When I first met Kate Leahy, after working at Chicago magazine in 2010, she was working with Chef Paul Virant in the midst of the Preservation Kitchen cookbook project. Michelin-starred, and Chicago-based Virant is widely known for his skill with canning and preserving, and the book is his guide and manual to techniques, recipes, and seasonal menus, inspired by his award-winning restaurants Vie, in Western Springs, Illinois, and Chicago’s Perennial Virant.

The book is finally out April 3^rd, and after all the cookbook ghostwriter hullabaloo last week, I thought it might be nice to chat with her about the cookbook experience. And Kate was kind enough to offer a copy of the book as a giveaway to my readers. So read her words, leave a comment about your favorite canning recipe below, and I’ll choose a winner next Monday April 2, 2012 to receive the beautiful book!

Katherine Sacks: So, you’ve worked on several books now, your first A16 Food + Wine, then Preservation Kitchen, and most recently the forthcoming SPQR book. Tell me about working with Paul.

Kate Leahy: I met Paul staging at Vie in 2006. I just went in because I was curious to see if a restaurant in Western Springs could be as good as everyone was writing it was. I called up Paul and staged there, and I was really impressed with what he was doing. In 2009, I sent him an email­—I didn’t know him well at the time, but knew him enough—and I asked him if he’d thought about doing a cookbook. There wasn’t a canning cookbook on the market that was also by a chef, and he seemed interested. So we met and really hit it off; at the next meeting he wanted his wife there, and we all got along.

So it started becoming this weekly meeting that we would have over coffee, to talk shop and also talk about the book. He’s a little different than most chefs—he’s not an introvert, and everywhere you go, you run into people he knows. Being his sidekick for a year and a half, I really got to know the person, and it was a great experience. Even though he’s pressed for time and stressed like most chefs, he really does care about people and values creating relationships. After the project was over, to thank me and the recipe tester, he invited us over to his home to cook for us. It was an amazing meal, and his kids even played the cello and violin for us. It was like becoming part of his family.

KS: How did the project get off the ground? So many food writers/bloggers are interested in writing books, how did you get yours started?

KL: I pitched the book to Paul, and while he was still figuring out what it meant to write a book, I was in touch with Ten Speed about whether a book about canning from Paul would be of interest. The canning and preserving market is saturated, but if you have the chef’s perspective, that is different. We spent a long time developing the proposal before we sent it to Ten Speed, and we had a clear idea of what we wanted to create. Sometimes with the proposal, you later realize you need to change things, but because we had a lot of meetings early on, it really helped figure out how we would approach this book.

Working on Preservation Kitchen with Chef Paul Virant, image via Kate Leahy

KS: What was your favorite part of working on the project?

KL: The trips we took out to the farms. Paul, Tony [the recipe tester], and I all went out to Heritage Prairie one day, and we ended up going out there nine months later for a photo shoot. I had never seen a beekeeper pulling out a fresh honeycomb, and then he handed us a piece. We also went down to Prairie Fruits farm for a shoot and spent all day there seeing the goats and the orchards and just how these farmers do it. It was really fascinating.

KS: The New York Times article about ghostwriting caused quite a stir. Do you consider yourself a ghostwriter?

KL: I think I’ve been a ghostwriter. When I did the A16 book that was like being a ghostwriter. I stayed in the background. I wrote the whole darn thing, but when it came to media attention it was Shelley and Nate Appleman. So I can identify with that article. With Paul, it really is his story, they are his recipes, but he is also such a collaborative type of guy—he would always ask me questions, “Well, what do you think, we could do this or this.” I thought that was really interesting, because a lot of chefs would just say these are my recipes. It’s still his book and it’s still his name on the front, but I feel pretty connected to the book as well.

KS: And what’s up next?

KL: This fall I’m coming out with a book with SPQR, another Italian cookbook. I’m gonna get the first page proofs next week, so the hard work is done, and it’s coming out in mid-October of this year. After that, I might need a breather after these heavy duty projects. I would like to do my own book I think, nothing huge, but you need the time to actually develop it and in this bizz we never have enough.

