Sous Chef

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME The back must slave to feed the belly. . . . In this urgent and unique book, chef Michael Gibney uses twenty-four hours to animate the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography in an upscale New York restaurant kitchen. Here readers will find all the details, in rapid-fire succession, of what it takes to deliver an exceptional plate of food—the journey to excellence by way of exhaustion. Told in second-person narrative, Sous Chef is an immersive, adrenaline-fueled run that offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the food service industry, allowing readers to briefly inhabit the hidden world behind the kitchen doors, in real time. This exhilarating account provides regular diners and food enthusiasts alike a detailed insider’s perspective, while offering fledgling professional cooks an honest picture of what the future holds, ultimately giving voice to the hard work and dedication around which chefs have built their careers. In a kitchen where the highest standards are upheld and one misstep can result in disaster, Sous Chef conjures a greater appreciation for the thought, care, and focus that go into creating memorable and delicious fare. With grit, wit, and remarkable prose, Michael Gibney renders a beautiful and raw account of this demanding and sometimes overlooked profession, offering a nuanced perspective on the craft and art of food and service. Praise for Sous Chef “This is excellent writing—excellent!—and it is thrilling to see a debut author who has language and story and craft so well in hand. Though I would never ask my staff to read my own book, I would happily require them to read Michael Gibney’s.”—Gabrielle Hamilton “[Michael] Gibney has the soul of a poet and the stamina of a stevedore. . . . Tender and profane, his book will leave you with a permanent appreciation for all those people who ‘desire to feed, to nourish, to dish out the tasty bits of life.’”—The New York Times Book Review “A terrific nuts-and-bolts account of the real business of cooking as told from the trenches. No nonsense. This is what it takes.”—Anthony Bourdain “A wild ride, not unlike a roller coaster, and the reader experiences all the drama, tension, exhilaration, exhaustion and relief that accompany cooking in an upscale Manhattan restaurant.”—USA Today “Vibrantly written.”—Entertainment Weekly “Sizzling . . . Such culinary experience paired with linguistic panache is a rarity.”—The Daily Beast “Reveals the high-adrenaline dance behind your dinner.”—NPR

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME The back must slave to feed the belly. . . . In this urgent and unique book, chef Michael Gibney uses twenty-four hours to animate the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography in an upscale New York restaurant kitchen. Here readers will find all the details, in rapid-fire succession, of what it takes to deliver an exceptional plate of food—the journey to excellence by way of exhaustion. Told in second-person narrative, Sous Chef is an immersive, adrenaline-fueled run that offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the food service industry, allowing readers to briefly inhabit the hidden world behind the kitchen doors, in real time. This exhilarating account provides regular diners and food enthusiasts alike a detailed insider’s perspective, while offering fledgling professional cooks an honest picture of what the future holds, ultimately giving voice to the hard work and dedication around which chefs have built their careers. In a kitchen where the highest standards are upheld and one misstep can result in disaster, Sous Chef conjures a greater appreciation for the thought, care, and focus that go into creating memorable and delicious fare. With grit, wit, and remarkable prose, Michael Gibney renders a beautiful and raw account of this demanding and sometimes overlooked profession, offering a nuanced perspective on the craft and art of food and service. Praise for Sous Chef “This is excellent writing—excellent!—and it is thrilling to see a debut author who has language and story and craft so well in hand. Though I would never ask my staff to read my own book, I would happily require them to read Michael Gibney’s.”—Gabrielle Hamilton “[Michael] Gibney has the soul of a poet and the stamina of a stevedore. . . . Tender and profane, his book will leave you with a permanent appreciation for all those people who ‘desire to feed, to nourish, to dish out the tasty bits of life.’”—The New York Times Book Review “A terrific nuts-and-bolts account of the real business of cooking as told from the trenches. No nonsense. This is what it takes.”—Anthony Bourdain “A wild ride, not unlike a roller coaster, and the reader experiences all the drama, tension, exhilaration, exhaustion and relief that accompany cooking in an upscale Manhattan restaurant.”—USA Today “Vibrantly written.”—Entertainment Weekly “Sizzling . . . Such culinary experience paired with linguistic panache is a rarity.”—The Daily Beast “Reveals the high-adrenaline dance behind your dinner.”—NPR

The Pocket Sous Chef —Da Vinci’s Guide to Cooking for 1 + 1 is a cookbook about falling in love with cooking again. Many people who are single or have busy lifestyles don’t identify with a lot of cookbooks, because they don’t fit in with their lifestyle. Da Vinci wrote The Pocket Sous Chef with singles, couples, students, and busy professionals in mind. No longer will you need to slave over a hot stove just to make one meal for yourself or two plates of food. Now there is an easy guide with more than sixty recipes—breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, desserts, and drinks—to lead home cooks in the right direction and allow you to fall in love with making good food for yourself or your plus-one!

A beautiful, minimalist cookbook that invites you to take a more mindful approach to every meal. CONSIDER A SLOWER, MORE MINDFUL APPROACH TO COOKING and eating together. A way to disconnect from the outside world's distractions and truly connect to each other and yourself. A moment to take the time to enjoy and elevate the experience of every day cooking. For Philip and Mystique (the co-creators and couple behind the blog Chef Sous Chef), this approach in the kitchen is a way of life. Mystique is the "sous" to Philip's "chef," and through her elegant, authentic touches, his delicious dishes come to life. In their debut cookbook, they share their simple, stunning recipes, and the stories and memories behind them. Eat with Us's recipes are inspired by Philip and Mystique's family favorites growing up and the multicultural city they live in. The chapters are organized by occasion to reflect the way we truly eat today: Simple (weekday meals), Comfort (food for the soul), Lavish (special occasions), Al Fresco (dining outdoors), and Feasts (larger parties). From breakfast (Baked Eggs in Tomatillo Sauce with Bacon) to dinner (Channa Curry with Coconut Milk), and salads (Fig Panzanella with Ricotta and Basil) to sweets (Salted Brown Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies), these recipes celebrate and elevate home cooking. In Eat with Us, Philip and Mystique invite you to read, cook, eat, savor, connect and unwind.

