capture a spark of outdoor adventure with these seasonal picnic ideas. 

Inside you’ll find:

• Décor ideas with woven rugs, crate tables, mismatched china, plush pillows
• Planning recommendations like fresh-cut blooms, wine, and artisanal bread
• An outdoor cookbook full of one-of-a-kind recipes for sandwiches, grazing boards, and more!

If you’re looking for charcuterie books, a picnic snacks cookbook, or recipes for food on the go—or enjoyed Platters and Boards, The Camp Cookout, or Paris Picnic Club—then you’ll love The Art of Picnics.

Easy Desserts to Bake for Every Week of the Year

#1 New Release in Sweets, Confectionary

Sweet recipes with gorgeous pictures for every season.

Baked treats for every season. An ode to seasonal baking, Vedika Luthra has crafted unique dessert recipes using seasonal ingredients and distinctive flavor combinations for throughout the year.

Desserts for Christmas and other holiday desserts. Whether you're looking for a stunning pumpkin spice cheesecake to welcome fall to your household, or a festive pavlova that serves as the grand finale to your Christmas party, this book provides you with a recipe repertoire fit for all occasions. These treats can serve as gifts for friends and family or an indulgent sweet treat for yourself.

Never run out of delicious recipes. Vedika invites you to explore desserts from her Indian heritage, her polish home base, and other dishes from around the world. Indulge in her unique 52 recipes, one for each week of the year, each accompanied by breath-taking photographs that will kick-start your sugar cravings and inspire you to create something special.

Uncomplicated baking. Is your favorite flavor chocolate, vanilla, or red velvet? Vedika has easy desserts to bake for you. She wants everyone to feel confident in their confectionary creations. Practice makes perfect and she guides you on your dessert journey whether it be lemon cakes, Bundt cakes, banana bread, or cookies.

If you loved baking with Zoë Bakes Cakes, The Great British Baking Show, or Small Batch Baking, then 52 Weeks, 52 Sweets should be your next sweet read.

Revised 2023 Edition with Over 100 Pastry Recipes from Miette

“The photos are so enticing, and the pastries so perfectly made, we almost ate the paper.”—The Oregonian

#1 New Release in Chocolate Baking, Brunch & Tea, and Pie Baking

Sharing the secrets of creating the perfect pastries, candies, cookies, and chews from the Miette Patisserie, this delicious dessert cookbook combines the rustic charm of homemade sweets with the elegance of French baking. With all new recipes and photos, take your baking to the next level.

Bring home San Francisco’s favorite French bakery. Renowned for beautiful cakes and whimsical confections, Miette Patisserie is among the most beloved of San Francisco's culinary destinations for locals and travelers. At Miette, cakes, cookies, and desserts are transformed into creative creations. Its pretty Parisian aesthetic enchants visitors with tables piled high with beribboned bags of gingersnaps, homemade marshmallows, fleur de sel caramels, and rainbows of gumballs.

The cutest confectionary cookbook you’ll ever own. Self-taught baker and owner Meg Ray shares baking recipes and secret formulas for favorite Miette treats in this scrumptious sweets cookbook. More than 75 gorgeous color photos capture the enchanting beauty of Miette desserts and shops. The edges on the book block enhance its charming package, adding a sweet touch to every home. Whether professionals or beginners, baking aficionados will delight in these unique bakery recipes. Just like the adorable cakes, cookies, eclairs, and tarts for sale in Miette's, this book is irresistible!

Inside, find recipes like:

• Strawberry Charlotte
• Chocolate Sablés
• Lime Meringue Tart
• And more!

If you’re looking for a French baking gift, a pastry chef cookbook, or a French baking cookbook—like Dessert Person, French Pastry Made Simple, and Tartine—then you’ll love Miette.

Step Into the World of Modern Cake Recipes!

“…Heidi is an amazing artist who is able to blend both precision and whimsy in her flawless designs.” ―Shannon Bond, owner of Shannon Bond Cake Design

#1 New Release in Dessert & Sweets, Confectionary Desserts, Professional Cooking

The Art of Modern Cake is the place where sugar blooms and leaves are sweet. With this magical book learn how to hone your skills in the art of sugar flowers and elevated cake decorating.

Dessert baking with the phenomenal Heidi Moore Holmon. Master the magical art of sugar florals and botanicals as you are guided on a journey by Heidi, a designer turned cake artist, through beautifully photographed, step-by step instructions. Your skill set will flourish as you are led through a garden of cake projects featuring modern textures such as origami, geometric curves, concrete, watercolor painting, crystal trails, and more.