The first thing that came to mind while re-reading Year in Provence for our second rEATers book club was pâté. Creamy, silky, and oh-so-French, it was the perfect dish to dig into while discussing the ebbs and flows of Peter Mayle’s impressive book. I’d never made pâté before, and—after a good deal of research—I settled on a chicken liver recipe that was quite the hit. Enriched with salty bacon fat, and a good shot of Calvados, it was just the rich, earthy flavor to get us in the mood for a discussion of all things Provençal. With Katzie’s spread of wood mushroom-brie crostini, flowering kale salad, and celery root remoulade (and a few bottles of wine), our stomachs were filled French-style by the end of the evening.

Our discussion of Year in Provence was a fitting background to this rich and glorious meal: I first read the tome in high school, and quickly fell in love with the romanticism of the European lifestyle. I couldn’t wait to retire to France and eat my way through the countryside. In my second read, the book felt a bit less romantic. Perhaps it was my older age, or the fact that I’ve now traveled a good deal through Europe, but some of that dreamy facade fell away. The other rEATers agreed with me; during our meeting we discussed how unrealistic the book seemed at times—a rich couple with nothing to worry about other then rebuilding a Provençal home—to a group somewhat shocked by the country’s economic status. And, as retiring is far from our 20-something minds, it all seemed a bit impractical. But for the most part, the group enjoyed the rich scenes and reading about a culture where food is held on such a high pedastool. And of course, eating and drinking French-style for the evening is never a bad thing.

Chicken Liver Pâté, adapted from Bon Appètit
10-15 servings
½ cup bacon fat, room temperature
1 shallot, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 handful thyme
1 pound chicken livers, cleaned
½ cup water
1½ cups unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
2 tablespoons Calvados or Brandy
2 teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Small (2–4-oz.) glass jars or bowls

Add a spoonful of the bacon fat to a large sauté pan and place over low heat. Add the shallot, garlic and thyme, and heat until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the livers and the water, turning up the heat to medium, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook until the livers are firm but still pink inside, about 5 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat, and discard the thyme. Place the livers, shallot, and garlic in a food processer and blitz until a paste begins to form. Add the remaining bacon fat, and continue to mix. Slowly add in the butter, until a smooth, creamy consistency forms. After all of the butter is incorporated, add the Calvados, and season with salt and pepper. Blitz one more time to incorporate all the flavors.

Strain the mousse through a fine chinois and pour into glass jars. Allow to set until firm in the refrigerator, then pour a small amount of melted butter over the top to form a seal. Store for 3 to 5 days, refrigerated.

When my New York City plans finally started to come together last fall, the first thing I began working up with my two best friends, and former LA roommates, Ashley Quinn and Katzie Guy-Hamilton, was a food-focused book club. Food had long been a joining theme in our friendships—Quinn and I had explored many Philadelphia restaurants during college and I went through Spago’s pastry boot camp with Guy-Hamilton—so there really were no two better ladies to begin a literary fest with.

Fast-forward five months and as I’m finally starting to settle into my skin here (between trips to Morocco, Boston, Atlanta and Hawaii), we began rEATers, our force de literary culinare. An e-vite announced our intent to a mix-up of chefs, writers, creatives, and a few friends who just happen to love food and also enjoy a good page turner—that rEATers (yes we named our little club) would gather in February for a discussion of Gabrielle Hamilton’s wildly enjoyable Blood, Bones & Butter.

Told in Hamilton’s remarkable storyteller voice (thanks in part to her creative writing MFA), the book is equal parts behind-the-scenes kitchen tale, romance, and story of a tough woman growing up. It’s at times brutally honest, connecting the reader with Hamilton in the way only the best memoirs do. Peppered with just enough larger-than-life culinary scenes (making pasta in Italy with Hamilton’s mother-in-law, eating across Europe’s hostels) the book is Kitchen Confidential for women, an inspirational read that both food-lovers and the non-kitchen-obsessed alike will enjoy.

And in the spirit of Hamilton, Prune and the restaurant’s absolutely addictive Bloody Marys, along with some inspiration from the New York Times’ recent Modernist dinner party, I put together these Bloody Mary-infused celery sticks and drinks for our first meeting. Even at 8pm, the Bloody Marys were a big hit, and our energetic conversation showed promise for a year full of good reads and enjoyable rEATers meetings to come.

