Category: Education & Reference

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A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison [0802126464, Format: EPUB]

  • Title: A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand
  • Autor: Jim Harrison
  • Print Length: 288 pages
  • Publisher (Publication Date): Grove Press (March 24, 2017)
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B01MXOP9VF
  • ISBN-10: 0802126464
  • ISBN-13: 978-0802126467
  • File Format: EPUB
“[A] culinary combo plate of Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Julian Schnabel, and Sam Peckinpah . . . Harrison writes with enough force to make your knees buckle and with infectious zeal that makes you turn the pages hungry for more . . . Jim Harrison has staked out a distinctive place in the world of food writing.”—Jane and Michael Stern, New York Times Book Review on The Raw and the Cooked

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison was one of this country’s most beloved writers, a muscular, brilliantly economic stylist with a salty wisdom. He also wrote some of the best essays on food around, earning praise as “the poet laureate of appetite” (Dallas Morning News). A Really Big Lunch, to be published on the one-year anniversary of Harrison’s death, collects many of his food pieces for the first time—and taps into his larger-than-life appetite with wit and verve.

Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in A Really Big Lunch. From the titular New Yorker piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from Brick, Playboy, Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews, A Really Big Lunch is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades. A Really Big Lunch is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.

“Harrison is the American Rabelais, and he is at his irreverent and excessive best in this collection.” —John Skowles, San Diego Union-Tribune on The Raw and the Cooked

Review

”Jim Harrison is the Henry Miller of food writing. His passion is infectious.” –Wall Street Journal ”A celebration of eating well and drinking even better as a recipe for the good life.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was the author of over thirty-five books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, including Legends of the Fall, The Road Home, The English Major, and The Farmer’s Daughter. His writing appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and the New York Times. He earned a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association. His work has been recognized worldwide and published in twenty-two languages.Audiobook Narrator Bio: Joe Barrett has appeared both on and off Broadway as well as in hundreds of radio and television commercials. He has earned multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. He has narrated books by such authors as Trevanian, Brian Freeman, Don Winslow, and James W. Huston.

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Album di famiglia by Matteo Santoni [B01MU6AXSX, Format: EPUB]

  • Title: Album di famiglia
  • Autor: Matteo Santoni
  • Print Length:
  • Publisher (Publication Date): Matteo Santoni (31 dicembre 2016)
  • Language: Italiano
  • ASIN: B01MU6AXSX
  • ISBN-10:
  • ISBN-13:
  • File Format: EPUB

 
La Lucania non esiste più sulle mappe geografiche, ma questo non ha permesso la scomparsa della forte identità sociale e culturale di quel territorio dimenticato, nel quale la vita scorre inesorabile in un interscambio viscerale tra i suoi abitanti e il loro intorno.

È una storia questa di donne e di uomini, ognuno a proprio modo con l’esigenza di un riscatto che stenta ad arrivare anche a livello personale. Sono percorsi di gente che rimane, che fugge, che capita lì, che ritorna, in un angolo di Lucania dove ancora oggi è difficile arrivare perché forse Cristo è ancora fermo a Eboli.

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Food Culture in the Mediterranean: (Food Culture around the World) by Carol Helstosky [0313346267, Format: PDF]

Food Culture in the Mediterranean (Food Culture around the World) by Carol Helstosky

  • Print Length: 189 Pages
  • Publisher: Greenwood
  • Publication Date: March 20, 2009
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B002AS9R0O
  • ISBN-10: 0313346267
  • ISBN-13: 978-0313346262
  • File Format: PDF

Food that originated from the Mediterranean area is incredibly popular. Pasta, pizza, gyros, kebab, and falafel can be found just about everywhere. Many people throughout the world have a good idea of what Mediterranean cuisine and diet are all about, but they know less about the entire food culture of the region. This one-stop source provides the broadest possible understanding of food culture throughout the region, giving a variety of examples and evidence from the southern Mediterranean or North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt), the Western Mediterranean or European side of the Mediterranean (Spain, France, Italy, and the French and Italian islands), to the eastern Mediterranean or Levant (Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel).

The Mediterranean region region is home to three of the world’s major religions, and for centuries, the Mediterranean Sea has been an invitation to trade, travel, conquest, and immigration. Where different cultures, beliefs, and traditions mix there is always volatility and tension, but there is also great energy. Understanding the food culture in the Mediterranean is one way readers can see how people of different regions come together, share ideas and information to create new dishes, meals, traditions, and forms of sociability. This volume answers questions such as Do people in the Mediterranean still eat the Mediterranean Diet or do they eat American style? Why is it that the same ingredients can be prepared in so many different ways, even in the same country? Why would cooks take the time to make foods like zucchini, lentils, or figs into dozens of different dishes? How and why do religious rituals differ regarding food preparation? What do Jews, Muslims, and Christians eat on religious holidays? Do people eat out or eat at home? Why is hospitality so important to Mediterranean people and what do they do to demonstrate hospitality and good will through the preparation and serving of meals?

