A lively romp into the frenetic life of a significant American chef.
One man's journey from short-order cook to acclaimed chef.
As Van Aken (My Key West Kitchen: Recipes and Stories, 2012, etc.) readily admits in his delightful, oftentimes laugh-out-loud memoir, his journey into the life of restaurant cooking occurred by happenstance: He needed a job, and a diner needed a cook, no experience necessary. What unfolded over a 20-plus-year span was the slow maturation of a teen into a man and of a clumsy and untrained novice into a chef who rode the edge of the New American cuisine wave as it broke on the shores of America. From Illinois to Key West, Van Aken takes readers behind the scenes and deep into the hearts of the restaurants for which he worked, where the kitchen life was energized, hectic and often swelteringly hot. With no formal schooling in the culinary arts, the author watched like a hawk, asked numerous questions and read cookbooks by some of the best chefs in the world while learning the ins and outs of French cuisine, ethnic Latin American, Italian and Japanese foods, as well as the new fusion style of American cooking. At first, however, he did it all with a certain amount of reluctance, as he writes: "A kitchen job again? Oh my God! What crimes did I do in a former life to merit this role again?" Nicely intertwined with the fast-paced antics of the kitchen are Van Aken's reflections on his romantic life with his wife and son. The author pays homage to the many chefs who influenced him in his career and recounts moments with some of the greats, like Julia Child, Charlie Trotter and Emeril Lagasse. As an added bonus, Van Aken includes a wide variety of recipes mentioned in the text.
A lively romp into the frenetic life of a significant American chef.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58979-914-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Taylor Trade
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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