Truffle Boy

"[Ian Purkayastha] has a true, deep expertise in everything he sells--caviar, truffles, fish. He knows the stories that we need to sell the stuff tableside . . . he can disrupt the entire luxury foods market." ---From the Foreword by David Chang Ian Purkayastha is New York City's leading truffle importer and boasts a devoted clientele of top chefs nationwide, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, David Chang, Sean Brock, and David Bouley. But before he was purveying the world's most expensive fungus to the country's most esteemed chefs, Ian was just a food-obsessed teenager in rural Arkansas--a misfit with a peculiar fascination for rare and exotic ingredients. The son of an Indian immigrant father and a Texan mother, Ian learned to forage for wild mushrooms from an uncle in the Ozark hills. Thus began a single-track fixation that led him to learn about the prized but elusive truffle, the king of all fungi. His first taste of truffle at age 15 sparked his improbable yet remarkable adventure through the strange--and often corrupt--business of the exotic food trade. Rife with tales from the hidden underbelly of the elite restaurant scene, Truffle Boy chronicles Ian's high stakes dealings with a truffle kingpin in Serbia, meth-head foragers in Oregon, crooked businessmen and maniacal chefs in Manhattan, gypsy truffle hunters in the forests of Hungary, and a supreme adventure to find "Gucci mushrooms" in the Himalayan foothills--the land of the gods. He endures harsh failures along the way but rebuilds with tremendous success by selling not just truffles but also caviar, wild mushrooms, rare foraged edibles, Wagyu beef, and other nearly unobtainable ingredients demanded by his Michelin-starred clients. Truffle Boy is a thrilling coming-of-age story and the incredible but true tale of a country kid who grows up to become a force in the world of fine dining.

“The ultimate truffle true crime tale”*: A thrilling journey through the hidden underworld of the world's most prized luxury ingredient. *Bianca Bosker, New York Times bestselling author of Cork Dork Beneath the gloss of star chefs and crystal-laden tables, the truffle supply chain is touched by theft, secrecy, sabotage, and fraud. Farmers patrol their fields with rifles and fear losing trade secrets to spies. Hunters plant poisoned meatballs to eliminate rival truffle-hunting dogs. Naive buyers and even knowledgeable experts are duped by liars and counterfeits. Deeply reported and elegantly written, this page-turning exposé documents the dark, sometimes deadly crimes at each level of the truffle’s path from ground to plate, making sense of an industry that traffics in scarcity, seduction, and cash. Through it all, a question lingers: What, other than money, draws people to these dirt-covered jewels? Praise for The Truffle Underground “Investigative journalist and first-time author Jacobs does a remarkable job reporting from the front lines of the truffle industry, bringing to vivid life French black-truffle farmers, Italian white-truffle foragers, and their marvelously well-trained dogs.”—Booklist (starred review) “In The Truffle Underground, Ryan Jacobs presents a lively exposé of the truffle industry, reporting on the crimes that ‘haunt the whole supply chain.’ . . . Even if truffles are beyond your pay grade, there is plenty of enjoyment to be had in the sheer devilment portrayed in this informative and appetizing book.”—The Wall Street Journal “You’ll never look at truffle fries the same way after reading this book. . . . You can practically smell the soil as you follow truffle farmers and bandits through the groves and fields of France and Italy where the fungi are harvested and stolen.”—Outside, “Five Favorite Summer Reads” “[The] book is a rigorously reported, carefully written, endlessly interesting immersion in a high-stakes subculture.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Jacobs takes us on an eye-opening journey through the prized mushroom’s supply chain and the global black market for these tubers in this tale of theft, deceit, and high-stakes secrets.”—Real Simple

The eagerly awaited first cookbook from one of Food Network's favorite competitors on the wildly popular Iron Chef America Chef Marc Forgione opened his eponymous New York City restaurant in 2008 to widespread acclaim, becoming the youngest American-born chef and owner to receive a Michelin star in consecutive years. Upon winning Season 3 of Food Network's The Next Iron Chef, Forgione joined the ranks of former and current stars and best-selling authors such as Mario Batali and Bobby Flay. He can now be seen competing as one of the stars of the beloved Iron Chef America. Forgione's first cookbook features gorgeous photos throughout and 170 recipes with restaurant signature favorites including Chili Lobster and Chicken Under a Brick. The cookbook features not only recipes but also stories of an unlikely journey to where Chef Forgione and the restaurant are now. Flavor comes first, but Forgione is like an artist in the way he presents food. His goal with the book is not to just present a collection of recipes but to challenge home cooks and aspiring chefs, helping them to elevate their skills in the kitchen.