Although Quinn had to miss out on the February festivities due to a move, she’s excited to attend in March, when the group will delve into Year in Provence. I’ve already read this one—admittedly I’ve read many of the books on our possibilities list—but Peter Mayle’s tome is so good that I can’t wait to start re-reading it. I’m not sure what the future of rEATers will bring, but I’ll keep you posted about the books we read, and the food we cook up along the way. And I’d love to hear any of your food book suggestions to add to our list!

No matter the hour, these spicy Bloody Marys make it a happy one!

Bloody Mary-Infused Celery Sticks, adapted from New York Times
Serves 6 to 8 people

6 ounces vodka, chilled
12 ounces tomato juice
4 lemons, juiced
2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
9 drops chili sauce
½ tablespoon horseradish
Salt
Fresh-cracked black pepper
1 bunch celery stalks, reserving celery leaves for garnish
1 siphon and chargers

1. Combine the vodka, tomato juice, lemon juice, Worcestershire, chili sauce, and horseradish and season with salt and pepper.

2. Wash the celery stalks. Use a pairing knife to trim the ends and cut the celery in half, then peel back the center rib from each piece.

3. Fill the siphon snuggly with the celery and cover the celery sticks with the tomato liquid. Put the lid on the siphon and reserve the remaining tomato mixture.

4. Carefully charge the siphon twice. Squeeze the entirety of the liquid out of the siphon into a container, and then carefully remove the lid. Remove the infused-celery and repeat with the remaining celery. (You can re-use the liquid.)

5. Place 1 to 3 pieces of celery in each glass, top with the Bloody Mary mixture, and garnish with the celery leaves. Enjoy!

In the Midwest, peaches don’t really come into full flavor until late August — just around the same time sticky hot days have us begging for a frozen treat, and right before September’s cool weather starts rolling in. When Fany Gerson’s new book Paletas arrived a few weeks ago, I was inspired to turn every farmers’ market find, including peaches, into a refreshing summer dessert or drink. With beautiful pictures and easy-to-follow authentic Mexican recipes, it’s a great go-to book for everything from raspadoa (shaved ice) to aguas frescas, as well as a slew of popsicles.

For those who think pops are as easy as just freezing juice, be warned: it’s important to follow a base recipe to account for the sugar and water content in diverse fruit varieties. The real fun comes in adding flavors and seasonings; take Gerson’s Apricot-Chamomile pops, Cocao-Corn Drink, and Spicy Mango Ice for inspiration. This combination of sweet, juicy peach and hearty maple syrup is one that I love, and it works well as an end-of summer, refreshing treat. For another Paletas spin, check out my horchata-peach pops for the Chicago Sun-Times, inspired by Gerson’s recipe for the rice-based drink.

Peach-Maple Pops, makes 8 to 10 popsicles
½ cup water
¼ cup sugar
4 medium-sized peaches, halved and pitted
½ tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon high-quality maple syrup, I prefer Blis
A pinch of salt

1. Combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook until sugar has dissolved, then let cool to room temperature.

2. Puree the peaches, lemon juice, salt and sugar solution in a food processor; blend until smooth. Stir in the maple syrup and adjust seasonings to taste.

3. If using conventional molds, fill, snap on lids and freeze until solid, around 5 hours. If using cups or other unconventional molds, freeze until the popsicles are beginning to set, around 2 hours, then insert sticks and freeze until solid, at least another 3 hours. Follow manufacturers instructions for using an instant ice pop maker.

You were a fashion writer for the Baltimore Sun and the Wall Street Journal, living a busy life in New York City. What similarities are there between the fashion and food world?

I went from covering a world that’s about avoiding eating to one that’s all about eating. When I was covering fashion, I went to some of the best restaurants for lunches or covering events, but all everyone does is order a salad. Of course there are some common threads­ — in both industries you have very artistic people who are focused on the details. And I have always loved food.