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Pure Heart: A Spirited Tale of Grace, Grit, and Whiskey by Troylyn Ball [0062458973, Format: EPUB]

Pure Heart: A Spirited Tale of Grace, Grit, and Whiskey by Troylyn Ball

  • Print Length: 288 Pages
  • Publisher: Dey Street Books
  • Publication Date: February 7, 2017
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B01HM24J3W
  • ISBN-10: 0062458973
  • ISBN-13: 978-0062458971
  • File Format: EPUB

Troylyn Ball and her husband, Charlie, an engineer and real estate developer, had spent their entire lives in Texas. But after a near fatal trip to the emergency room with their non-verbal, wheelchair-bound son Marshall, they admitted the dust and the heat were too dangerous. To save their boys, the Balls cashed out, sold their beloved farm, and moved to Asheville, North Carolina.

Nearing fifty, Troy thought her chance at adventure had passed. But in this booming little Appalachian Mountain city of hippies, farmers, artisans, and retirees, she unexpectedly discovered a support network and something she’d never had in twenty-five years of providing round-the-clock care for her special needs boys: the freedom to pursue her own dreams. She struck up a friendship with a legendary eighty-year-old raconteur from the mountains, met his friends, and soon found herself in a rickety country shack with an ingeniously inventive retired farmer trying to create the best recipe ever for traditional mountain moonshine.

But when the real estate bubble burst and the collapse of her husband Charlie’s new venture in Asheville left them deeply in debt, Troy realized her ten-year business plan for Troy & Sons Platinum Whiskey wasn’t enough. If she was going to save her family—and she was definitely going to save her family—she needed to become the most successful woman in the legal whiskey business. And she needed to do it fast, before the bank took her house, her business, and everything she’d worked so hard to achieve.

Full of eccentric characters and charming locations—from a “haunted” cabin in the mountains to the last farm in the world to grow heritage Crooked Creek corn—Pure Heart is a charming story of a woman who set out to find a purpose in the most unexpected of places, and ended up finding happiness, contentment, and a community of love and respect.

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The Kitchen Hand: A Miscellany of Kitchen Wisdom by Anthony Telford [1865088900, Format: PDF]

The Kitchen Hand: A Miscellany of Kitchen Wisdom by Anthony Telford

  • Print Length: 304 Pages
  • Publisher: Allen & Unwin
  • Publication Date: October 1, 2004
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1865088900
  • ISBN-13: 978-1865088907
  • File Format: PDF

This handy kitchen reference offers a fount of culinary knowledge, tips, and conversions for cooking globally with international cookbooks. A user-friendly dictionary layout provides quick access to necessary information such as metric conversions, equivalent weights, alternatives for allergy sufferers, and rescue remedies for kitchen disasters. Replacements for hard-to-find ingredients that are often elements of foreign recipes are also included. Guides to commonly used abbreviations, oven temperatures, additives, and dimensions of cooking equipment help cooks convert recipes to use for their own kitchens. Tips for making homemade crème fraiche, using leftover egg whites, perfecting pork glaze, and other kitchen tidbits are interspersed throughout.

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Nuts: A Global History by Ken Albala [1780232829, Format: PDF]

Nuts: A Global History (Edible) by Ken Albala

  • Print Length: 128 Pages
  • Publisher: Reaktion Books
  • Publication Date: April 15, 2014
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B00KD8YWQM
  • ISBN-10: 1780232829
  • ISBN-13: 978-1780232829
  • File Format: PDF

From almonds and pecans to pistachios, cashews, and macadamias, nuts are as basic as food gets—just pop them out of the shell and into your mouth. The original health food, the vitamin-packed nut is now used industrially, in confectionary, and in all sorts of cooking. The first book to tell the full story of how nuts came to be in almost everything, Nuts takes readers on a gastronomic, botanical, and cultural tour of the world.

Tracking these fruits and seeds through cultivation, harvesting, processing, and consumption—or non-consumption, in the case of those with nut allergies—award-winning food writer Ken Albala provides a fascinating account on how they have been cooked, prepared, and exploited. He reveals the social and cultural meaning of nuts during various periods in history, while also immersing us in their modern uses. Packing scrumptious recipes, surprising facts, and fascinating nuggets inside its hardcover shell, this entertaining and informative book will delight lovers of almonds, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and more.

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Offal: A Global History by Nina Edwards [1780230974, Format: EPUB]

Offal: A Global History (Edible) by Nina Edwards

  • Print Length: 141 Pages
  • Publisher: Reaktion Books
  • Publication Date: April 15, 2013
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B00G2ADR6Q
  • ISBN-10: 1780230974
  • ISBN-13: 978-1780230979
  • File Format: EPUB

“Offal” has the same pronunciation as “awful”—an appropriate homophone, given that offal comprises the whole spectrum of an animal’s glands, essential organs, skin, muscle, guts, and every unmentionable in between. Yet as Nina Edwards shows in this intriguing history, offal has been consumed and enjoyed across ages and continents, often hidden by the rich variety of terms—like fois gras and sweetbread—that have evolved to veil their origins.