Looking to level up with a cake making cookbook, a sugar art book, or a confectionary cookbook? Well, this is the cake decorating book for you! Refine and modernize your skill at every stage from baking to flawlessly finished cakes, discover unexpected and unique sugar flower pairings, and gain the confidence to create edible art like a pro. The Art of Modern Cake is a must-have book for cake artists aspiring to create statement pieces and gorgeous, texture-rich confections brimming with lush extravagance.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Step by step instructions to refine, redefine, and level up your baking and cake decorating skills
• Marbling techniques, cake stacking tips, and techniques for creating sugar flowers, greenery, succulents, and more
• Timeless cake recipes like the classic white cake, buttercream, compote, and ganache staples

If you’re looking for cake baking cookbooks, or a baking decorating book―or you enjoyed books like Cake Confidence, Icing on the Cake, The Contemporary Buttercream Bible, or The Painted Cake―you’ll love The Art of Modern Cake.

Take Care of Yourself―With the Power of Herbs and Spices!

#1 New Release in Herbs, Spices & Condiments

“...health-conscious recipes that don’t skimp on flavor. Dr. Joe and Chef Daniel blend both worlds so well—anyone can cook with cannabinoids!” —bestselling author Becca Anderson

The 11 rich foods that can give your body health benefits, without using any CBD or hemp products

The word “cannabinoid” can be jarring, but it doesn’t mean what you think. We have a whole system named after pot called the endocannabinoid system (ECS), composed of receptors and enzymes that help regulate a variety of our bodily functions. "Endocannabinoid" means cannabis-like substances that naturally occur inside us. The ECS is a chemical communication system that performs the vital function of achieving and maintaining homeostasis, or balance, within the body.  Homeostasis is your body's efforts to keep everything in the right zone. This includes our sleep cycle, mood, memory, appetite, pain sensations, and so much more.

Discover wonderful uses of turmeric, basil, rosemary, flax, oregano, cloves, cinnamon, cacao, and more. It is perfectly understandable to be wary about holistic foods and their healing properties. However, when used and prepared correctly these rich foods are full of natural healing remedies that can help you ease pain, sleep better, de-stress, and so much more. Jam-packed with healing ingredients, making easy and healthy dinner ideas has never been easier.

The Cannabinoid Cookbook provides a ton of healthy recipes using healing herbs and spices that can kick-start your ECS and help you feel better each day! Learn about:

• Common herbs and spices that can create an endocannabinoid response
• How to use these recipes to heal pain, inflammation, and other bodily issues
• Easy and delicious recipes that heal you, inside and out

If you enjoyed books like Alchemy of Herbs, The Anti-Inflammatory Diet, or The Science of Spice, then you’ll love The Cannabinoid Cookbook!

Discover the Science of Unique Drinks with this Mixologist Guide

Are you a novice mixologist? Are you a soda lover, or a connoisseur of unique alcoholic drinks? Would you like to know the science behind your favorite cocktail, mocktail, or coffee drinks? Well, this is the cocktail recipe book for you!

#1 New Release in Juices & Smoothies, Coffee & Tea, and Wine

Find your next favorite drink. In, Flavor Lab Creations Logan Richardson, the creator of Flavor Lab, combines cooking with science in a fun and accessible way. Richardson takes a mixologist approach and shares detailed recipes with scientific facts. This book explains the origins of unique drinks and the yummy nontraditional ingredients.

A mixologist guide to drinks from cocktails to strawberry milkshakes. Flavor Lab Creations goes beyond the simple spirit and mixed drinks options, Richardson takes us directly to unique options like a soda drink called Oleo Saccharum and a fermented cocoa bean chocolate tea. 

Inside Flavor Lab Creations, you’ll find: 

• Curious drinks such as the Viking Blaand 
• Mixologist recipes in this coffee and cocktail cookbook
• Scientifically fun approaches to unique drinks and alcoholic drinks

If you enjoyed books like Cocktails Made Simple, Mocktail Party, or The Coffee Recipe Book you’ll love Flavor Lab Creations.

Host Simple Backyard Gatherings with a Lavish Outdoor Living Aesthetic

“With recipes and pairings that are as gorgeous as they are delicious, The Outdoor Table will completely change your next alfresco meal.” —Lisa Dawn Bolton, author of On Boards

#1 New Release in Garden Furnishings, Table Setting, Brunch & Tea, Family Activities, Salads, and Cookies, Holidays, and Decorating

Create gorgeous get togethers that are fun for everyone—including you

Bring simple-yet-beautiful entertaining to your own backyard, the park, the beach, the forest, or other outdoor spots. Perfect for anyone who is searching for innovative hosting ideas, is a fan of fresco dining, or has an open-air space that is ideal for outside fun, The Outdoor Table gives you the tools to take your get-togethers from mundane to fabulous. 

