Notes from a Young Black Chef

Author: Kwame Onwuachi
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525433910
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
A memoir from “the most important chef in America” (San Francisco Chronicle) and chef of Tatiana, the New York Times #1 Restaurant in New York City 2023. “Kwame Onwuachi’s story shines a light on food and culture not just in American restaurants or African American communities but around the world.” —Questlove By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened—and closed—one of the most talked about restaurants in America. He had sold drugs in New York and been shipped off to rural Nigeria to “learn respect.” He had launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars made from selling candy on the subway and starred on Top Chef. Through it all, Onwuachi’s love of food and cooking remained a constant, even when, as a young chef, he was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the food world can be for people of color. In this inspirational memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age; a powerful, heartfelt, and shockingly honest account of chasing your dreams—even when they don’t turn out as you expected.

My America

Author: Kwame Onwuachi
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525659617
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
A BON APPETIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • What is American food? In his first cookbook, the acclaimed author of Notes from a Young Black Chef shares the dishes of his America; dishes that show the true diversity of American food. Onwauachi is “the most important chef in America” (San Francisco Chronicle) and chef of Tatiana, the New York Times #1 Restaurant in New York City 2023. “A must-have for anyone who wants to be a better cook. Each recipe is an insight into Kwame’s family, travels, and time spent in some of the best kitchens in the world.” —David Chang Featuring more than 125 recipes, My America is a celebration of the food of the African Diaspora, as handed down through Onwuachi’s own family history, spanning Nigeria to the Caribbean, the South to the Bronx, and beyond. From Nigerian Jollof, Puerto Rican Red Bean Sofrito, and Trinidadian Channa (Chickpea) Curry to Jambalaya, Baby Back Ribs, and Red Velvet Cake, these are global home recipes that represent the best of the patchwork that is American cuisine. Interwoven throughout the book are stories of Onwuachi’s travels, illuminating the connections between food and place, and food and culture. The result is a deeply personal tribute to the food of “a land that belongs to you and yours and to me and mine.”

Yes, Chef

Author: Marcus Samuelsson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0440338816
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the great culinary stories of our time.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Yes, Chef chronicles Samuelsson’s journey, from his grandmother’s kitchen to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four. But Samuelsson’s career of chasing flavors had only just begun—in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs, and, most important, the opening of Red Rooster in Harlem. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fulfilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room—a place where presidents rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, and bus drivers. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home. Praise for Yes, Chef “Such an interesting life, told with touching modesty and remarkable candor.”—Ruth Reichl “Marcus Samuelsson has an incomparable story, a quiet bravery, and a lyrical and discreetly glittering style—in the kitchen and on the page. I liked this book so very, very much.”—Gabrielle Hamilton “Plenty of celebrity chefs have a compelling story to tell, but none of them can top [this] one.”—The Wall Street Journal “Elegantly written . . . Samuelsson has the flavors of many countries in his blood.”—The Boston Globe “Red Rooster’s arrival in Harlem brought with it a chef who has reinvigorated and reimagined what it means to be American. In his famed dishes, and now in this memoir, Marcus Samuelsson tells a story that reaches past racial and national divides to the foundations of family, hope, and downright good food.”—President Bill Clinton

My Ackee Tree

Author: Suzanne Barr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735239517
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 TASTE CANADA AWARDS* NOMINATED FOR THE 2023 HERITAGE TORONTO AWARDS For fans of The Measure of My Powers and Notes from a Young Black Chef, a memoir about food, family, and the recipes that brought one woman home when she needed it the most. Suzanne Barr’s journey to become a chef started when she was 30. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer and she moved home to Florida to take care of her. Suzanne escorted her mother to doctor’s appointments, bathed her, and kept her company, but the hardest part of the experience was that she didn’t know how to cook for her. She didn’t even know where to begin. Fast-forward to the summer of 2017 when Suzanne became the inaugural Chef-in-Residence at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. She wanted to create a menu that represented who she was as a chef and it emerged as a love letter to her mother. Her Rite of Passage Menu, as she called it, changed her. It started her on a journey that has brought her closer to her mother, to her ancestors, and to her Jamaican heritage. But a lot has happened before and since. My Ackee Tree tells the story of a woman who is always on the move, always seeking; who battles the stereotypes of being a Black female cook to become a culinary star in an industry beset by dated practices and landlords with too much power. From the ackee tree in front of her childhood home, through New York City, Atlanta, Hawaii, the Hamptons, and France, Suzanne takes us on her unpredictable journey, and at every turn, she finds light and comfort in the kitchen. Told in a voice as fresh and honest as her cooking, My Ackee Tree is a celebration of creativity, soul searching, and motherhood that asks, “How can I keep the things I love?”