In the early part of your book, you mention your lack of skill when it comes to cooking — from your failed coconut cookies to your need to follow a recipe. Do you feel as though you have mastered cooking now?

I wouldn’t say that I’ve mastered it, although I’m much more of an expert. Originally, I taught myself to cook. I was living all by myself, so I started clipping out recipes in the newspaper, or off Campbell soup cans. I became more experimental, but I was still glued to recipes. But after the year with my Aunts, Grandmother and my mother­­ — watching them in the kitchen inspired me to be a little more confident.

What is the most important skill you learned in the kitchen?

Of course there were lots of little things, like how to chop quickly so your hands don’t get hurt. But the most important thing was just to be more free with cooking. I was always scared to be free with cooking, but my Aunts said agak-agak, which means guess-guess. Just taste, don’t be so wetted to precession. If it’s too sweet today, you’ll make it less sweet tomorrow.

What do you think is the biggest difference between Singapore kitchens and American ones?

In Singapore the main thing is the wok, it is the main cooking appliance. And in my Aunt’s kitchens, their fridges are packed with sauces and spicy condiments they’ve made themselves. They also like to make baskets to steam with, like for steaming fish. The wood gives the food a little more fragrance. When I was in Singapore I bought a few and brought them back here. Also, they cook so much that the backyard has been turned into an extension of the kitchen. There is a huge set of burners in the backyard and the tropical heat adds to the cooking.

You first came to the US to attend Northwestern University for college. When you were homesick, where would you go for Singapore food?

There really wasn’t anything close to it, but noodles are a very big part of Singapore cuisine, so I used to go to Penny’s Noodles all the time. It’s inexpensive, so I’m glad it’s still around.

What is a good dish for those of us looking to get a sample taste of Singapore’s food?

There are some really good restaurants in NY, DC and Menlo Park, CA. In NY, Café Asean and Taste Good in Flushing­ — that’s where the Singapore consulate caters its food. Malaysia Kopitiam in DC is great. In Menlo Park, Shiok. Beef Rendang is a good dish to try. It’s a coconuty, beef curry. It has all these spices in it, it’s really amazing when done well. The beef is so tender it practically falls apart in your mouth. Calling it a curry is not describing it well enough. There’s cinnamon, clove, star anise, lime leaf, blue ginger — a whole bunch of different spices so it’s a flavor bomb in your month.

What was the most unexpected thing you found in your year in Singapore?

Growing up in Singapore, I sort of knew there had been hardship in my family, but learning all the things the women in my family had been through was the most unexpected. History often tends to be told through the male perspective, and it was really great to hear my family’s history from the women. I learned that both my grandmothers were so incredibly poor and at one point ran illegal gambling dens. One of the dishes I loved was my late grandmother’s gambling rice. It was basically pork belly, cabbage, mushrooms, dried shrimp, all mixed together with uncooked rice that you put into a rice cooker. It’s a one-dish meal that they made for the gamblers­– the men could hold it in one hand and gamble with the other. It really just shows what a good cook my grandmother was and also how smart she was.

Although your book touches on Singapore’s cuisine and food culture, much of the focus is on your family’s history. Do you think you could have found a medium other than food to tell the story of your family?

Yes, I’m sure there could have been another way to tell this story, but to me food was the most natural way. Food is a way of expressing love; it was a way to reconnect with my family. Despite language barriers or differences in attitudes or beliefs, the thing that draws families together is food. It was a way to spend time together and slowly draw out the stories.

And I have to ask this one: With the Tiger Mother book and Tiger blood drama, this year really seems to be the year of the Tiger. Why do you think that is?

It’s been interesting to read her [Amy Chau] take on the Tiger spirit. I was born in the year of the Tiger, and I’ve always thought it’s all about being aggressive, rebellious, and going out into the world and conquering it. It’s about saying yes, not saying no or stifling yourself. I feel like my book is very different from that. But I do feel like this is a very Tiger moment and I am certainly embracing it.

Go: Meet Cheryl Tan and learn more about A Tiger in the Kitchen at a three-course dinner inspired by the book on June 2 in St. Charles, IL.

