A wildly inventive excursion through the creation of our daily bread—and our occasional carp à l’ancienne.
Four hours? A gimmick, to be sure, but a good one to lure you into this rangy, obsessive immersion in food and its many wonders.
We should become more conversant with the pot, the pan and all that issues therefrom, writes life-improvement guru Ferriss (The 4-Hour Body, 2010, etc.). You have so much to lose by not doing so. Eating well tones your body and mind, impresses people and increases your mating advantage. Even more, the tools needed to learn to cook well can be deployed in every manner of endeavor, from skinning a deer to memorizing a deck of cards. The author distills them into minimal, learnable units and examines how to order the units so as to keep readers engaged in their endeavors. Ferriss is a beguiling guide to this process, at once charmingly smart aleck-y and deadly serious, and he aims to make readers knowledgeable and freethinking. The author demonstrates how to hold a knife and cut an onion, but he also provides an engagement with the outdoors—how to build a shelter and butcher a kill, how to shop in Calcutta’s outdoor market and recognize a squirrel’s chirp (“akin to a Jack Russell digging through a chalkboard”). Ferriss also examines better eating through chemistry, which leads quite naturally to an extended encounter with Grant Achatz’s legendarily avant-garde cuisine—e.g., cigar-infused tequila hot chocolate. Ferriss is everywhere—preventing fat gain when you binge, poaching an egg, butchering a chicken, using liquid nitrogen, making a bacon rose—but is always focused on the main course: good eating.
A wildly inventive excursion through the creation of our daily bread—and our occasional carp à l’ancienne.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0547884592
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Amazon/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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