Outdoor living made delightful. You can sit back with loved ones, mingle with coworkers, or host a group in en plein air and see just how simple outdoor entertaining can be. This laid-back outdoor living kit helps you host like a pro. Author Alanna O’Neil shares her insights and strategies for creating simple-yet-elegant gatherings, and with her help, you can create them too. Find the perfect aesthetic party decor to set the stage, create simple-yet-scrumptious bites your guests will love, and tuck away perfectly curated recipe lists for future gatherings while you enjoy endless conversations with company. With The Outdoor Table, you’ll be the go-to host for anything under the sun—or stars.

Inside this unique party book, you’ll find:

• Aesthetic party essentials like decor and innovative location suggestions
• Dinner party do’s—from delectable dishes to table setting displays
• Recipes that allow you to get out of the kitchen and spend time with your friends

If you liked Nothing Fancy, Tables & Spreads, or Barefoot Contessa Parties!, you’ll love The Outdoor Table.

"Wine Hack" offers a new way forward. Learn wine like we in the industry learn wine. Spoiler: lots of tasting! This interactive book asks you to taste along with everyday food, drinks, and widely available wines to learn the four attributes that describe all wines, and even learn a few tricks for pairing wine with food.

This is the first book on wine that starts with your mouth, not your head. Teach your mouth wine and you will learn to find wines you love on a regular basis, no matter how snooty that wine shop guy is.

The Vegan Plant-Based Cookbook You’ll Love

"Even if you own other vegan cookbooks, this book is going to be the bible of vegan cooking you'll turn to time and again.” —Dee Dine, creator of the Green Smoothie Gourmet blog and author of Crazy Healthy with 4 Ingredients

Amazon Editors' Pick: Best Cookbooks, Food & Wine
#1 New Release in Gluten-Free Diets, Vegan Cooking, Raw Cooking

Perfect for spicing up your diet, healing with food, and embracing sustainable living

Simple and Delicious Vegan is a vegan, plant-based cookbook filled with delicious gluten free, vegan breakfast ideas, vegan lunch ideas, dairy and gluten free snacks, and unbelievable vegan dinners.

Eat Plants, be happy. Simple and Delicious Vegan makes cooking healthy food that tastes good easy as pie. Enjoy original, easy recipes that are healthy, allergy-friendly, delicious, and good for both your body and the planet. Only a few recipes contain nuts, soy, or corn, with substitutions always provided. This cookbook keeps things simple by providing metric and imperial measurements (cups, ounces, and grams). Lovingly photographed, Simple and Delicious Vegan also offers ingredient shots, so you see what to buy—getting you cooking—and eating—faster!

Learn how to cook plant-based food from an expert. Popular blogger and author Michaela Vais, or Ela, was a vegetarian by age six. In 2011, she made her best decision yet and went vegan. She gained energy, cured her cystic acne, and connected with the earth in a new way. In this vegan, plant based cookbook, she shares what she's learned so you, too, can reap the benefits.

Inside find:

• Innovative gluten free breakfast, lunch, and dinner ideas
• Delicious plant-based recipes like banana baked oatmeal, hearty lentil stew, and zucchini brownies
• Healthy, allergy-friendly foods with recommended ingredient substitutions
• And much more!

If you liked Unbelievably Vegan, Be A Plant-Based Woman Warrior, or The Fiber Fueled Cookbook, you’ll love Simple and Delicious Vegan.

Filled with illustrations, history, and recipes, this is the guide that every vodka lover must have!

Whether it's served neat, with a mixer, or in a cocktail, vodka's popularity continues to grow. Aficionados will love this lavishly illustrated pocket-sized book, which covers the trendy favorite from Absolut to Zubrowka. It's got all the basics: the history of the liquor, how vodka is distilled and flavored, where to buy the best brands, and delicious recipes, from classic cocktails to vodka-based foods, that will make a big splash. Vodka: The Essential Guide for Vodka Purists will go down as well as the most lovingly created Martini.

Reissue.