At first, the idea behind Aimee Bender’s second novel– that a girl can taste the emotions of other people through the food they prepare– seems too similar to Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. But Bender’s story and her characters are so full of emotion and depth that the book is impossible to put down.

As the heroine of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Rose Edelstein is an uncannily alert girl who realizes, on her ninth birthday, that she has a strange gift. Biting into birthday cake (homemade by her mother), Rose tastes tart lemon and sweetness, but also something else.

“I could absolutely taste the chocolate,” she says, “but…my mouth was filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother.” From this point on, throughout childhood and into adulthood, Rose forces down food cooked by others, burdened with this unbearable gift.

She tastes the unloved feeling of a cookie made by an angsty teenager and the understanding that her mother’s happiness in a roast beef dinner is the result of an affair. There is the emotionless junk food of vending machines and the peacefulness of a sandwich made by a happy family friend. With such scenes, Bender weaves a magical tale in a world so real it’s almost believable. Descriptions of Los Angeles, with its streets and neighborhoods (they live “fifteen minutes from a variety of crisscrossing freeways”), along with the mundane activities of Rose’s teenage life, set a truly convincing scene.

And while the idea of food is scary enough that Rose views the emotionally bland school vending machine as a savior (she kneels in front of it to pray), Bender devotes much time to clearly describing each painful bite, from the crunch of a sandwich to the sweetness of a cookie. She creates a teenage Rose who can even taste the location of her food’s origins, knowing the dinner’s beef came from Oregon or a quiche was made with organic cream from Nevada.

But it’s the vivid outlines of Bender’s characters that really take this story from a clever idea to well-crafted prose. At the center of Rose’s life are her absent-minded father, with whom she struggles to connect, her flighty and preoccupied mother, and her brother Joseph, the science genius whose aloof nature she both clings to and knowingly keeps her distance from. Stability comes in the form of Rose’s childhood friend, a normal happy girl, and George, Joseph’s only friend whom Rose adores.

These characters make the story more plausible. But the book has weak spots, among them the acute clarity of Ruth’s observations (as a nine year old she can see the hypocrisies of the adults around her as a 40-year-old might) and an unbelievable plot twist involving Joseph. But the bittersweet ending, as Ruth finds a satisfying use for her talent, is a great finish to a book. And when imagining the sweetness of a summer peach or the earthy, musky texture of a persimmon, the tale, that one can taste the emotions in food, seems almost, just, believable.

On Thursday, June 24, the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State Street, hosted Bourdain for a book reading and signing. The sarcastic author read an excerpt from the book discussing his opinions on Food Network celebrity hosts, cracked more than a few jokes about everyone from cooking celebrity Sandra Lee to himself and answered questions from a crowd of roughly 250. Selected audience questions and Bourdain’s responses have been condensed below.

Katherine Sacks

If you had to eat one style of food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
If I was going to a desert island and had to eat one genre of food everyday for the rest of my life, then I would travel with a really high-end sushi chef. If I could eat good sushi everyday for the rest of my life, I would not be unhappy about that.

Of all of the places you’ve been to, if you could only go to one of them again, where would it be?
It would depend where I’m at in my head. If everything in my life went horribly wrong, and I wanted to end up someplace as the tragic hero- the fantastic, poetic end to my life, I would go to Vietnam. If I ended up a broken man, alone, at least I would be eating delicious pho and watching life in Vietnam around me. That would be the consolation prize to an otherwise misspent life. I would be very happy there. The plan is, I want to go like Marlon Brando in the Godfather, but in Italy. I re-married an Italian woman, my daughter is a dual citizen. If everything goes perfect, I’m going to retire to Italy or Sardinia. I want to grow tomatoes in my backyard; I want to make really crappy wine. Someday chasing my granddaughter and grandson around the tomato vine I’m gonna keel over from a fucking heart attack. Right now, ask this question of ten really great chefs, a whole hell of a lot of them would say San Sebastian, they would say a restaurant called Etxebarri up in the mountains outside of San Sebastian with this dude, he just grills stuff, little eels, homemade chorizos, beautiful ham, two or three ingredients, cooked up in a little pub outside Basque country. You know keeling over stone dead with a half eaten piece of Iberico ham in your mouth, there’s worse ways to be.