A Knock at Midnight

Author: Brittany K. Barnett
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1984825801
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Book Description
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • A “powerful and devastating” (The Washington Post) call to free those buried alive by America’s legal system, and an inspiring true story about unwavering belief in humanity—from a gifted young lawyer and important new voice in the movement to transform the system. “An essential book for our time . . . Brittany K. Barnett is a star.”—Van Jones, CEO of REFORM Alliance, CNN Host, and New York Times bestselling author Brittany K. Barnett was only a law student when she came across the case that would change her life forever—that of Sharanda Jones, single mother, business owner, and, like Brittany, Black daughter of the rural South. A victim of America’s devastating war on drugs, Sharanda had been torn away from her young daughter and was serving a life sentence without parole—for a first-time drug offense. In Sharanda, Brittany saw haunting echoes of her own life, as the daughter of a formerly incarcerated mother. As she studied this case, a system came into focus in which widespread racial injustice forms the core of America’s addiction to incarceration. Moved by Sharanda’s plight, Brittany set to work to gain her freedom. This had never been the plan. Bright and ambitious, Brittany was a successful accountant on her way to a high-powered future in corporate law. But Sharanda’s case opened the door to a harrowing journey through the criminal justice system. By day she moved billion-dollar deals, and by night she worked pro bono to free clients in near hopeless legal battles. Ultimately, her path transformed her understanding of injustice in the courts, of genius languishing behind bars, and the very definition of freedom itself. Brittany’s riveting memoir is at once a coming-of-age story and a powerful evocation of what it takes to bring hope and justice to a system built to resist them both. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS

Burn the Place

Author: Iliana Regan
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 1982157771
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Nominated for the National Book Award, chef Iliana Regan’s debut memoir chronicles her journey from foraging on her family’s Midwestern farm to running her own Michelin-starred restaurant and finding her place in the world. Iliana Regan grew up the youngest of four headstrong girls on a small farm in Indiana. While gathering raspberries as a toddler, Regan learned to only pick the ripe fruit. In the nearby fields, the orange flutes of chanterelle mushrooms beckoned her while they eluded others. Regan’s profound connection with food and the earth began in childhood, but connecting with people was more difficult. She grew up gay in an intolerant community, was an alcoholic before she turned twenty, and struggled to find her voice as a woman working in an industry dominated by men. But food helped her navigate the world around her—learning to cook in her childhood home, getting her first restaurant job at age fifteen, teaching herself cutting-edge cuisine while hosting an underground supper club, and working her way from front-of-house staff to running her own kitchen. Regan’s culinary talent is based on instinct, memory, and an almost otherworldly connection to ingredients, and her writing comes from the same place. Raw, filled with startling imagery and told with uncommon emotional power, Burn the Place takes us from Regan’s childhood farmhouse kitchen to the country’s most elite restaurants in a galvanizing tale that is entirely original, and unforgettable.

