Drawing from personal interviews, Prospero has written 28 profiles of both established and up-and-coming chefs from the Triangle region of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, Cary, and Pittsboro). Each entry reveals the chef's philosophy, influences, and personality. Each profile also describes the ambience of the chef's restaurant and offers one or two of the chef's recipes.

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME The back must slave to feed the belly. . . . In this urgent and unique book, chef Michael Gibney uses twenty-four hours to animate the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography in an upscale New York restaurant kitchen. Here readers will find all the details, in rapid-fire succession, of what it takes to deliver an exceptional plate of food—the journey to excellence by way of exhaustion. Told in second-person narrative, Sous Chef is an immersive, adrenaline-fueled run that offers a fly-on-the-wall perspective on the food service industry, allowing readers to briefly inhabit the hidden world behind the kitchen doors, in real time. This exhilarating account provides regular diners and food enthusiasts alike a detailed insider’s perspective, while offering fledgling professional cooks an honest picture of what the future holds, ultimately giving voice to the hard work and dedication around which chefs have built their careers. In a kitchen where the highest standards are upheld and one misstep can result in disaster, Sous Chef conjures a greater appreciation for the thought, care, and focus that go into creating memorable and delicious fare. With grit, wit, and remarkable prose, Michael Gibney renders a beautiful and raw account of this demanding and sometimes overlooked profession, offering a nuanced perspective on the craft and art of food and service. Praise for Sous Chef “This is excellent writing—excellent!—and it is thrilling to see a debut author who has language and story and craft so well in hand. Though I would never ask my staff to read my own book, I would happily require them to read Michael Gibney’s.”—Gabrielle Hamilton “[Michael] Gibney has the soul of a poet and the stamina of a stevedore. . . . Tender and profane, his book will leave you with a permanent appreciation for all those people who ‘desire to feed, to nourish, to dish out the tasty bits of life.’”—The New York Times Book Review “A terrific nuts-and-bolts account of the real business of cooking as told from the trenches. No nonsense. This is what it takes.”—Anthony Bourdain “A wild ride, not unlike a roller coaster, and the reader experiences all the drama, tension, exhilaration, exhaustion and relief that accompany cooking in an upscale Manhattan restaurant.”—USA Today “Vibrantly written.”—Entertainment Weekly “Sizzling . . . Such culinary experience paired with linguistic panache is a rarity.”—The Daily Beast “Reveals the high-adrenaline dance behind your dinner.”—NPR

Vivian Howard, star of PBS's A Chef's Life, celebrates the flavors of North Carolina's coastal plain in more than 200 recipes and stories. This new classic of American country cooking proves that the food of Deep Run, North Carolina -- Vivian's home -- is as rich as any culinary tradition in the world. Organized by ingredient with dishes suited to every skill level, from beginners to confident cooks, Deep Run Roots features time-honored simple preparations alongside extraordinary meals from her acclaimed restaurant Chef and the Farmer. Home cooks will find photographs for every single recipe. Ten years ago, Vivian opened Chef and the Farmer and put the nearby town of Kinston on the culinary map. But in a town paralyzed by recession, she couldn't hop on every new culinary trend. Instead, she focused on rural development: If you grew it, she'd buy it. Inundated by local sweet potatoes, blueberries, shrimp, pork, and beans, Vivian learned to cook the way generations of Southerners before her had, relying on resourcefulness, creativity, and the traditional ways of preserving food. Deep Run Roots is the result of years of effort to discover the riches of Eastern North Carolina. Like The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, and The Taste of Country Cooking before it, this is landmark work of American food writing. Recipes include: Family favorites like Blueberry BBQ Chicken Creamed Collard-Stuffed Potatoes Fried Yams with Five-Spice Maple Bacon Candy Chicken and Rice Country-Style Pork Ribs in Red Curry-Braised Watermelon Show-stopping desserts like Warm Banana Pudding, Peaches and Cream Cake, Spreadable Cheesecake, and Pecan-Chewy Pie. You'll also find 200 more quick breakfasts, weeknight dinners, holiday centerpieces, seasonal preserves, and traditional preparations for all kinds of cooks.

A Chef’s Book of Favorite Culinary Quotations features over 200 fun and inspirational quotes for anyone who loves to cook, eat, and entertain, or simply loves to dream about all of the above. Food is a major part of our lives. We all have to eat and most of us have to cook. But even though Julia Child and Irma Rombauer and other visionaries inspired us to think of cooking as a joy, most of us still need to be reminded that cooking and eating can be fun and inspirational as well as essential! A Chef’s Book of Favorite Culinary Quotations highlights words of wisdom from a wide variety of people, including those in the food world and beyond. This scrumptious collection is a perfect gift for the food lover in all of us.