What is a good cookbook to learn to cook from?
Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it’s the Bible. When all else fails, go to Julia. I mean I love it. That’s it. You can barely do better than that. It’s just a terrific, terrific, terrific book. If you don’t trust a recipe or another recipe doesn’t work, those will always, always work.

Can you talk about your writing process?
Everything I learned as a dishwasher, no joke. I learned to show up on time and do the best you can. Given the opportunity to write a book I will deliver it on time and wake up early everyday and do the best I can to write it. What is my writing process? I don’t give myself anytime to think about the million and one reasons why I can’t or shouldn’t write the book. If I was sitting around staring at the ceiling thinking about, ‘Gee, what do they expect?,’ ‘What is the market like right now?,’ I’d never be able to write a word. I wake up, immediately start writing, write as long, as fast as I can, shove it in a drawer, don’t read it for weeks, because if I read it right away I’ll become miserable and critical and edit myself out of existence. I just go and I go and I go. I come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I’m not agonizing, I’m not Marcel Proust agonizing over sentences. You know, I write the way I talk.

Why this book, why now?
I wrote this book because it had been ten years since I wrote Kitchen Confidential, which is still selling like crazy, which I’m happy about but on the other hand I felt it was important to state publicly that I am no longer a working chef. In fact, it’s been ten years, I’m no longer in that tribe. It would be a mistake to assume that I am. I don’t work everyday, I wouldn’t be good at it anymore.

Where haven’t you been that you want to go in your travels?
I haven’t been to Cuba. I try every year and something always goes wrong. I really want to go before, you know. I assume that as soon as Castro hits the floor, they’ll be opening a W Hotel there. So I kinda want to see history, I want to go to Cuba and I want to see the greatest baseball players of the world play for $29 a month. So that’s a place I really want to shoot that we haven’t been able to. They’ll let us in, we’ll let us out, but it’s always getting the permits to move as freely as we want to that’s the problem.

In your opinion, what will it take to see a shift away from the Rachel Ray food culture?
An alternate universe. It won’t happen. It’s a spectacular success, people love that stuff, Food Network is putting up bigger and better numbers. Look at all the great newspapers that have been closing down in this country, all the great magazines that are evaporating.  All those Food Network magazines are a huge success story, so people like it, it’s the way it is. It’s Rachel’s world, I just live in it now.

If you were starting again, would you go into again?
Would I do it all over again? Yes. I wouldn’t change anything, I would do everything exactly the same again. I wouldn’t miss any of it, the good and the bad. I’m quite sure that if I could go back in time and confront myself at age 17 and say, listen the following really, really bad things are gonna happen. You know, heroin is gonna cause you a problem a little bit down the line, this is a bad career move, this and that, I’d do the same things. I’d ignore my own advice, from me.

What was the last thing you cooked?
Hmm, that was a long time ago. I think I made spaghetti alla bottarga, you know at home.

Favorite places to eat in Chicago?
I have a very narrow view. Anything Paul Kahn is associated with is worth paying attention to. I’m a big fan of the hot dog place I’m not going to mention because the line is already too long. And I really hate your fucking pizza.

Food has been center stage in artwork for centuries, originating with cavemen drawings of hunting scenes and bison. The still life medium emphasizes food, and dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. Throughout time, platters of bright round fruit, bowls of soured tomatoes, and spreads of cheese, wine, and meats have splashed across canvases. Fast forward to the 1960s and the modern art movement’s fascination with Campbell soup cans and Wayne Thiebaud’s cake paintings. Through every medium, photography, sculpture, painting and the like, food has been a concurrent theme.

Andy Warhol

M.F.K Fisher, in her tome The Art of Eating puts food forward as the art. “Cooking is an art, but you eat it too,” cookbook author Marcella Hazan once said. From France’s detailed Michel Bras to Chicago’s own Grant Atchaz, chefs all over the world create elaborate artwork on the plate, artwork gone as quickly as it is consumed.

