Share the unsurpassed pleasures of discovering, cooking, and eating good, simple food with this beloved book. Equal parts cookbook and memoir, Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking combines her insightful, good-humored writing style with her lifelong passion for wonderful cuisine in essays such as Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir, and Stuffed Breast of Veal: A Bad Idea. Home Cooking is truly a feast for the body and soul.

Nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell resovled to reclaim her life by cooking, in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves' livers andaspic, but a new life -- lived with gusto.

Whether acclaimed food writer Madhur Jaffrey was climbing the mango trees in her grandparents' orchard in Delhi or picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint, tucked into freshly baked spiced pooris, today these childhood pleasures evoke for her the tastes and textures of growing up.

This memoir is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to prompt memory, vividly bringing to life a lost time and place. Included here are recipes for more than thirty delicious dishes recovered from Jaffrey's childhood.

In 1971, it was nearly impossible to find a cappuccino or a croissant in this country, and goat cheese and mesclun were virtually unheard of. Then a Francophile named Alice Waters and her motley coterie of dreamers turned an old stucco house in Berkeley into the birthplace of a new food culture _ one that incorporated fresh, local ingredients and progressive ideas in a venue reminscent of a Marseille waterfront tavern. It was called Chez Panisse and Waters would eventually be called the mother of american cooking. Based on unprecedented access to Waters and her inner circle, this authorized biography offers an intimate portrait of the maverick who reeducated the American palate.

Rarely has a man defined the spirit of an age as well as Alexis Soyer, popular hero of the Crimean War. Soyer designed the famous kitchens of the Reform Club, which he filled with ingenious inventions such as the gas stove. He devised the sauces that would make household names of Mr. Crosse and Mr. Blackwell and he set up revolutionary soup kitchens during the Irish potato famine. Later in his career, he travelled to the Crimea where he transformed army catering, saving many soldiers from starvation. Yet this heroic figure was also a secret bigamist and alcoholic who died penniless and dropped completely from public view after his untimely death. Today the grave of one of the most enigmatic and extraordinary figures of the Victorian age lies neglected in Kensal Green cemetery.

The Shameless Carnivore explores the complexityies surrouding the choice to eat meat as well as its myriad pleasures. Delving into everything from ethical issues to dietary, anthropological, and medical findings, Gold answers such probing questions as: Can staying carnivorous be more healthful than going vegetarian? What's behind the "tastes like chicken" phenomenon? And, of course, What qualities should you look for in a butcher? The author also chronicles his attempt to become the "ultimate carnivore" by eating 31 different meats in 31 days (as well as every cut and organ of a cow). He includes tasty recipes and describes his experiences hunting squirrels in Louisiana, attending the annual Testicle Festival, and even spending an entire, painstaking week as a vegetarian.