Boys' Life is the official youth magazine for the Boy Scouts of America. Published since 1911, it contains a proven mix of news, nature, sports, history, fiction, science, comics, and Scouting.

A village in Tuscany is the setting for this joyous debut—a novel that defies all our expectations as it puts a fresh, clever, captivating spin on the age-old tale of forbidden love. Rich in literary delights, filled with spectacular wordplay, and rife with the bawdy humor of Shakespeare’s comedies, Tomato Rhapsody is the almost-true tale of how the tomato came to Italy—at once a brilliantly inventive fable of love, lust, and longing, and a dazzling feast for the imagination. This is a story born from love—a forbidden love—between Davido, an Ebreo tomato farmer, and Mari, a beautiful Catholic girl.…But it’s not only Davido and Mari who have secrets of the heart. Everyone around them yearns for something—from Davido’s grandfather, who tenderly cultivates the tomato plant he stole on his voyages with Columbus, to Mari’s villainous stepfather, whose eye is trained on his stepdaughter’s virginity and his neighbor’s land. Caught in the midst of these passions and machinations is a village full of eccentrics who speak in rhyme, celebrate the Feast of the Drunken Saint, and live a life untouched by the passage of time. The schemes and dreams of these men and women are about to change as what is forbidden becomes too delicious to resist. Tradition, religion, and good taste collide unforgettably in a story about the courage to pursue love and tomato sauce at all costs.

Edna Lewis (1916-2006) wrote some of America's most resonant, lyrical, and significant cookbooks, including the now classic The Taste of Country Cooking. Lewis cooked and wrote as a means to explore her memories of childhood on a farm in Freetown, Virginia, a community first founded by black families freed from slavery. With such observations as "we would gather wild honey from the hollow of oak trees to go with the hot biscuits and pick wild strawberries to go with the heavy cream," she commemorated the seasonal richness of southern food. After living many years in New York City, where she became a chef and a political activist, she returned to the South and continued to write. Her reputation as a trailblazer in the revival of regional cooking and as a progenitor of the farm-to-table movement continues to grow. In this first-ever critical appreciation of Lewis's work, food-world stars gather to reveal their own encounters with Edna Lewis. Together they penetrate the mythology around Lewis and illuminate her legacy for a new generation. The essayists are Annemarie Ahearn, Mashama Bailey, Scott Alves Barton, Patricia E. Clark, Nathalie Dupree, John T. Edge, Megan Elias, John T. Hill (who provides iconic photographs of Lewis), Vivian Howard, Lily Kelting, Francis Lam, Jane Lear, Deborah Madison, Kim Severson, Ruth Lewis Smith, Toni Tipton-Martin, Michael W. Twitty, Alice Waters, Kevin West, Susan Rebecca White, Caroline Randall Williams, and Joe Yonan. Editor Sara B. Franklin provides an illuminating introduction to Lewis, and the volume closes graciously with afterwords by Lewis's sister, Ruth Lewis Smith, and niece, Nina Williams-Mbengue.

JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER IACP Cookbook Award finalist In the face of apocalyptic climate change, a former fisherman shares a bold and hopeful new vision for saving the planet: farming the ocean. Here Bren Smith—pioneer of regenerative ocean agriculture—introduces the world to a groundbreaking solution to the global climate crisis. A genre-defining “climate memoir,” Eat Like a Fish interweaves Smith’s own life—from sailing the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers to developing new forms of ocean farming to surfing the frontiers of the food movement—with actionable food policy and practical advice on ocean farming. Written with the humor and swagger of a fisherman telling a late-night tale, it is a powerful story of environmental renewal, and a must-read guide to saving our oceans, feeding the world, and—by creating new jobs up and down the coasts—putting working class Americans back to work.