Appetites: A Cookbook: Anthony Bourdain

Product Information

This is not an inexpensive book, and considering its purpose, it's impractically bound in off-white fabric. Attractive, but good lord, what genius thought that was a smart idea? Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. It often indicates a user profile. Actually, this is a book I need to buy. It’s one of those book you get out of the library just so you can look through it and decide whether or not it’s something you really need on your shelf.

How brilliant to release this just before Thanksgiving. I've obsessed over his recipes for the last 2 days. My husband said "this year is going to be epic, baby!" We have a deep, mutual love for Bourdain. I hand wrote the weeks food planning. What I share with Tony is focused preparation, a desire to entertain, a need for my food to be effing amazing, and for everyone to have a good time or get out! This book screams of these and I soaked it all up. I was one of the very first to review his previous book. I am always certain to have them immediately. Because I love him. The recipes themselves lean more practical than I expected - the kitchen experience is here as efficiency is the central component of each, as far as I can tell. Seafood is his kryptonite so it makes sense that's where the heart of the book lies, but he makes room for comfort foods like mac' n cheese and biscuits and gravy. No dessert, though, so if that's a dealbreaker you'll want to avoid this one. Underneath its carefully curated punk aesthetic and ripped-from-the-(now ex-)family recipes, "Appetites" is also unintentionally a meditation on life and how it should be lived. Reading Bourdain's commentaries, you get the sense that “Appetites” reflects the man and his experiences. Perhaps because I lived a deliberately safe and sheltered life, I can taste the textures and tones that went into his. When you live your life in the world, devouring all that you see, you're marinating in what you consume. You are what you eat, literally, emotionally, and figuratively.

Publishers Text

Anthony Bourdain is aman of many appetites. And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends. Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down Anthony Bourdain is a man of many appetites. And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends. Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites—dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed “bad boy” of cooking, Mr. Bourdain has, in recent years, become the father of a little girl—a role he has embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he now enjoys entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, have caused him, in his words, to have “morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten.” The result is a home-cooking, home-entertaining cookbook like no other, with personal favorites from his own kitchen and from his travels, translated into an effective battle plan that will help you terrify your guests with your breathtaking efficiency. [126]…more Appetites: A Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain – eBook Details I'm just going to start with a disclaimer: I am not the target audience for this cookbook. I love reading books about food, but full disclosure: I am vegan, so I'm never going to make most of these recipes. Many of the recipes that could be easily made vegan contain huge amounts of oil (seriously, there are recipes that call for CUPS of oil!). Ugh. Bourdain explains in his introduction that this is his family cookbook. It should be noted that, as this book was published, Bourdain abandoned his family for his television work. "These are the dishes I like to eat and that I like to feed my family and friends. They are the recipes that ‘work,’ meaning they've been developed over time and have been informed by repetition and long -- and often painful -- experience.” On New England Clam Chowder: There is only one chowder. All else is soup. And I’m a purist. YES! I’m going to have to try this recipe.

I've heard complaints that some recipes were so simple it insulted ones intelligence and some so out there who would make that? And I can only think, so Bourdain. Most of the recipes are for the things he liked to eat … pastrami sandwich, burgers, spaghetti dishes, ramen/miso and some other more exotic type of fare. I will say that the curation of recipes is obviously done by Bourdain and not too many cookbooks would cover as wide a ground of super complicated/fancy recipes to everyday stuff like sandwiches or three to four ingredient pasta.The response I'm looking for is to hear from someone from the neighborhood saying, "How did you ever find that place? I thought only we knew about it. It's truly a place that we love and is reflective of our culture and our neighborhood." I like a cookbook that teaches me new words. From Anthony Bourdain in this book, I learned that certain terms to describe cuts of beef are marketing bullshit and "douche bait." That phrase right there is valuable knowledge I can use over and over. So there it is... hold hands, and all together now... "It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all...."

That means you get recipes for Sausage and Pepper Hero with a shot of Bourdain eating on the toilet (pants up; he’s no Zappa), and an explanation of how he can't resist this street food, "served at temperatures that would be probably be considered suboptimal by the New York State Department of Health, squashed on a dirty griddle and then piled into a squishy hero roll with some browned onions and peppers, the whole thing a greasy, soggy, unmanageable mess that generally falls apart in my hands before I can eat it. And within an hour of consumption, I'm s**ting like a mink." As a restaurant professional, Bourdain spent his life on the fringes of normality – he worked while normal people played, and played while normal people slept. Since then he has settled (kind of) into family life and is cooking for the people he loves rather than people who pay. These are the recipes he turns to when called in for pancake service at sleepover parties or when preparing a violence-free family dinner.

Bourdain's pulled pork was a showstopper that can feed a crowd

B.J. Carpenter wrote the cookbook "Come, You Taste" to capture the recipes that immigrants brought with them to the Iron Range, including I started working as a dishwasher one summer and it was really a big event for me, because up to that point I was lazy. I was the kid that if you hired me to shovel your walk in winter, I would really do a terrible job of it, probably find a way to weasel out. ... Edgy, evocative photography by Bobby Fisher and a cover from artist Ralph Steadman (known for his work with Hunter S. Thompson) make Appetites a visually distinct entry to the 2016 cookbook lineup. Go, take a look inside: If freshness and hygiene is a question, generally it's tribal situations that are problematic, where the whole tribe, the chief is offering you something that's what they have. Often they don't have refrigeration, it's often old — their tolerance for meat that's even spoiled is higher than [that of] my relatively sensitive stomach. Often these dishes are eaten in one large bowl with the whole tribe jamming their fingers in. So yeah, rotten food, food that's clearly not clean, water that's clearly not good — those are a challenge. Anthony Bourdain is man of many appetites. And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends. Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites—dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed "bad boy" of cooking, Mr. Bourdain has, in recent years, become the father of a little girl—a role he has embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he now enjoys entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, have caused him, in his words, to have "morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten." The result is a home-cooking, home-entertaining cookbook like no other, with personal favorites from his own kitchen and from his travels, translated into an effective battle plan that will help you terrify your guests with your breathtaking efficiency. Read More