Edwards dissects the complicated relationship we have with offal and the extreme reactions it inspires, asking if we can enjoy a pig’s heart, a cow’s eyes, or a sheep’s brain when it reminds us so viscerally of our own flesh and blood. She explores the offal dishes that are specific to regional cuisines and holidays, such as Scottish haggis, Jewish chopped liver, and Southern states’ chitterlings. As she reveals, offal is a food of contradictions—it is high in nutrients but also dangerously high in cholesterol, and it can range from expensive haute cuisine to a cheap alternative for the impoverished. From tongue in Sichuan and gizzard stew in Rio de Janeiro to spicy cartilage in Calcutta, Offal sheds new light on the sometimes stomach-churning foods we consume.
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Onions and Garlic: A Global History by Martha Jay [1780235879, Format: PDF]

Onions and Garlic: A Global History (Edible) by Martha Jay

  • Print Length: 144 Pages
  • Publisher: Reaktion Books
  • Publication Date: May 15, 2016
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B01NAITRXT
  • ISBN-10: 1780235879
  • ISBN-13: 978-1780235875
  • File Format: PDF

Look at any recipe for a savory dish and chances are it will start with this step: fry onions in a pan over medium heat. Onions—and their allium family relatives, shallots, garlic, chives, and leeks—are one of the most heavily used ingredients in cuisines all over the world. You’ll rarely find them in the spotlight, though—except for when they are fried into rings or used to repel vampires. In this book, Martha Jay gives alliums their due, offering an illuminating history of these cherished plants that follows the trail of their aromas to every corner of the globe and from ancient times up to today.

Going back to the earliest recipes from ancient Mesopotamia, Jay traces the spread of alliums along trade routes through Central Asia and into ancient Greece and Rome. Likewise she follows their spread in East Asia, where they have become indispensable, and of course into Europe and the Americas, where the onion—and its odor—gave rise to the name “Chicago” and the leek became the national symbol of Wales. Celebrated, denigrated, prescribed, and proscribed, onions, garlic, and their relatives can be found—as Jay lavishly demonstrates—in the histories of peasants and kings, in cuisine and art, in tales of colonization and those of resistance, and in medicinal cures and magical potions alike. Her book is a welcome celebration of some of the most important ingredients in the world.

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Dates: A Global History by Nawal Nasrallah [1861897960, Format: PDF]

Dates: A Global History (Edible) by Nawal Nasrallah

  • Print Length: 136 Pages
  • Publisher: Reaktion Books
  • Publication Date: April 1, 2011
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B00C2PINN2
  • ISBN-10: 1861897960
  • ISBN-13: 978-1861897961
  • File Format: PDF

In Dates, Nawal Nasrallah draws on her experience of growing up in the lands of ancient Mesopotamia, where the date palm was first cultivated, to explore the history behind the fruit. Dates have an important role in their arid homeland of the Middle East, where they are a dietary staple and can be consumed fresh or dried, as a snack or a dessert, and are even thought to have aphrodisiac qualities.

In this history, Nasrallah describes the central role the date palm has played in the economy of the Middle East. This informative account of the date palm’s story follows its journey from its land of origin to the far-flung regions where it is cultivated today. Along the way, Nasrallah weaves many fascinating and humorous anecdotes that explore the etymology, history, culture, religion, myths, and legends surrounding dates. For example, she explains how the tree came to be a symbol of the Tree of Life and associated with the fiery phoenix bird, the famous ancient goddess Ishtar, and the moon, and how the medjool date acquired its name.

This delightful and unusual book is generously illustrated with many beautiful images, and supplemented with more than a dozen delicious date recipes for savory dishes, sweets, and wine.

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Rice: A Global History by Renee Marton [1780233507, Format: PDF]

Rice: A Global History (Edible) by Renee Marton

  • Print Length: 144 Pages
  • Publisher: Reaktion Books
  • Publication Date: October 15, 2014
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B011LDV5PI
  • ISBN-10: 1780233507
  • ISBN-13: 978-1780233505
  • File Format: PDF

From jambalaya to risotto, curry to nasi kandar, few foods are as ubiquitous in our meals as rice. A dietary staple and indispensable agricultural product from Asia to the Americas, the grain can be found in Michelin restaurants and family kitchens alike. In this engaging culinary history, Renee Marton explores the role rice has played in society and the food economy as it journeyed from its beginnings in Asia and West Africa to global prominence.

Examining the early years of rice’s burgeoning popularity, Marton shows that trade of the grain was driven by profit from both high status export rice and the lower-quality versions that fed countless laborers. In addition to urbanization and the increase in marketing and advertising, she reveals that rice’s rise to supremacy also came through its consumption by slave, indentured servant, and immigrant communities. She also considers the significance rice has in cultural rituals, literature, music, painting, and poetry. She even shows how the specific rice one consumes can have great importance in distinguishing one’s identity within an ethnic group. Chock full of delicious recipes from across the globe, Rice is a fascinating look at how this culinary staple has defined us.