Wine Essay

From cameraman to chef, musician to food scientist, Alton Brown has had a diverse and remarkable career. His work on the Food Network, including creating Good Eats and hosting Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen, has resonated with countless viewers and home cooks. Now, he shares exactly what’s on his mind, mixing compelling anecdotes from his personal and professional life with in-depth observations on the culinary world, film, personal style, defining meals of his lifetime, and much more.

A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a magazine article, but John McPhee kept encountering so much irresistible information that he wrote a book. It is perhaps the last word on the subject (the first came in 500 BC and is attributed to Confucius). McPhee writes about the botany, history, and industry of oranges, from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida, who may be the last of the individual orange barons.

For more than a decade, Jay McInerney’s vinous essays, now featured in The Wall Street Journal, have been praised by restaurateurs (“Filled with small courses and surprising and exotic flavors, educational and delicious at the same time” —Mario Batali), by esteemed critics (“Brilliant, witty, comical, and often shamelessly candid and provocative” —Robert M. Parker Jr.), and by the media (“His wine judgments are sound, his anecdotes witty, and his literary references impeccable” — The New York Times).

For Diana Henry's many fans, her evocative writing about places, people and food brings just as much pleasure as her delicious recipes. Around the Table is a selection of some of Diana's very best essays, handpicked from over two decades of her beloved cookbooks. This vivid and nourishing collection of essays on the joys of good food is an utter delight for the senses.

I grew up in a family where we wrote one another love letters. We put them on pillows, in lunch bags, by bedsides. So it was only natural that when my niece Katie asked me to compile some family recipes for her upon the occasion of her marriage that I would place those recipes alongside all the love letters I had been wanting to write and had written in the form of essays that were published in a variety of magazines and newspaper periodicals before their decline. Eating supper hasn’t declined, however, and love letters to brides and nieces have a kind of perennial value if not to the ...

A mouthwatering testament to the healing power of food, My Place at the Table is a moving coming-of-age story of how a gay man emerges from a wounding childhood, discovers himself, and finds love. Published here for the first time is Lobrano’s “little black book,” an insider’s guide to his thirty all-time-favorite Paris restaurants.

How Would You Like Your Mammoth? is a chronological journey through the culinary history of humankind, with fifty short, snackable essays packed to the brim with juicy tidbits and cultural insights. With author Uta Seeburg as your guide, you'll learn not only which dishes are linked to key cultural moments, but also how each represents the social hierarchy and values of the civilization that invented it.

"Laugh-out-loud funny!" - Publishers Weekly "An argument for joy.' - Foreword Reviews 2014 Silver Medal Winner for Humor - Independent Publisher Book Awards program First Place Winner for Humor - North American Book Awards Winner for Top Ten Idaho Authors - Idaho Book Extravaganza Welcome to Midlife Cabernet! This title is SO much better than the original working title of Elderly Wino. If you’re a feisty, robust female tumbling down the far side of fifty, grab a glass of cabernet (oh hell, grab the whole bottle), wear your rhinestone-studded reading glasses, and savor some witty words of ...

Everyone knows the parlor game question asked of every chef and food personality in countless interviews: What is the last meal you'd want to eat before you die? But what does it look like when you pose the question to bartenders? In Last Call, James Beard Award-winning author Brad Thomas Parsons gathers the intriguing responses from a diverse range of bartenders around the country.

Mark Kurlansky, winner of the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing, leads us on a mouthwatering culinary tour around the world and through history and culture from the fifth century B.C. to the present day. This wonderful collection contains essays by Plato on the art of cooking, Pablo Neruda on french fries, and many other writers on the passions of cuisine.

Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on? In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking—that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books—as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.

First, Catch is a cookbook without recipes, an invitation to journey through the digressive mind of a chef at work, and a hymn to a singular nine-dish festive spring lunch. In Eagle’s kitchen, open shelves reveal colorful jars of vegetables pickling over months, and a soffritto of onions, celery, and carrots cook slowly under a watchful gaze in a skillet heavy enough to double as a murder weapon. He is a tour guide to the world of ingredients, a culinary explorer, and thoughtful commentator on the ways immigration, technology, and fashion has changed the way we eat.