The culinary philosophy of premiere chef André Chiang, whose Restaurant André is in the top 50 world's best restaurants list. Headed up by chef-owner André Chiang, Restaurant André's menu centres around his 'Octaphilosophy' taking into account Chiang's eight elements of gastronomy: salt, texture, memory, purity, terroir, south, artisan and uniqueness. Octaphilosophy, explores one year in his restaurant. Including snacks, mains and sweets over each season, and the stories and processes behind each dish, Chiang will share his unique approach to food combining the technical precision of Asian gastronomy with the Western culinary preference for produce, producers and seasonality. This volume includes 150 recipes, 95 full dishes, 22 fermented juices and 33 basic recipes. Heavily illustrated with photos of the working kitchen, and the final results, Octaphilosophy will be one of the first cookbooks to capture the emerging gastronomic scene in Asia and its leading proponent.

An approachable, comprehensive guide to the modern world of vegetables, from the leading grower of specialty vegetables in the country Near the shores of Lake Erie is a family-owned farm with a humble origin story that has become the most renowned specialty vegetable grower in America. After losing their farm in the early 1980s, a chance encounter with a French-trained chef at their farmers' market stand led the Jones family to remake their business and learn to grow unique ingredients that were considered exotic at the time, like microgreens and squash blossoms. They soon discovered chefs across the country were hungry for these prized ingredients, from Thomas Keller in Napa Valley to Daniel Boulud in New York City. Today, they provide exquisite vegetables for restaurants and home cooks across the country. The Chef's Garden grows and harvests with the notion that every part of the plant offers something unique for the plate. From a perfect-tasting carrot, to a tiny red royal turnip, to a pencil lead-thin cucumber still attached to its blossom, The Chef's Garden is constantly innovating to grow vegetables sustainably and with maximum flavor. It's a Willy Wonka factory for vegetables. In this guide and cookbook, The Chef's Garden, led by Farmer Lee Jones, shares with readers the wealth of knowledge they've amassed on how to select, prepare, and cook vegetables. Featuring more than 500 entries, from herbs, to edible flowers, to varieties of commonly known and not-so-common produce, this book will be a new bible for farmers' market shoppers and home cooks. With 100 recipes created by the head chef at The Chef's Garden Culinary Vegetable Institute, readers will learn innovative techniques to transform vegetables in their kitchens with dishes such as Ramp Top Pasta, Seared Rack of Brussels Sprouts, and Cornbread-Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms, and even sweet concoctions like Onion Caramel and Beet Marshmallows. The future of cuisine is vegetables, and Jones and The Chef's Garden are on the forefront of this revolution.

Originally published: New York: A.A. Knopf: Distributed by Random House, Inc., 1994.

Describes the L.A. street cook's life, including working in his family's restaurant as a child, figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, and his success with his food truck and restaurant.

With Think Like a Chef, Tom Colicchio has created a new kind of cookbook. Rather than list a series of restaurant recipes, he uses simple steps to deconstruct a chef's creative process, making it easily available to any home cook. He starts with techniques: What's roasting, for example, and how do you do it in the oven or on top of the stove? He also gets you comfortable with braising, sautéing, and making stocks and sauces. Next he introduces simple "ingredients" -- roasted tomatoes, say, or braised artichokes -- and tells you how to use them in a variety of ways. So those easy roasted tomatoes may be turned into anything from a vinaigrette to a caramelized tomato tart, with many delicious options in between. In a section called Trilogies, Tom takes three ingredients and puts them together to make one dish that's quick and other dishes that are increasingly more involved. As Tom says, "Juxtaposed in interesting ways, these ingredients prove that the whole can be greater than the sum of their parts," and you'll agree once you've tasted the Ragout of Asparagus, Morels, and Ramps or the Baked Free-Form "Ravioli" -- both dishes made with the same trilogy of ingredients. The final section of the books offers simple recipes for components -- from zucchini with lemon thyme to roasted endive with whole spices to boulangerie potatoes -- that can be used in endless combinations. Written in Tom's warm and friendly voice and illustrated with glorious photographs of finished dishes, Think Like a Chef will bring out the master chef in all of us.

A savory collection of more than 125 recipes from the Magnolia Grill showcases the flavors, ingredients, and culinary expertise that makes this North Carolina eatery a great repository of Southern cuisine. Reprint. (Cookbooks)