Running Against the Tide

Author: Captain Lee
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501184466
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
From the star of Bravo’s hit reality show Below Deck comes Running Against the Tide, the “Stud of the Sea’s” first-ever memoir recounting his journey from landlocked Saginaw, Michigan to the high seas, where he has spent more than twenty-five years as a superyacht captain. The cast members of Below Deck are known for their catfights, scheming, personal attacks, and long-held grudges, but what keeps viewers coming back week after week is resident hero Captain Lee, the only cast member to appear in all five seasons. But you don’t have to be one of Below Deck’s 1.5 million weekly viewers to appreciate Captain Lee’s story, which offers a glimpse behind-the-scenes at the luxury yachting industry and one of Bravo’s biggest franchises. From having to reclaim his drunk captain's lost papers in the Dominican Republic to unwittingly crewing a drug boat out of Turks and Caicos to navigating the outrageous demands of the super-rich in New York City, Captain Lee's tales from the high seas run the gamut, proving time and time again why he’s a fan favorite: he’s occasionally profane, he’s often surprising, but he’s never dull and, for the first time, he’s here to tell all.

Letters to a Young Chef

Author: Daniel Boulud
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0786736615
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Daniel Boulud is a pioneer of our contemporary food culture-from the reinvention of French food to the fine dining revolution in America. A modern man with a classical foundation and a lifetime of experience, Boulud speaks with passion about the vocation of creating food. Part memoir, part advice book, part recipe book, this updated edition celebrating of the art of cooking will continue to delight and enlighten all chefs, from passionate amateurs to serious professionals.

Eat More Better

Author: Dan Pashman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451689756
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
What if you could make everything you eat more delicious? As creator of the WNYC podcast The Sporkful and host of the Cooking Channel web series You're Eating It Wrong, Dan Pashman is obsessed with doing just that. Eat More Better weaves science and humor into a definitive, illustrated guidebook for anyone who loves food. But this book isn’t for foodies. It’s for eaters. In the bestselling tradition of Alton Brown’s Good Eats and M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating, Pashman analyzes everyday foods in extraordinary detail to answer some of the most pressing questions of our time, including: Is a cheeseburger better when the cheese is on the bottom, closer to your tongue, to accentuate cheesy goodness? What are the ethics of cherry-picking specific ingredients from a snack mix? And what role does surface-area-to-volume ratio play in fried food enjoyment and ice cube selection? Written with an infectious blend of humor and smarts, Eat More Better is a tongue-in-cheek textbook that teaches readers to eat for maximum pleasure. Chapters are divided into subjects like engineering, philosophy, economics, and physical science, and feature hundreds of drawings, charts, and infographics to illustrate key concepts like The Porklift—a bacon lattice structure placed beneath a pancake stack to elevate it off the plate, thus preventing the bottom pancake from becoming soggy with syrup and imbuing the bacon with maple-based deliciousness. Eat More Better combines Pashman’s award-winning writing with his unparalleled field research, collected over thirty-seven years of eating at least three times a day. It delivers entertaining, fascinating, and practical insights that will satisfy your mind and stomach, and change the way you look at food forever. Read this book and every bite you take will be better.

Rebel Chef

Author: Dominique Crenn
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224765
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
“Dominique Crenn is a hero to so many of us, both inside and out of the restaurant industry. She has unlimited courage to always follow her own path, to carve her own way in the world. This book, and Dominique’s whole life, show that everything and anything is possible if you believe in yourself and you keep pushing forward, always forward.” —José Andrés The inspiring and deeply personal memoir from highly acclaimed chef Dominique Crenn When Dominique Crenn decided to become a chef, she knew it was a near impossible dream in France where almost all restaurant kitchens were run by men. She left her home and everything she knew to move to San Francisco, and almost thirty years later was awarded three Michelin stars in 2018 for her influential restaurant Atelier Crenn, the first female chef in the United States to receive this honor—no small feat for someone who hadn’t been formally trained. In Rebel Chef, Crenn tells of her untraditional coming-of-age as a chef. Adopted as a toddler, she didn’t resemble her parents, and was haunted by a past she knew nothing about. But after years of working to fill this blank space, Crenn embraced the power her history gave her to be whoever she wants to be. In this disarmingly honest look at one woman’s evolution from a daring young chef to a respected activist, Crenn reflects on the years she spent working in the male-centric world of professional kitchens and tracks her career from struggling cook to running one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants. At once a tale of personal discovery and a tribute to unrelenting determination, Rebel Chef is the story of one woman making a place for herself in the kitchen, and in the world.