Culinary School

Ruhlman propels himself and his readers through a score of kitchens and classrooms, from Asian and American regional cuisines to lunch cookery and even table waiting, in search of the elusive, unnamable elements of great cooking.

When you're cooking, you're a chemist! Every time you follow or modify a recipe you are experimenting with acids and bases, emulsions and suspensions, gels and foams. In your kitchen you denature proteins, crystallize compounds, react enzymes with substrates, and nurture desired microbial life while suppressing harmful microbes. And unlike in a laboratory, you can eat your experiments to verify your hypotheses.

Last summer, The New Yorker published chef Anthony Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Now, the author uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable audiobook, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike.

From the author of the bestselling Pelican Cove cozy mysteries Meet Meera Patel - college dropout and soon to be murder suspect Life in sleepy college towns in the south follows a predictable pattern. Summers are slow and lazy and campus is almost deserted. Scorching days end in flaming sunsets. Meat cooks on the backyard grills, infusing the air with heady aromas of charcoal and dry rubs. Kids splash in pools and run around, licking snow cones and popsicles. It's the calm before the storm, before the frenzy of fall term begins in earnest. Swan Creek, Oklahoma is no different. Meera Patel ...

When a retired detective superintendent chooses to take a culinary tour of the British Isles, he hopes to find tasty treats and delicious bakes...what he finds is murder, mayhem, and mystery everywhere he goes. His dog, Rex Harrison, a former police dog fired for having a bad attitude, does his best to steer the humans in the right direction, but he cannot understand why they don’t just use their noses–the answers are right there if they would just employ their strongest sense!

A visionary new master class in cooking that distills decades of professional experience into just four simple elements, from the woman declared "America's next great cooking teacher" by Alice Waters.

When Nell Valenti is offered a chance to move to Tuscany to help transform an aging villa into a farm-to-table cooking school, she eagerly accepts. But Nell gets more than she bargained for when she arrives. With only a day to go until the launch dinner for the cooking school, the villa is in shambles, and Chef O is blissfully oblivious of the work that needs to be done before a group of local dignitaries arrive, along with a filmmaker. The situation only worsens when Nell discovers that the filmmaker is an ex-boyfriend, and he's found murdered later that night.

When a wealthy New York philanthropist pays top dollar for a private four-day ziti workshop, Nell Valenti wants everyone at the Villa Orlandini Cooking School focused on the task at hand. But complications abound when Nell’s boyfriend, Pete Orlandini, rushes to Rome for an unexpected business trip; Chef Orlandini is more preoccupied with a potential spot on an American cooking show than with preparing for the workshop; and an uninvited woman sneaks into the villa to inspect Pete’s olive grove.

Nell Valenti is settling into her role of transforming the Villa Orlandini into a superb farm-to-table cooking school, and the time has finally come for a full taste test run. But when Chef Orlandini prepares to reveal his top secret marinara recipe for the first time to a group of American gastro-tourists, Nell realizes she might have bitten off more than she can chew.

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, writer Kathleen Flinn returned with no idea what to do next, until one day at a supermarket she watched a woman loading her cart with ultraprocessed foods. Flinn's "chefternal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy, easy meals.

It's all here, written in short vignettes with Salisbury's incisive wisdom and wit. He guarantees that at least one idea will more than save you the cost of the book, repeatedly. More than a restaurant manual, the book is filled with universal insights into good business practices. And diners in search of a great restaurant experience will appreciate Salisbury's insights into what gets people to return to their favorites.

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.

When Jane Bertch was seventeen, her mother took her on a graduation trip to Paris. Thrilled to use her high school French, Jane found her halting attempts greeted with withering condescension by every waiter and shopkeeper she encountered. At the end of the trip, she vowed she would never return.

Retirement is bliss—or is it? Newly retired music teacher, Susan Wiles, puts her natural nosiness to work and discovers a talent for solving murders. In Murder is Elementary, Susan finds her former principal dead on the office floor, a half-eaten funfetti cupcake on the desk, and a list of suspects rivaling pre-pandemic lines at Disney! In book two, a dead body is discovered in a construction site behind a school. Susan puts her sleuthing skills into action to save her husband’s best friend, Tank, who is accused of the crime. While Susan works to solve this mystery and exonerate Tank, ...

Discover the perfect children's adventure story that combines education and entertainment in this delightful addition to the beloved "What Shall We Do Today?" series! Join curious 7-year-old Imani, enthusiastic 8-year-old Tommy, and knowledgeable 8-year-old Maya as they embark on an exciting journey celebrating both International Bat Appreciation Day and National Cheeseball Day! When Maya's mom invites the friends to visit the bat sanctuary where she works, followed by a special cheeseball-making activity at a local snack bar, the children dive into a day filled with fascinating discoveries...

From the author of the bestselling Pelican Cove series - Meet Meera Patel – college dropout and soon to be amateur sleuth Fall term is almost over and Thanksgiving is around the corner. Meera has been ordered to stop her tomfoolery and think about her future. All good intentions are foiled when Meera runs into a dead man in the park. The local diner owners are implicated in the young rancher’s death. Meera and her grandma face off against the Patel men and insist on sticking by their friends. Meera interviews the long list of suspects on and off campus, trying to find someone who might ...

When the organizing committee for her upcoming high school reunion needs a caterer, Halia agrees to help out. Soon she's serving up her signature macaroni and cheese and famous chicken wings to a host of appreciative ex-classmates. Some folks have blossomed since graduation. Others, like manipulative Raynell Rollins, currently married to a former football star, haven't changed nearly enough. When Raynell is found dead the morning after the reunion, the role call of possible suspects could fill the school gymnasium. Extramarital affairs, mega-church scandals and sports secrets...

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn, a 36-year-old American living and working in London, returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother's advice that she get another job immediately or "never get hired anywhere ever again", Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream: a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.

We all struggle sometimes. Even those of us who are known for our valor. When a down-and-out young veteran winds up homeless for the holidays, he takes the only job that he can find, dressing up as a mall Santa. When a murder happens at the mall, our hero finds himself in a situation that's tighter than a chimney. A single mom Good Samaritan who reaches out to help begins to wonder about the wisdom of her decision, when he is accused of murder. Will he lose everything that he’s fought so hard to gain, or will the magic of Christmas come to his aid in time?

This is the story of one woman's journey to find herself. Armed with nothing but a love of food and the words of the 20th-century food writer M.F.K. Fisher, she travels from France to Italy, then the Congo, and back again. Along the way, she goes to pastry school in Paris, eats the most perfect apricots over the Tuscan hills, watches a family of gorillas grazing deep in the Congolese brush, has her heart broken one last time on a bridge in Lyon, and, ultimately, finds a path to life and joy.