Renaissance Italy's art, literature, and culture continue to fascinate. The domestic life has been examined more in recent years, and this book reveals the preparation, eating, and the sociability of dining in Renaissance Italy. It takes readers behind the scenes to the Renaissance kitchen and dining room, where everyday meals as well as lavish banquets were prepared and consumed. Katherine McIver considers the design, equipment, and location of the kitchen and food prep and storage rooms in both middle-class homes and grand country estates. The diner's room, the orchestration of dining, and the theatrical experience of dining are detailed as well, all in the context of the renowned food and architectural scholars of the day.

You've made it to Friday, now what are you going to eat? Having spent years gathering friends around her kitchen table, Eleanor has perfected the art of Friday night dinner. It usually starts with a sip of something cold and ends with friends tipsily heading home, full and happy. But most importantly, there's always something good to eat. Here are more than a hundred recipes for the best night of the week. If you're planning to spend the evening on the sofa, have your closest friend over or even host the masses, why not try Eleanor's fail-safe crowdpleasers: Frozen jalapeno margaritas Baked potato with hot smoked salmon, soured cream and pickled radishes Bucatini with mushroom cream and crispy sage Sausages with lemony, caraway cabbage and apples Roast chicken with chicken juice rice and orange and onion salad Ginger, prune and PX cake with cardamom custard And amongst the recipes are thoughts on the glamour of mixing a martini for one, the lifesaving magic of a really good spaghetti carbonara, and the joy of a table laden with bits, waiting for hungry hands. So, fill your favourite glass, choose something mouth-watering to cook and embrace all that Friday night has to offer.

Natural wine has nothing to hide. Made from grapes alone - organically farmed, then harvested, fermented, aged, and bottled without additives - it's wine that seeks to express, in every sip, its traditional and crucial link to nature. The World of Natural Wine is the book wine lovers need to navigate this movement - because it's about so much more than labels and vintages. Meet the obsessive, often outspoken, winemakers; learn about the regions of France where natural wine culture first appeared and continues to flourish today; and explore natural wine in Spain, Italy, Georgia, and beyond. And just as important: find out what must be "unlearned" to discover the eye-opening pleasures of drinking naturally.

In The New Southern Garden Cookbook, Sheri Castle aims to make "what's in season" the answer to "what's for dinner?" This timely cookbook, with dishes for omnivores and vegetarians alike, celebrates and promotes delicious, healthful homemade meals centered on the diverse array of seasonal fruits and vegetables grown in the South, and in most of the rest of the nation as well. Increased attention to the health benefits and environmental advantages of eating locally, Castle notes, is inspiring Americans to partake of the garden by raising their own kitchen plots, visiting area farmers' markets and pick-your-own farms, and signing up for CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) boxes from local growers. The New Southern Garden Cookbook offers over 300 brightly flavored recipes that will inspire beginning and experienced cooks, southern or otherwise, to take advantage of seasonal delights. Castle has organized the cookbook alphabetically by type of vegetable or fruit, building on the premise that when cooking with fresh produce, the ingredient, not the recipe, is the wiser starting point. While some dishes are inspired by traditional southern recipes, many reveal the goodness of gardens in new, contemporary ways. Peppered with tips, hints, and great stories, these pages make for good food and a good read.

One bowl meals are the answer to quick, simple meals that are well thought out, balanced and filling.

Filled with grains, noodles, rice or millets, vegetables and protein, they serve as the perfect weeknight meal that is complete, can be made in individual portions, makes good use of left overs and are extremely versatile. Bowl meals give you the flexibility to switch out ingredients based on dietary restrictions, healthy choices or personal tastes. Indian food offers a variety of flavours and opportunity to pair different flavours, techniques, marinades and ingredients.

Chef Megha Kohli takes the principles of the traditional Indian meal and applies it to the popular ‘one bowl meal’ concept to give you recipes that are easy to follow, quick to whip up and in which eat bite offers an exciting combination of taste, textures and flavours.

What is better than cooking with cast iron? Cooking with cast iron on an open fire, camp stove or grill is better! There's no such thing as spending too much time outdoors. The cravings you work up exerting all that energy in nature will be satisfied when you cook with The Campfire Cast Iron Cookbook, making for a healthy and delicious adventure. This guide to outdoor cooking over a campfire guarantees that the more time you spend outside, whether in the backyard or the backcountry, the better your meals will taste. Inside you'll find: - Over 100 recipes for all meals and all tastes - Chapters dedicated to breakfast, sides and starches, meat, seafood, vegetables, and desserts - An in-depth description and explanation of different types of cast iron cookware - A guide on how to set up your fire and cookware for the perfect outdoor cooking experience - Tips and tricks for cooking and clean-up, including how to properly care for your cooking fire and firepit From roughing it to van life and glamping, The Campfire Cast Iron Cookbook has your outdoor meal needs covered.