Originally served at the coronations of French kings, Champagne is now popular around the world and sales increase year on year as people discover this delicious, delightful, de-lovely drink. Although Champagne only comes from a small area, there are many producers, ranging from the globally famous houses such as Dom Perignon, Moët & Chandon and Taittinger to the 19,000 vignerons who produce on a much smaller (but no less delicious) scale.

Champagne has its own vocabulary, etiquette and special place in popular and culinary culture and The Little Book of Champagne traces the history of the drink from its early years to the present day and examines what makes Champagne so special. We delve into the intricacies of chilling (very cold), pouring (one inch, let the bubbles settle, then two-thirds) and drinking (slowly). There are also fun facts, quotes and sayings relating to Champagne's unique position in popular culture. So pop that cork, fill your glass and slowly sip your way slowly through the pages of this joyful celebration.

SAMPLE QUOTE:
"Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn't everyone?"
- Noël Coward

SAMPLE FACT:
The oldest Champagne producer still in existence is Ruinart. They started production in 1729.

Anything is possible with sunshine and a glass of rosé.

Pale and delicate or robust and ruby red, rosé has fuelled a revolution in the drinking world. Take a dip into this fact-filled book and discover the fascinating history of the pink drink, along with truly informative details on the winemaking process, types of grapes, growing regions of the world and the best ways to select and serve your rosé. Celebrate the halcyon days of summer all year round with 20 cocktail recipes and a variety of food pairings. Amuse yourself with entertaining quotations and sayings that capture the love of rosé. Explore fun facts, stats and trivia. There is something here for everyone, whether you prefer your Provence dry and sparkling or you're a brosé who loves frosé.

'I think a rosé should have that inherently Pavlovian-to-women peachy-pink quality that just draws us in. I don't know what it is about us girls, but we love pink'

Drew Barrymore, Instagram

'I love rosé more than any member of my biological family'

Josh Ostrovsky, Instagram

'Rose wine is like your little black dress... there's one for breakfast, lunch and dinner'

Sommelier Belinda Chang, www.elle.com

The hunger for thoughtful, wholesome and truly delicious vegetarian recipes is only increasing, especially now that we all know that eating more veg is good for our health -- and the planet. In The Magnificent Book of Vegetables, trained chef and food writer Alice Hart shares over 80 tantalising recipes that not only taste great, but will leave you feeling amazing.

As a trained nutritionist, Alice knows the importance of vegetable-centric, wholefood eating, but at the same time understands that most of us lead busy lives and shop at our local supermarkets. As such, many of the recipes in this book are uncomplicated yet big on flavour, and really make the vegetable the hero of every dish. Alice shares advice on the best way to plan your shop throughout the seasons so that nothing goes to waste, even suggesting tinned, pickled or frozen swaps where possible. Start the day right with a Green quinoa breakfast bowl, whip up a batch of Kale and potato hand pies with caraway seeds for the park, and warm up a dreary winter's evening with Chard and black bean chilli with Jalepeno-cornbread crust.

Featuring do-ahead elements to make your meal preparation easier, tips on when certain vegetables are in season, and fad-free advice, The Magnificent Book of Vegetables will prove that, with the right recipe, even a humble cabbage or beetroot can be exciting and delicious.

A foodie gift book for the connoisseur, this book is packed with information on the world’s best, most expensive and strangest cheeses, from the champion Swiss Gourmino gruyere to the Sardinian maggot-ridden casu martzu. Including pros tips on cutting and serving to ideas for cooking with cheese, such as fondu and baked feta, there are also fun facts and quotes to indulge in your cheese addiction.

Save water: Drink Prosecco

Who doesn’t love a chilled glass of Prosecco? Champagne’s younger, more affordable Italian cousin is a light, dry sparkling wine, perfect for every occasion. From a summer tipple to a tasty cocktail, dinner accompaniment or festive fizz, you just can’t beat it. And as global sales would indicate, Prosecco is the new black.

Bubbling with Prosecco-infused wit and wisdom, and mixed with recipes for some of Italy’s most iconic Prosecco cocktails – the Spritz, Rossini, Mimosa – The Little Book of Prosecco is a sparkling celebration of one of the world’s best-loved wines that will have you reaching for a bottle and popping that cork in no time.

Prosecco has only 90 calories per glass – that’s less than a banana!

“All you need is love, laughter and Prosecco.” Unknown

Everything you ever wanted to know about beer but were too busy drinking it to ask.

