On the morning after Kristallnacht, Toby Sonneman's father walked through broken glass to apply for the visa that saved him from the fate of so many during the Third Reich. In examining her own family history, the author discovered the similarities between the fate of the Jews and the Gypsies in the Holocaust, both peoples selected on racial grounds for extermination by the Nazis.She traveled with an American Gypsy survivor to Munich, where she stayed with the formidable Ro...

You can squeeze it, zest it, slice it, juice it, pickle it, or even take a bite out of it as Sicilians do. Adding freshness and flavour to food and drinks, this versatile sour fruit, also known for resolving diverse health and household troubles, has long been considered vital to Mediterranean and European cookery and cuisine.Lemon: A Global History tells the story of the remarkable adventure of the lemon, starting with its fragrant and mysterious ancestor, the citron, ado...

The New York Times-bestselling guide to botany and booze celebrates its 10th anniversary with an updated edition— now including a guide to planting your very own cocktail garden to go with more than fifty drink recipes. This fascinating, go-to text about the plants that make our drinks is the ideal gift book for every cocktail aficionado, the perfect drinks book for every plant-lover.Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barl...

Funny, outrageous, passionate, and unrelenting, Vogue's food writer, Jeffrey Steingarten, will stop at nothing, as he makes clear in these forty delectable pieces.Whether he is in search of a foolproof formula for sourdough bread (made from wild yeast, of course) or the most sublime French fries (the secret: cooking them in horse fat) or the perfect piecrust (Fannie Farmer--that is, Marion Cunningham--comes to the rescue), he will go to any length to find the answer.At the ...

Award-winning food writer Bee Wilson’s secret history of kitchens, showing how new technologies—from the fork to the microwave and beyond—have fundamentally shaped how and what we eat.**“Like having a long dinner table discussion with a fascinating friend ... A pure joy to read.” —**Los Angeles Times**"Delightful ... [An] ebulliently written and unobtrusively learned survey." -**Harper's MagazineSi...

In this outrageous and delectable new volume, the Man Who Ate Everything proves that he will do anything to eat everything. That includes going fishing for his own supply of bluefin tuna belly; nearly incinerating his oven in pursuit of the perfect pizza crust, and spending four days boning and stuffing three different fowl—into each other-- to produce the Cajun specialty called “turducken.”It Must’ve Been Something I Ate finds Steingarten testing the virt...

A Fantasy Lover’s Food GuideEqual parts writer’s guide, comedy, and historical cookbook, fantasy author Krista D. Ball takes readers on a journey into the depths of epic fantasy’s obsession with rabbit stew and teaches them how to catch the blasted creatures, how to move armies across enemy territories without anyone starving to death, and what a medieval pantry should look like when your heroine is seducing the hero.Learn how long to cook a salted cow tong...

A "funny and fascinating" cultural history about one of our favorite pastimes: eating ( The Village Voice).This is a delightful and intelligent look at the food we eat, with a cornucopia of incredible details about the ways we do it.Presented like a meal, each chapter of Since Eve Ate Apples Much Depends on Dinner represents a different course or garnish, which Margaret Visser handpicks from the most ordinary American dinner: among them co...

This Mediterranean travel memoir offers "an engaging mix of history, food travelogue, and botany lesson . . . There is much to enjoy here" ( Library Journal).Inspired by her Syrian forebears' intimate relationship with the olive, Julie Angus embarks on a voyage around the Mediterranean to unlock the secrets of the fruit that meant so much to them. Accompanied by her husband and their ten-month-old son, Angus collects samples from ancient trees to determine...

The author of Front Yard Gardens celebrates the joy of garlic—from its culinary history to advice on growing and cooking with the indispensable ingredient.Liz Primeau's love affair with garlic began when her teenaged boyfriend took her to an Italian restaurant for spaghetti served with heavenly garlic-laced meatballs, a sublime escape from the bland English dinners she was used to at home. Here, Primeau celebrates that culinary love, discussing garlic's cen...

"Intimate and far-reaching . . . Khosrova's ambitious project is a successful, fascinating account of a common dairy product" ( Publishers Weekly).It's a culinary catalyst, an agent of change, a gastronomic rock star. Ubiquitous in the world's most fabulous cuisines, butter is boss. Here, it finally gets its due.After traveling across three continents to stalk the modern story of butter, award-winning food writer and former pastry chef Elaine Khosrov...

If you want to know how to brew the ultimate cup of coffee in the comfort of your own home (and save some money too!), then you want to read this book.You see, making great coffee boils down to doing a number of little things right, such as selecting the right beans and roasts, and creating the right blends; using the right coffee machine and grinder; using the right amount of grounds; brewing at correct temperatures and for the right amount of time; and more....