Michael Ruhlman's groundbreaking "New York Times" bestseller takes us to the very "truth" of cooking: it is not about recipes but rather about basic ratios and fundamental techniques that makes all food come together, simply.
When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe, it's instantly knowing a thousand.
Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want--chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.
Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin.
Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2--or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.
Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, "Ratio" is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen--water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs--work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.
As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. "Ratio" provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is--and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

We are living a moment in which famous chefs, Michelin stars, culinary techniques, and gastronomical accolades attract moneyed tourists to Spain from all over the world. This has prompted the Spanish government to declare its cuisine as part of Spanish patrimony. Yet even with this widespread global attention, we know little about how Spanish cooking became a litmus test for demonstrating Spain's modernity and, in relation, the roles ascribed to the modern Spanish women responsible for daily cooking. Efforts to articulate a new, modern Spain infiltrated writing in multiple genres and media. Women's Work places these efforts in their historical context to yield a better understanding of the roles of food within an inherently uneven modernization process. Further, the book reveals the paradoxical messages women have navigated, even in texts about a daily practice that shaped their domestic and work lives. This argument is significant because of the degree to which domestic activities, including cooking, occupied women's daily lives, even while issues like their fitness as citizens and participation in the public sphere were hotly debated. At the same time, progressive intellectuals from diverse backgrounds began to invoke Spanish cooking and eating as one measure of Spanish modernity. Women's Work shows how culinary writing engaged these debates and reached women at the site of much of their daily labor-the kitchen-and, in this way, shaped their thinking about their roles in modernizing Spain.

Ever since Darwin and "The Descent of Man," the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in "Catching Fire," renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors' diets, "Catching Fire" sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, "Catching Fire" will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins--or in our modern eating habits.

Drawing directly from his experience as an acclaimed climate-change gardener, and of setting up a kitchen garden from scratch for River Cottage, Mark explains the practical aspects of organic growing, introduces us to a whole world of vegetables we may not have previously considered, and does away with alienating gardening jargon once and for all. Mark begins with a catalogue of vegetables that will grow in this country, explaining for each their benefits, what varieties to go for, dos and don'ts, and popular culinary uses. He then invites us to create a wish list of foods, and shows us his own list from his early gardening days. Next, he explains how to turn this wish list into a coherent kitchen garden plan appropriate for our space, whether it be a patch of acidic soil, a roof-top garden or an allotment, whether we put on our wellies in every free moment or are 'time-poor' gardeners. Then he puts all the theory into practice, showing us how to look after nutrients in the soil, how to resist pests and diseases, and how to make our garden sustainable and organic. In clear, concise sections we learn about seed trays, supporting plants with climbing structures, mulching, composting, companion planting, irrigation and promoting pollination, and there are additional tables showing sowing and harvesting times, plant sizes, and alternative varieties of plants for different sites.About thirty recipes and a directory of useful addresses finish the book, and the handbook is complemented by bright colour photography throughout. Practical and inspiring, with a textured hard cover and an introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, "Veg Patch" is destined to join Handbooks No. 1, 2 and 3 as an indispensible household reference.

Ready to get pickling? This brightly illustrated guide is your invitation to a voyage down the Great Pickle Highway, with 36 recipes for famous and funky ferments, along with a jarful of fascinating pickle tidbits and lore.

Pickled foods come in all shapes and sizes, from spicy, bold shreds of classic kimchi to slightly sweet, crunchy bread and butter discs. Inside Pickles, Illustrated, you’ll discover four categories of pickles: sour-ish, savory-ish, sweet-ish, and spicy-ish. Recipes for classics such as Pickled Red Onion sit alongside deeper cuts like Spicy Blackened Szechuan Pickled Peppers—all delicious options for your next charcuterie board.

Instructions for each recipe include the preferred pickling method as well as expert guidance on the type of salt best suited for that particular pickled delicacy (whichever fruit, veggie, seafood, or mix of ingredients it may be). The four preserving methods employed throughout are: Quick pickles, or quickles Refrigerator pickles Fermentation Salt-curing

Sprinkled among the recipes are salty bits of pickle culture and traditions from around the world, like the origins of Kimchi Day in Korea and the history behind the ubiquitous pickle holiday ornament. In a pickle to find a gift for the pickle lover in your life? Relish this moment—you’ve found it!

Everyone eats, but rarely do we investigate why we eat what we eat. Why do we love spices, sweets, coffee? How did rice become such a staple food throughout so much of eastern Asia? Everyone Eats examines the social and cultural reasons for our food choices and provides an explanation of the nutritional reasons for why humans eat what they do, resulting in a unique cultural and biological approach to the topic. E. N. Anderson explains the economics of food in the globalization era; food's relationship to religion, medicine, and ethnicity; and offers suggestions on how to end hunger, starvation, and malnutrition. This thoroughly updated Second Edition incorporates the latest food scholarship, most notably recognizing the impact of sustainable eating advocacy and the state of food security in the world today. Anderson also brings more insight than ever before into the historical and scientific underpinnings of our food customs, fleshing this out with fifteen new and original photographs from his own extensive fieldwork. A perennial classic in the anthropology of food, Everyone Eats feeds our need to understand human ecology by explaining the ways that cultures and political systems structure the edible environment.

Surveys the history of changing tastes in food and fine dining – what was available for people to eat, and how it was prepared and served – from prehistory to the present day

Since earliest times food has encompassed so much more than just what we eat – whole societies can be revealed and analysed by their cusines. In this wide-ranging book, leading historians from Europe and America piece together from a myriad sources the culinary accomplishments of diverse civilizations, past and present, and the pleasures of dining.

Ten chapters cover the food and taste of the hunter-gatherers and first farmers of Prehistory; the rich Mediterranean cultures of Ancient Greece and Rome; the development of gastronomy in Imperial China; Medieval Islamic cuisine; European food in the Middle Ages; the decisive changes in food fashions after the Renaissance; the effect of the Industrial Revolution on what people ate; the rise to dominance of French cuisine in the 19th and 20th centuries; the evolution of the restaurant; the contemporary situation where everything from slow to fast food vies for our attention. Throughout, the entertaining story of worldwide food traditions provides the ideal backdrop to today’s roaming the globe for great gastronomic experiences.