The Little Book of Beer is a light-hearted, irreverent but also informative book that celebrates beer culture. The book should be something that enlightens the reader while also leaving them foaming (pun intended) at the month at the mere thought of going for a pint. It will show how beer is one of the great unifiers, a drink almost as old as time, and it is something that brings people together and makes them happy. While it celebrates how beer has influenced popular culture and vice versa, it avoids falling into obvious traps of beer snobbery or elitism.

'You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.' Frank Zappa.

'When all else fails, there is music. When that fails you, there is beer.' James Hauenstein.

As we've all been cooking more for ourselves lately, it's become commonplace to run out of ideas or feel fatigued from spending too much time in the kitchen. In Fast Feasts, John Gregory-Smith puts flavour firmly back into the kitchen with a selection of quick and easy recipes, all featuring his signature Middle Eastern twist, which will make you feel excited about cooking again.

The book is packed with exciting meals that are full of flavour and look really impressive on the plate. The best thing, they are all super simple to make, using accessible supermarket ingredients so everyone can feel confident cooking them. Think gooey mac cheese, funked up with rose harissa, ready to rock in under half an hour, wickedly good chicken shawarma and chips - a recipe John picked up from his favourite kebab shop in Lebanon, and a delicious Nutella borek. As well as full recipes, John includes cheats on how to make a simple meal sing, from jazzed up mayos, quick sauces and zingy spice mixes that you can keep on hand for later or whip up in a few minutes as needed.

"Positive and educational, this entertaining cookbook delivers on its title promise to make cooking fun, fast, and easy, with a side order of deliciousness."- ForeWord Reviews


This new essential family cookbook from renowned children's cookery author Annabel Karmel is filled with fun, tasty and easy-to-make recipes to get the family cooking together.


Inside, you'll find everything from Hidden Vegetable Bolognese to Teddy Bear Burgers, as well as nutritionally balanced snacks and sweets like oat and raisin cookies and fruity ice pops. Recipes include child-friendly versions of food from around the world, such as stir-fries, paella and kebabs. The recipes cater to all dietary requirements, featuring swaps for gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian, and vegan versions.

Adults will appreciate the emphasis on nutrition and straightforward, step-by-step instructions. And thanks to the engaging illustrations, children will love discovering more about the food they eat, as well as helping to create meals they'll love.

With simple, step-by-step instructions, fascinating foodie facts, top cook-along tips, and beautiful illustrations, it's the perfect way to encourage budding little chefs to join you, teaching them essential cooking skills that will last a lifetime. It's time to put the FUN into food!

From sourdough to flatbread, banana bread or classic white loaf: bread in all of its wonderful variations is one of the world's bestloved and oldest foods. And according to scientists, the mere smell of a loaf in the oven can spark feelings of wellbeing no wonder baking bread has the reputation for selling houses. The Little Book of Bread celebrates this humble staple in all of its guises, and is filled with interesting facts, fascinating historical anecdotes and fun quotes.

Whether served as toast, a sandwich, or as a vessel for delicious morsels, this feelgood food has a huge fan based. And no matter what anyone tells you, there's nothing better than sliced bread.

Life is better with a little avocado on the side.

The perfect introduction to this versatile and nutritious fruit that continues to take the world by storm, The Little Book of the Avocado is packed with interesting facts, inspiring quotes and delicious recipes that will help you get the most out of this wonder food.

For many, the perfectly ripe avocado holds a god-like status. With its creamy texture and rich, nutty flavour, the avocado is one of the most versatile ingredients in the kitchen. But the benefits of the avocado go far beyond its taste – packed with healthy monounsaturated fats, fibre, potassium, and various vitamins and minerals, the avocado is considered a superfood, offering a range of health benefits that are essential for a healthy lifestyle.

With a history that makes it older than the invention of the wheel, the avocado has been a symbol of many things: an aphrodisiac, a superfood, a symbol of wealth and medical term to name but a few. So, whether you're looking to lower your cholesterol, boost your heart health, or simply get more nutrients into your diet, this little book has got you covered.

"If you're trying to eat healthily, avocados are one of the best foods you can add to your diet."
Dr. Axe, American chiropractor and nutritionist

"The avocado is a food of the gods, and when you eat it, you feel like one too."
Jason Wrobel, American vegan chef and author

Ginspiration' to keep you shaken and stirred.

Gin may be the national spirit of Britain, but it is now a drink that belongs to the world. It's gone 'ginternational', if you will. Within the last decade or so gin consumption has exploded, becoming the most popular alcoholic refreshment in the world, overtaking whisky and vodka.

Following the rules dictated by supply and demand, The Little Book of Gin is here to toast gin's extraordinary 'ginaissance' in the 21st century and to celebrate everyone's tipple of choice through wit and wisdom, facts and stats in a single serving-sized compendium.

