In many ways, I feel like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is the companion reader to Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation,” a book that first sent a shockwave throughout the American food industry in 2005, by holding up a mirror to our current eating habits. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” written by Michael Pollan and published in 2006, raises [...]

For anyone who has ever cooked professionally, “Don’t Try This at Home” may feel a little too familiar at times. Edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman, this short story collection is an engaging compendium of classic kitchen war stories, written first-person by an impressive roster of America’s most well-known chefs (along with a handful [...]

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a unique connection to Michael Ruhlman’s 2006 book, “The Reach of a Chef”: I happen to be the “UCLA graduate who worked in L.A. entertainment and also the dot-com world before it burst” on page 81. Ruhlman had visited my Skills I class for several days in [...]

I purchased a copy of Ferran Adrià’s “A Day at elBulli” today, although I wondered if I even had any business doing so. After all, Catalonia’s famed elBulli restaurant is at the epicenter of the molecular gastronomy movement, and Adrià’s culinary techniques often employ chemicals and equipment that would be very difficult to turn up, [...]

Food writer Stewart Lee Allen offers a unique approach to culinary history with his book “In the Devil’s Garden,” a collection of essays cleverly divided into seven sinful chapters. Allen’s book, which runs the gamut from lust to anger, addresses an impressive array of food-related topics, from the taboos of cannibalism to the near-mythical delicacy [...]

Ten years ago, successfully naming five of the red Bordeaux varietals was enough to establish your wine-drinking credibility. Twenty years ago, this may have qualified you as an expert. Of course, back in the heyday of Hearty Burgundy, times were much simpler. These days, as wine has gained popularity in the United States, the stakes [...]

During my first six weeks of culinary school, I spent many afternoons trolling the campus storeroom, trying to learn the differences between things like ginger and galangal or radicchio and red cabbage. The sheer inventory of the storeroom was impressive: a veritable dungeon, this area was stocked with foodstuffs ranging from the exotic to the [...]

If I was ever granted the opportunity to teach a food-writing class, I would certainly assign Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” and Bill Buford’s “Heat” as required texts. These are two books that simply beg to be compared and contrasted. On the surface, both books rely upon engaging narratives, and they both do an outstanding job [...]

The last book I read before attending chef school was “Kitchen Confidential,” Anthony Bourdain’s quasi-autobiography about (as he puts it) life in the culinary underbelly. To say that this book was inspiring would be an understatement. It was, in fact, a call to arms, a rally cry. Bourdain’s memoir made cooking professionally seem like rock [...]