From the writers of acclaimed blog Pen & Palate, a humorous coming-of-age (and mastering-the-art-of-home-cooking) memoir of friendship, told through stories, recipes, and beautiful illustrations. Getting through life in your twenties isn't easy--especially if you're broke, awkward, and prone to starting small grease fires in your studio apartment. For best friends Lucy Madison and Tram Nguyen, cooking was an escape from the daily humiliation that is being a twenty-something woman in a big city. PEN & PALATE traces the course of Lucy and Tram's devoted friendship through miserable jobs and tiny apartments, first loves and ill-advised flings, successes and setbacks--always with a shared love of food at the center of the narrative. A modern take on Laurie Colwin's classic Home Cooking, this coming-of-age memoir for the Girls set weaves together comical (mis)adventures and recipes meant to be shared with a best friend and bottle of wine.

Whether you know it or not, you become a chemist any time you step into a kitchen. As you cook, you oversee intricate chemical transformations that would test even the most hardened of professional chemists. Focussing on how and why we cook different dishes the way we do, this book introduces basic chemistry through everyday foods and meal preparations. Through its unique meal-by-meal organisation, the book playfully explores the chemistry that turns our food into meals. Topics covered range from roasting coffee beans to scrambling eggs and gluten development in breads. The book features many experiments that you can try in your own kitchen, such as exploring the melting properties of cheese, retaining flavour when cooking and pairing wines with foods. Through molecular chemistry, biology, neuroscience, physics and agriculture, the author discusses various aspects of cooking and food preparation. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the science behind cooking.

Explore the wonderful world of vegetables with Vegetables: The Ultimate Cookbook. A celebration of vegetables by chef and farmer Laura Sorkin. Learn about where specific vegetables originated, which countries produce the largest amount of radishes, how to select the best avocado, ways to use jicama, and more. With this book on hand, it's easy to delight all tastes by making vegetables the star of any dish. Inside you'll find: - 300+ easy-to-follow recipes, including options for snacks, salads, soups, stews, side dishes, and entrees - A heavily illustrated A-Z of over 50 vegetables comprised of the author's expertise as both a chef and farmer - Mouthwatering photography, archival imagery, and colorful original illustrations - Recipes for essential ingredients, including stocks, pastas and noodles, dumpling wrappers, and condiments - Thoughtful analysis of various farming methods Laura Sorkin was born in New York City and grew up in Connecticut. She has a BA from McGill University, a Culinary degree from the French Culinary Institute, and a Masters of Environmental Management from Duke University. She ran an organic vegetable farm for over 15 years and has been co-owner of Runamok Maple since 2009. Laura has written for Edible Green Mountains, Kids VT, Seven Days, Modern Farmer, Local Banquet, Northern Woodlands, and Better Homes and Gardens. She lives in northwestern Vermont with her husband and two children.

Cookbook author, TV chef and food writer Terry Tan takes a trip down memory lane in "Stir-Fried and Not Shaken," TanAEs intriguing memoir into Singapore's past. Lap up the mirth of TanAEs anecdotal observations, and enjoy memories that would otherwise be relegated to the mists of history.

Why are most of us so woefully uninformed about our kitchen knives? We are intimidated by our knives when they are sharp, annoyed by them when they are dull, and quietly ashamed that we don't know how to use them with any competence. For a species that has been using knives for nearly as long as we have been walking upright, that's a serious problem. "An Edge in the Kitchen" is the solution, an intelligent and delightful debunking of the mysteries of kitchen knives once and for all. If you can stack blocks, you can cut restaurant-quality diced vegetables. If you can fold a paper airplane, you can sharpen your knives better than many professionals.

Veteran cook Chad Ward provides an in-depth guide to the most important tool in the kitchen, including how to choose the best kitchen knives in your price range, practical tutorials on knife skills, a step-by-step section on sharpening, and more----all illustrated with beautiful photographs throughout. Along the way you will discover what a cow sword is, and why you might want one; why chefs are abandoning their heavy knives in droves; and why the Pinch and the Claw, strange as they may sound, are in fact the best way to make precision vegetable cuts with speed and style.

"An Edge in the Kitchen" is the one and only guide to the most important tool in the kitchen.

This book explores food from a philosophical perspective, bringing together sixteen leading philosophers to consider the most basic questions about food: What is it exactly? What should we eat? How do we know it is safe? How should food be distributed? What is good food? David M. Kaplan's erudite and informative introduction grounds the discussion, showing how philosophers since Plato have taken up questions about food, diet, agriculture, and animals. However, until recently, few have considered food a standard subject for serious philosophical debate. Each of the essays in this book brings in-depth analysis to many contemporary debates in food studies - Slow Food, sustainability, food safety, and politics - and addresses such issues as "happy meat", aquaculture, veganism, and table manners. The result is an extraordinary resource that guides readers to think more clearly and responsibly about what we consume and how we provide for ourselves, and illuminates the reasons why we act as we do.