Filled to the rim with history, how to's, what for's, drinking games, cocktail recipes and serving suggestions as well as a whole host of 'gintellectual' curiosities, The Little Book of Gin is 'ginfinite' in its revelry.

""The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen's lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire"" Winston Churchill - During WWII, British naval officers received a daily ration of gin

Gin takes its name from the Dutch word for juniper, genever. (It was the Dutch who invented gin, not the English)

Gin is the national spirit of Britain. It comes as no surprise then that gin has been having a ""ginaissance"", in the last decade, with more bottles of the gin being sold than ever before.

Imagine having the absolute worst day, then coming home and discovering a beautiful package on your doormat, filled with delicious home-made treats — there's no way your day wouldn't be better.

In Sweet Deliveries, Leith's-trained chef Lucy Burton shares over 40 easy yet decadent recipes, all made to be sent through the mail, and small enough to come through your mail slot if you're not home. Lucy will debunk the myth that modern, stylish baking needs to be complicated - this book will use just one tray and simple, accessible ingredients to guide you towards delicious desserts. Best of all, Lucy shares guidance on how to pack the cakes, to make sure they look beautiful and arrive in one piece. Featuring PBJ, Salted Caramel and Mulled Wine Christmas Brownies; Pistachio Praline and Matcha Blondies; sharing cookie slabs, sponge cakes and more, there is something to please even the most discerning sweet tooth.

The best thing about these cakes is that you can send them across the country, to loved ones you may not be able to hug in person. So, whether it's a birthday, get-well-soon, new home or 'just because', make someone's day by mailing them a tasty cake, whipped up by you.

With over 50 tasty recipes, Wonderful Christmas Cakes is a must for all festive gatherings.

There's no better way to get into the Christmas spirit than by filling your house with the delicious aromas of a mouthwatering bake. Featuring recipes for cookies, truffles, festive bark, cupcakes, chocolate logs, stollen, frozen desserts, brioches, drinks and more, the book is packed with treats for beginners and baking experts alike. Written by experienced pastry chef and YouTuber Guillame Marinette, these failsafe recipes will delight your holiday meals.

So whether you fancy an easy Christmas snack to kick-start the holiday vibes, of the main dessert on the big day, this is the book for you.

The Little Book of Whisky is here to listen, entertain and help you imbibe as many whisky-soaked tidbits of wit and wisdom as possible.

Whisky, aqua vitae, the water of life, the spirit of the Gods, the hard stuff - whatever you call it, has long been many people's best friend. But now your best friend has a new best friend - The Little Book of Whisky, a tiny tome guaranteed to raise your spirits with its fine blend of whisky facts & stats, quotes & quips, and matured with whisky history and heritage. The Little Book of Whisky is a guaranteed 100 proof… of excellence.

"I'm on a whisky diet. I've lost three days already." Tommy Cooper

"A good gulp of hot whiskey at bedtime - it's not very scientific, but it helps." Alexander Fleming on how to kill a common cold

If this doesn't make you want to visit Scotland nothing will. The nation is home to more than 20 million casks of maturing whisky. That's four barrels for every Scottish person. No wonder they want their independence.

A Celebration of Tea

One of the most popular drinks in the world, over two billion cups of tea are drunk every day! But how do you take yours? With one lump or two? At four o'clock with scones and jam?

From humble beginnings in China over 5000 years ago, the humble cup of tea has become a staple in homes across the globe...

"If you are cold, tea will warm you; If you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you." - William Ewart Gladstone, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

From basement bars to man caves and backyard tiki huts, the home bar has been a beloved, boozy playground for nearly 75 years. While the heyday of home bars arose in the US after World War II, these days the global pandemic has led us all to invest heavily in our homes and reluctant to mingle with randoms. What better way to entertain than by having friends over for a few drinks!

According to Instagram, today’s home bar is an upmarket concept featuring a trolley, some swanky ice cubes, homemade syrups, and reassuringly overpriced bottle of spirits. Sounds time-consuming, but help is at hand! 

Inside Home Bar, food and drink connoisseur Andy Clarke reveals his top tips on fuss-free entertaining and how to curate the essential kit – from swizzle sticks to spirits, glasses to mixers, and so much more. His recipes will include classic favorites, batch tipples to save time, mocktails as well as his own boozy inventions, guaranteed to get the party started.

As featured in the Guardian.