Just as Hugh Acheson brought a chef's mind to the slow cooker in The Chef and the Slow Cooker, so he brings a home cook's perspective to sous vide, with 90 recipes that demystify the technology for readers and unlock all of its potential. NAMED ONE OF FALL'S BEST COOKBOOKS BY FOOD & WINE Whether he’s working with fire and a pan, your grandpa’s slow cooker, or a cutting-edge sous vide setup, Hugh Acheson wants to make your cooking life easier, more fun, and more delicious. And while cooking sous vide—a method where food is sealed in plastic bags or glass jars, then cooked in a precise, temperature-controlled water bath—used to be for chefs in high-end restaurants, Hugh is here to help home cooks bring this rather friendly piece of technology into their kitchens. The beauty of sous vide is its ease and consistency—it can cook a steak medium-rare, or a piece of fish to tender, just-doneness every single time . . . and hold it there until you're ready to eat, whether dinner is in ten minutes or eight hours away. But to unlock the method’s creative secrets, Hugh shows you how to get the best sear on that steak after it comes out of the bath, demonstrates which dishes play best with extra-long, extra-slow cooking, and opens up the whole world of vegetables to a technology most known for cooking meat and fish. Praise for Sous Vide “High-end cooking comes to the home kitchen in this fun, clear approach to a gourmet technique. . . . [Hugh] Acheson writes with such charm that he can make warm water interesting.”—Publishers Weekly

“A bold and passionate new collection... Intimacy is rarely conveyed as gracefully as in Bass’s lustrous poems.” —Booklist Indigo, the newest collection by Ellen Bass, merges elegy and praise poem in an exploration of life’s complexities. Whether her subject is oysters, high heels, a pork chop, a beloved dog, or a wife’s return to health, Bass pulls us in with exquisite immediacy. Her lush and precisely observed descriptions allow us to feel the sheer primal pleasure of being alive in our own “succulent skin,” the pleasure of the gifts of hunger, desire, touch. In this book, joy meets regret, devotion meets dependence, and most importantly, the poet so in love with life and living begins to look for the point where the price of aging overwhelms the rewards of staying alive. Bass is relentless in her advocacy for the little pleasures all around her. Her gaze is both expansive and hyperfocused, celebrating (and eulogizing) each gift as it is given and taken, while also taking stock of the larger arc. She draws the lines between generations, both remembering her parents’ lives and deaths and watching her own children grow into the space that she will leave behind. Indigo shows us the beauty of this cycle, while also documenting the deeply human urge to resist change and hang on to the life we have, even as it attempts to slip away.

A revolution in cooking Sous vide is the culinary innovation that has everyone in the food world talking. In this revolutionary new cookbook, Thomas Keller, America's most respected chef, explains why this foolproof technique, which involves cooking at precise temperatures below simmering, yields results that other culinary methods cannot. For the first time, one can achieve short ribs that are meltingly tender even when cooked medium rare. Fish, which has a small window of doneness, is easier to finesse, and shellfish stays succulent no matter how long it's been on the stove. Fruit and vegetables benefit, too, retaining color and flavor while undergoing remarkable transformations in texture. The secret to sous vide is in discovering the precise amount of heat required to achieve the most sublime results. Through years of trial and error, Keller and his chefs de cuisine have blazed the trail to perfection—and they show the way in this collection of never-before-published recipes from his landmark restaurants—The French Laundry in Napa Valley and per se in New York. With an introduction by the eminent food-science writer Harold McGee, and artful photography by Deborah Jones, who photographed Keller's best-selling The French Laundry Cookbook, this book will be a must for every culinary professional and anyone who wants to up the ante and experience food at the highest level.

2018 James Beard Award Winner: Best American Cookbook Named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2017 by NPR, The Village Voice, Smithsonian Magazine, UPROXX, New York Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Mpls. St. PaulMagazine and others Here is real food—our indigenous American fruits and vegetables, the wild and foraged ingredients, game and fish. Locally sourced, seasonal, “clean” ingredients and nose-to-tail cooking are nothing new to Sean Sherman, the Oglala Lakota chef and founder of The Sioux Chef. In his breakout book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, Sherman shares his approach to creating boldly seasoned foods that are vibrant, healthful, at once elegant and easy. Sherman dispels outdated notions of Native American fare—no fry bread or Indian tacos here—and no European staples such as wheat flour, dairy products, sugar, and domestic pork and beef. The Sioux Chef’s healthful plates embrace venison and rabbit, river and lake trout, duck and quail, wild turkey, blueberries, sage, sumac, timpsula or wild turnip, plums, purslane, and abundant wildflowers. Contemporary and authentic, his dishes feature cedar braised bison, griddled wild rice cakes, amaranth crackers with smoked white bean paste, three sisters salad, deviled duck eggs, smoked turkey soup, dried meats, roasted corn sorbet, and hazelnut–maple bites. The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen is a rich education and a delectable introduction to modern indigenous cuisine of the Dakota and Minnesota territories, with a vision and approach to food that travels well beyond those borders.