By Yoji Yamaguchi, ZAGAT.com staff editor
In case your friends have already stocked up with the latest Zagat Guides, here are some books from 2007 about cooking, dining and food.
Nancy Verde Barr, Backstage With Julia: My Years With Julia Child
(Wiley, 304p.) Barr, who worked with Child (nee Julia McWilliams) for 24 years, first as an assistant and ultimately as her TV producer, offers an affectionate memoir of the cooking legend.
James Beard, Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking
(Bloomsbury, 352p.) This reissue of the 1974 classic is a selection of Beard's syndicated newspaper columns featuring recipes, culinary lore and advice for chefs, with the original introduction by Julia Child and a new foreword by NY Times writer Mark Bittman.
Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach
(Bloomsbury, 292p.) This richly illustrated volume chronicles Bourdain’s sojourns to places such as Beirut, Singapore and Uzbekistan for his popular TV show.
Trevor Corson, The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket
(HarperCollins, 384p.) Corson narrates the struggles of students at the California Sushi Academy to master the art of raw fish, interspersing them with informative commentary on the origins of sushi, marine biology and the science of taste.
Phoebe Damrosch, Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter
(Wm. Morrow, 240p.) Damrosch demystifies haute dining with a memoir of her stint as a waiter and captain at Thomas Keller’s Per Se, larded with vignettes of insufferable celebrities, as well as tips on how to stay on a waiter’s good side.
Melanie Dunea, My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes
(Bloomsbury, 224p.) Fifty of the world’s preeminent chefs ruminate on their last meals on earth in this handsome volume featuring Dunea’s photos and recipes by each of the participants.
Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant
(Riverhead, 288p.) A collection of 26 short essays by writers ranging from M.F.K. Fisher to Haruki Murakami about the ups and downs of cooking for one’s self or dining solo.
Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School
(Viking, 304p.) Cooking becomes a metaphor for self-discovery in Flinn’s account of the year she spent in Paris attending the Cordon Bleu school after losing her job as a high-powered executive.
Barry Glassner, The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong
(Ecco, 304p.) In this work of social commentary, Glassner offers the insights of chefs, food chemists, nutritionists and restaurant critics, as well as his own, as he sets out to debunk many of the prevailing food fads, myths and obsessions in America.
Judith Jones, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food
(Knopf, 304p.) The legendary Knopf editor, who introduced Julia Child, Marcella Hazan and Madhur Jaffrey, among others, to the world, looks back at these and other luminaries, as well as her own love of food.
David Kamp & Marion Rosenfeld, The Food Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Gastronomical Knowledge
(Broadway, 144p). A witty compendium of essential buzzwords and boldfaced names for foodies, by the author of United States of Arugula.
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
(HarperCollins, 384p.) The acclaimed novelist recounts the year she and her family lived exclusively on foods grown on their own or neighboring farms, with sidebars on agriculture and recipes.
Nicole Mones, The Last Chinese Chef
(Houghton Mifflin, 288p.) Mones’ novel tells of a recently widowed food writer who sets off to China to profile a rising young Chinese-American-Jewish chef and discovers love, peace of mind and some incredible food along the way.
Stewart O'Nan, Last Night at the Lobster
(Viking, 160p.) Manny DeLeon is the conscientious, quixotic manager of a New England Red Lobster slated for closing four days before Christmas in this humorous novel of self-discovery and loss.
Molly O’Neill, American Food Writing: An Anthology: With Classic Recipes
(Library of America, 700 p.) The former NY Times columnist and host of “Great Food” compiles three centuries of American food writing, including essays, anecdotes and recipes, by writers ranging from Hawthorne and Melville to Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain.
Russ Parsons, How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table
(Houghton Mifflin, 432p.) This account of agribusiness’ rise to market dominance with year-round crop availability and the nascent comeback of local, seasonal produce includes recipes and a buyer’s guide on the side.
David Remnick, Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink
(Random House, 608p.) The editor of The New Yorker gathers 80 years of the magazine’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and cartoons about all things epicurean. Writers include Bill Buford, M.F.K. Fisher, A.J. Liebling, John McPhee, Joseph Mitchell, Susan Orlean and Calvin Trillin.
Laura Schenone, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family
(W.W. Norton, 384p.) James Beard Award–winner Schenone traces her family’s history from industrial New Jersey to the shores of Liguria in her quest to rediscover her great-grandmother’s long-lost ravioli recipe.
Hervé This, Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
(Columbia UP, 232p.) The author of Molecular Gastronomy demystifies the chemistry and physics of cooking for the everyday chef, explaining how recipes, preparations and utensils affect the properties of foods.
John Thorne, Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite
(North Point, 448p.) In this collection of previously published pieces, the James Beard Award–winning food writer and publisher of the newsletter “Simple Cooking” expounds on the joys of food and cooking.
Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
(Clarkson Potter, 406p.) The doyenne of local and sustainable dining offers 19 culinary lessons and more than 250 recipes illustrating her belief that good ingredients trump fancy technique, and food is “extraordinary [when] it tastes like what it is.”
And in case you want to exchange something at your local bookstore, here are a few titles to watch out for in early 2008:
John Haney, Fair Shares for All: A Memoir of Family and Food
(Random House, 304p., January)
Frederick Kaufman, A Short History of the American Stomach
(Harcourt, 224p., February)
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
(Penguin Press, 256p.,
January)
Sara Roahen, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table
(Norton, 288p., February)