There's never been a better time to embrace a more plant-based life, and in this accessible and engaging book, Lindsey Harrad shows you how to achieve it, one small step at a time. Living more plantfully will help you save money, be healthier, live longer, connect with nature, all while being more socially responsible.

Lindsey Harrad is the former editor of the UK's bestselling and award-winning vegetarian magazine. In Living Plantfully, she gathers together all the wellness wisdom she has acquired over 20 years of journalistic experience, as well as drawing on the advice and experience of trusted experts in food, health, gardening and sustainability, to offer brilliant ideas, simple recipes and easy projects that anyone can do to help live a more plant-based, healthy and happy life.

Broken into three sections; growing, cooking and living, Living Plantfully is not only a useful guide but also an inspirational journey, combining accessible evidence-based facts with practical, bitesize ideas that will empower anyone to make changes in their homes and lives. Weaving in colourful facts and figures with the voices of relevant experts - including chefs and nutritionists, wellness experts, bloggers and sustainability heroes - along with plenty of quick-read box outs, clever tips and little nuggets of plant-based wisdom, this is an informed but accessible guide that explores both why and how to embrace a more sustainable, plant-centred way of eating and living.

"A font of information for anyone wanting to live and eat more mindfully and sustainably" - Anna Jones, cook and author

In this ode to all that is ranche-able, which is everything, you will find trivia, recipes, folklore and astonishing facts and figures that will delight and surprise all fans of America's No.1 condiment. In this ode to all that is ranche-able, which is everything, you will find trivia, recipes, folklore and astonishing facts and figures that will delight and surprise all fans of America's No.1 condiment.

The dressing the Washington Post called “extravagant and trashy” may not be fine dining but it sure is versatile. Here you will learn to make it from scratch, fold it into comforting snacks, sophisticated dips, grain bowls and salads, and use it in brunch favorites, marinades and pasta sauces. The creamy, peppery ranch is so far beyond salad dressing that it should never be sidelined. Its tangy coolness is perfect paired with spicy, charred or fried food; it adds flavor to main dishes like mac- and-cheese and works as a dip for wings, fries and pizza. Any way you dress it, dip it or dunk it, you'll soon discover there's nothing ranch can't do.

The popularity of chocolate is never in doubt, but what are the true origins of this most delicious of treats? Who are the greatest chocolatiers? Which countries eat more than others? Is dark chocolate really good for you? Answers to all these questions and many more are included in The Little Guide to Chocolate, a fun- and fact-packed book that explores all aspects of this global indulgence.

From the purest chocolates to the most bizarre flavors you can find and from the everyday to the decadent, this book is a light-hearted celebration of the history, taste and culture of chocolate. There are facts and statistics, amusing sayings, proverbs and puns, as well as quotations from the great and the good all about chocolate, why it's so nice and how best to consume it. Dip in to a few pages of this and you'll soon be reaching out for a slab of brown (or white) heaven in your hand!

SAMPLE QUOTE:
"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
- Charles M. Schultz

SAMPLE FACT:
The scientific name for the tree that chocolate comes from is theobroma cocoa, meaning "food of the gods".

An essential guide to understanding what it means to be vegan, The Vegan Kitchen offers all the know-how you need for a plant- based diet. It is divided into three parts: the first part examines what it means to be vegan, the health benefits and risks and where to find essential fats, protein, vitamins and minerals in order to achieve a balanced diet; the second part looks at over 100 ingredients and these are divided into groups such as root vegetables, beans and pulses, nuts and seeds and leafy greens. Each ingredient is given its own entry and vital nutritional and practical information is included.The final part is a collection of 12 essential recipes for kitchen staples such as pastry, bread, biscuits and vegan milks.

This book embraces, celebrates and explains vegan ingredients to ensure a varied, colourful and balanced diet is achieved.

This sizzling NEW 2021 book turns up the heat when it comes to BBQ wit, wisdom and wisecracks.

For the BBQ beginner, this perfectly prepared companion contains some simple recipes with all the basics to stop them from getting burned: from how to select your first BBQ grill, to how to cook a well-seasoned steak like a seasoned pro.

For the master BBQ’er, this indispensable beer buddy contains all the essentials on the latest techniques, fuels, cuts of meat, vegetable seasons, marinades, sauces, sears, and rubs – all the necessities you’ll need to keep you cookin’ on all cylinders, all in bitesize, easy-to-digest nuggets of knowledge.

From bean to cup and everything in between!

If you like nothing more than waking up to the smell of a freshly brewed cup of coffee, then this is the book for you.