Food as art from chefs Grant Atchaz and Michel Bras

The January release of the book Food in the Louvre is a combination of culinary artwork and recipes. With a forward from Michelin-starred chef Paul Bocuse and commentary from the museum’s head chef, Yves Pinard, the book serves as a tour of the legendary museum’s still life’s and gastronomic artwork feasts.

The narrative spans 40 of the Lourve’s works, from ancient Greek and Egyptian tomb carvings through the oil paintings of the mid 1800s. Along with commentary on the artwork, Pinard provides recipes to accompany many of the pieces. Alongside Eugene Delacroix’s Still Life with Lobsters(pictured below), the book offers directions for lobster thermidor and pheasant salami. A recipe for Fig and Pain Dore, a fig and bread pudding style treat, accompanies Luis Eugenio Meléndez’s Still Life with Figs, an 18th Century print of green figs and bread.

You may not be able to afford a tip to Paris for a stroll through the hallways of the Louvre and have lunch along the Seine, but an afternoon spent reading Food in the Louvre is almost as good.

Planning my trip to stage at The Fat Duck restaurant last summer, I had so many questions. How many chefs jackets should I bring? Which knives I would need? How could I possibly escape making a fool of myself in front of the heavy-hitting cooks I would be training under?  I also couldn’t help but deliberate over whether to purchase the massive tome of The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, which had been released earlier that year(November 2008). Flipping through a friend’s copy, I fell in love with the words, the history of the place, the imaginative photographs and the bright, playful artwork. I dreamed of bringing the book along with me; having each cook I worked with sign it. (I secretly hopped I would meet Heston Blumenthal, the infamous chef behind the restaurant, and have him autograph the book as well.) At $250, the price of the book dug deep into my Europe spending money and the thought of lugging an 11-pound book around Rome and Paris in my backpack for two months was simply frightening. And so I refrained, deciding to pack lighter instead.

My week at The Fat Duck was a whirlwind of watching some of the world’s best cooks prepare some of the world’s best food.  The system of the Fat Duck is one with a million tiny little components; each job done with the up most care. From a perfectly centered sticker on a treat bag to vanilla beans cut into “cherry stems” with an exacto knife to cleaning and pureeing cases of parsley at a time, an army of stages was grease for  the machine of cooks who made Blumenthal’s recipes come alive. Near the end of the week, one such stage mentioned the discount we would receive on the book, and the offer to have Blumenthal personally autograph it. At a discount of 70 GBP($113), I forgot about the weight of the book and pre-paid for a copy. Unfortunately it was Saturday, and the office holding the books was closed. I left England on Monday, hoping to arrange a way to recieve my book. After weeks of mis-understandings and my reluctance to pay shipping fees, I sadly left Europe just as I had been when I arrived, without a copy. For the time being, it would simply be a sour note in my European experience story.

And then, this past October 2009, publishing house Bloomsbury decided to re-print a slightly smaller version of the book, presenting The Fat Duck Cookbook. With all the content of the original, at the reduced price of $50, it was like a gift from the cookbook gods. I finely managed to have my very own copy of the volume, albeit sans Blumenthal autograph. Never the less I was thrilled.

The Fat Duck Cookbook is all at once impressive, inspiring, and thought-provoking.  Beginning with an introduction by Harold McGee, a genius in his own rite, it is in essence three books: one covering the history of The Fat Duck and Blumenthal, one showcasing the recipes of the restaurant, and one explaining of the science used to create the innovative cuisine. The pages are dotted with bright, flashy drawings from artist Dave McKean and incredible photographs from Dominic Davies. It is a true introduction to the restaurant twice voted best in the world; flipping through its pages you can almost hear Blumenthal’s voice, smell the foods, touch the plates.

For a true gourmand, the details of the beginnings of this unconventional chef and his three-star Michelin restaurant are captivating. A young boy growing up in middle-class England, Blumenthal describes how his early interest in food led to a job trimming large piles of green beans to transforming a village pub into The Fat Duck. As a child, the self-taught chef poured through classic cookbooks, teaching himself technique and flavor. As an adult, he continued to look at books for the answers, only his questions became more complex. Sharing the experiences of building the restaurant, receiving Michelin stars and testing concepts beyond their conventional limits, Blumenthal’s first section of The Fat Duck Cookbook is a full of wonderful insight into the wizard of a chef and the restaurant he created.

