Showing titles in Gastronomy

For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way? The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production.

Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating alongside perfect strangers in a loud and crowded room to be an enjoyable pastime? To find the answer, Rebecca Spang takes us back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a quasi-medicinal bouillon not unlike the bone broths of today.

Spending time in nature is good for both our bodies and minds - but with our hectic lives (not to mention the unreliable British weather), it can be hard to get outside as much as we'd like. But fear not: we've selected some of BBC Radio 4's best nature documentaries to transport you to the great outdoors - and encourage you to take your own trip into the wild.

Do you know what the first burger chain was? That Taco Bell was originally known as Bell Burger - and was founded in the same city as McDonald's? Have you heard of the 1980s burger wars? All About the Burger covers all of these topics and more! Discover the food history you've been missing in this entertaining audiobook.

As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.

In Tuscany celebrates the abundant pleasures of life in Italy as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants and markets, in the kitchen and on the piazza, in the vineyards, fields, and olive groves. Combining essays by Frances Mayes and a chapter by her husband, poet Edward Mayes, each of this book's five sections highlights a signature aspect of Tuscan life.

Throughout a career spanning 30 years, well-known food critic and writer (and little-known collector of spice grinders of eclectic origin) Marryam H. Reshii has had a relentless love affair with spices. Such has been her passion that she has travelled across the country and to various corners of the world - crushing, grinding, frying and tasting - in a bid to understand every aspect of these magnificent ingredients.

France is in a rut, and so is French cuisine. Twenty-five years ago it was hard to have a bad meal in France; now, in some cities and towns, it is a challenge to find a good one. For the first time in the annals of modern cooking, the most influential chefs and the most talked-about restaurants in the world are not French. Within France, large segments of the wine industry are in crisis, cherished artisanal cheeses are threatened with extinction, and bistros and brasseries are disappearing at an alarming rate.

This classic follows coffee's journey around the world, from London to Brazil, telling in fascinating detail and amusing anecdote the singular history of the legendary commodity - from the discovery that chewing on the beans were keeping goats awake in Yemen to the author's own experiences with the bean in 1935.

Having conquered the world's taste buds and established itself as a staple in our daily lives, coffee has mirrored the moods and movements of society for centuries - yet, how much do we know about its history? In his riveting new book, A Short History of Coffee, Gordon Kerr investigates the fascinating history behind the global obsession with coffee, from its Ethiopian origins, the legends, myths, geographical locations and somewhat eccentric characters that have helped make it the staple that it is today.

Like the savory, simple dishes she favored, M. F. K. Fisher's writing was often "short, stylish, concentrated in flavor, and varied in form", writes Joan Reardon in her introduction to this eclectic, lively collection. Magazine writing launched and helped to sustain Fisher's long, illustrious career and in these 57 pieces, we experience again the inimitable voice of the woman widely known to have elevated food writing to a literary art.

Cask Strength is more than a history book. In it, Mike Gerrard, an award-winning travel and drinks writer, investigates the making, buying, and selling of barrels and details how drinks like wine, tequila, rum, cognac, and others are enhanced by specific kinds of barrel production.

Throughout Maya Angelou’s life, from her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, to her world travels as a bestselling writer, good food has played a central role. Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and connection. Now in Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, Angelou shares memories pithy and poignant—and the recipes that helped to make them both indelible and irreplaceable.

You've seen the headlines: Parmesan cheese made from sawdust. Lobster rolls containing no lobster at all. Extra-virgin olive oil that isn't. Fake foods are in our supermarkets, our restaurants, and our kitchen cabinets. Award-winning food journalist and travel writer Larry Olmsted exposes this pervasive and dangerous fraud perpetrated on unsuspecting Americans.

Have you ever pondered... What led to the creation of the humble sandwich? Why does chocolate have that irresistible allure? What's the story behind our morning cup of coffee? Like the ever-curious, you've perhaps questioned the origins of these everyday items on your plate. Prepare yourself for an enlightening journey as you uncover your favorite foods' unexpected and perhaps slightly peculiar history.

This enticingly fresh audiobook introduces modern listeners to lost American food traditions and leads them on a tantalizing culinary journey through the evolution of our vibrant cuisine and culture. Covering a hundred different foods from the Native American-era through today and featuring over a dozen recipes and photos, this fascinating history of American food will delight history buffs and food lovers alike.

Mezcal. In recent years, the oldest spirit in the Americas has been reinvented as a pricy positional good popular among booze connoisseurs and the mixologists who use it as a cocktail ingredient. Unlike most high-end distillates, most small-batch mezcal is typically produced by and for subsistence farming communities, often under challenging conditions.

Every home cook has thoughts on the right and wrong ways to use spices. These beliefs are passed down in family recipes and pronounced by television chefs, but where do such ideas come from? Many are little better than superstition, and most serve only to reinforce a cook's sense of superiority or cover for their insecurities. It doesn't have to be this way. These notes On Spice come from three generations of a family in the spice trade, and dozens upon dozens of their collected spice guides and stories.

Foraging is not just a throwback to our hunter-gatherer past; it's a way to reconnect with the landscape. And Langdon Cook is not just your typical grocery cart-toting dad. For him, gourmet delicacies abound, free for the taking if we just open our eyes. As a result, he finds himself free-diving in icy Puget Sound in hopes of spearing a snaggletooth lingcod, armed with nothing more than a "Hawaiian sling." He bushwhacks through rugged mountain forests in search of edible mushrooms. He strings up a fly rod to chase after sea-run trout.

A settant'anni suonati, dopo aver passato oltre un ventennio a raccogliere, e provare (!), le tante ricette regionali, Artusi pubblica "La Scienza in cucina e l'Arte di mangiar bene", destinato a diventare una vera e propria bibbia popolare. Spartiacque nella cultura gastronomica italiana, ha subito conquistato, con la sua prosa limpida e vivace e i gustosi aneddoti, un posto nei cuori, nelle biblioteche e nelle cucine dell’intero paese. Con questo titolo debutta la collana AudioCook a cura di Luisanna Messeri, talentuosa scrittrice e volto amato della cucina in tv. Ospite fisso alla Prova del Cuoco, dove sforna con vulcanica allegria piatti ispirati alla grande tradizione nostrana.