Legend has it that we have an Ethiopian goat herder called Kaldi to thank for the discovery of one of the world's most popular beverages, all the way back in 9th century...

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" T.S. Eliot

"Even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all." David Lynch

A celebration of all that is neat about tequila.

In 2019, the United States bought more than 240,000,000 bottles of tequila, approximately 80 per cent of the world's total supply. The top five states that consumed the most tequila were, you guessed it, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, California, and Maryland.

Following hot on the heels of whisky, vodka and gin, tequila has become the latest spirit to be revolutionised, gentrified, and beautified in the last ten years. Every day a new small-batch, craft, artisan, tequila brand opens its doors to a loyal and thirsty following of blue agave lovers desperate to get their hands on this nectar of the Aztec gods.

The days of slammin' and shootin' shots with a lick of salt and a suck of lemon have passed, and replaced by a definitive twenty-first century glow-up, swapping shot glasses for champagne flutes. Indeed, there is a lot more to tequila than meets the eye, and The Little Book of Tequila has researched itself into sweet oblivion to give its readers more than an eyeful of this mysterious and delicious spirit.

A little tequila, sunshine and tacos never hurt anybody. Ron Woodroof (played by Matthew McConaughey), Dallas Buyers Club, 2013, as seen on IMDB.com.

Kids love it, adults love it, we all love it – ice cream is the most beloved dessert throughout the world and by every age group, and it’s the one food item that we can eat even when we’re full! Ice cream not only refreshes us, it brings a smile to our faces – from the classic and best-loved vanilla to the more sophisticated new flavours.

As veganism continues to grow in popularity the world over, many people are curious about going vegan. And others who are already vegan may be looking for simple ways to explain to friends and family why they have decided to make the change.

In The Little Book of Vegan you will learn what being a vegan entails – not just your diet, but how to shop and live your life, dealing with negative comments, making sure you’re getting the right vitamins and minerals and much more. With a little bit of planning and a positive attitude, absolutely anyone can adopt a plant-based lifestyle, and this little book will show you how.

Middle Eastern cuisine is renowned the world over for its sophistication, variety, and flavor. Bilhana (Egyptian for 'bon appétit') brings a contemporary twist to traditional Middle Eastern dishes with the use of healthy cooking methods and the freshest ingredients the region has to offer. Spanning the vast area south of the Mediterranean from the East (Lebanon and Egypt) to the West (Morocco), from simple mezze or breakfast dishes to elaborate stews and roasts, the recipes in this book showcase the vibrant colors and immense variety of Middle Eastern cooking as well as being easy to follow. Included are recipes for Roasted Eggplant with Tahini, Alexandrian Grilled Shrimp, Shakshuka, Moroccan Lamb Stew, Vegan Moussaka, Green Beans in Garlic and Caramelized Onions, Pomegranate and Guava Salad, and much more. Exquisitely illustrated with more than 130 full-color photographs.

James Bond's favourite weapon of choice, vodka, is the soon-to-be crowned king of the alcohol market, following its premium gentrification. What once used to be the crude and rude Russian cousin of gin, is now the toast of upmarket towns and swanky city bars, arriving for the first time ever in all manner of flavours and celebrity sponsors.

The Little Book of Vodka is a large swig and glug of stats, facts, quotes, notes, icons, origins of all things vodka-based, from its eastern European origins to its latest reincarnation as every taste-makers' go-to mixer and chaser. This tiny tome is a complete compendium, your ideal companion as you wait in line at the trendy new bar you've always wanted to go. Vodka is back, baby, and it's worth a shot!

'I no longer know If I wish to drown myself in love, vodka or the sea.'
Franz Kafka

'There's no absolutes in life – only vodka.'
Mick Jagger

'Vodka is kind of a hobby.'
Betty White

The Great British Bakeoff alumni and winner of the NYE 2023 special, Manon Lagrève, shares over 80 French classics — simplified or with a twist — for the modern baker.

In her debut cookbook Simple French Baking, Manon proves that elegant French baking does not have to be difficult or pretentious to make. With just a few basic pieces of baking equipment and Manon’s secret short-cuts, you too can master the French pastries and desserts of your dreams. This is a collection of her favorite family recipes, many of which were handed down by her mother and grandmothers, and are perfect for sharing with the people you love.

Whether you want to perfect the classics such as brioche, éclairs and macarons or whip up a galette or a clafoutis after a mid-week meal, there’s something for every baker and palate. French baking can be chic and simple, and whatever your baking skill, Manon will show you how.