Of course, their would be no history of The Fat Duck without the food. These are recipes that take months to develop in a special test kitchen at the restaurant. Reading through the recipes Blumenthal offers, you have the experience of sitting in the dining room and being personally served each dish by the chef himself. The minutia of detail and the thought process behind it is laid before you to enjoy. Every element of the experience is picked apart; from the flatware to accompanying sounds and smells, each is particularly chosen for the dish. Blumenthal explores every curiosity, testing sound, pairing an iPod playing ocean sounds with a sushi course; playing with temperatures, serving a half hot/half cold tea; and testing the mind, serving red jellies that taste like orange and orange jellies that taste like red beets. These may not be recipes you will whip up for Friday night dinner, but Blumenthal’s curiosity comes alive in the explanation of each; they sure are fun to read and understand.

The determined curiosity of Blumenthal is answered by combing science with food. The third section of his book explains the techniques, tools, and ingredients necessary for the scientific chef. Reading the theories of cookery, viewing the laboratory-like equipment, and reading about the chemicals Blumenthal uses, you can really understand the difference in approach this restaurant takes than most others in the world. The section ends with articles written by scientists throughout the world, reporting on the theories of flavor, smell, and taste.

Not only an autobiography of one of the world’s most innovative chefs and restaurants, a cookbook, and a scientific exploration, The Fat Duck Cookbook is also a beautiful piece of art, a mash-up of chef and style. Creative photographs place Blumenthal’s dishes in a mossy woods scene, a dry dessert, or a sky of fireworks. Colorful art swooshes in and out of the prose: a world of birds with human hands for heads and flying chefs is created in the text. Comic strip stories and the drawings of adult and child Blumenthal interspersed throughout the chapters show the chef can let loose and not take life too seriously.

While it may seem a cookbook for food geeks, anyone interested in the history of one of the worlds greatest restaurants, the rise and complexity of innovative cuisine, or simply a lavish, colorful book filled with beautiful photography and artwork, can appreciate The Fat Duck Cookbook. It’s a wonderful book to own, even if it merely sits on your coffee table as a means to spark conversation, and the story it tells is captivating. Totally worth all $250 for the original, this newer version puts it grasp of those on a budget, making it available for almost anyone. At that price, it should be on the shelf of every would-be chef, gastronome, and interested eye.

I’ve just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I’m a bit behind, as most people read this book when it was published in 2007. I could have done the same, when my mother gave a copy to both me and my sister that year as Christmas gifts. My sister had already jumped on the band wagon of reducing her carbon footprint, using recycled paper towels and changing all the light-bulbs in our house to energy saving ones, and she read the book almost as soon as she tore the wrapping paper off. As a student in culinary arts school, all I could think about was food, but my mind was far from the food system and I tossed the book aside. I was more concerned with how to de-bone a chicken then how it was grown, and as far as I knew, produce came off a truck, straight from the company our school bought it from.

After moving to California, my thoughts changed a bit. Tasting strawberries and tomatoes that lacked the starchy, cardboard substance of those found in East Coast grocery stores, I adopted a farmers market focus in my palate. I ate my first persimmons, chard, and fresh figs, purchased directly from the farmers who grew them, and I couldn’t get enough. Living on three years of California produce, I finally traveled to Europe to work on two organic farms, furthering my understanding of the importance of quality produce. After watching the documentary Food, Inc, I realized how this farmer focused produce fit into the picture of our food system. And how corn and soybean additives and government-subsidized, corporate agriculture should not. I changed my food ways, trying to buy goods from stores that supported local, sustainable companies and shopping more at the farmers market.

It wasn’t until I read the first few chapters of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, however, that I realized just how important knowing what you eat, where it comes from, and how it affects out food system, really is. The book tells the story of Barbara Kingsolver, who relocates her family from the dry and arid landscape of Arizona, to rural Appalachian Virginia. There, surrounded by a sprawling farm, the family of four embarks on a mission to eat only locally produced items, found within 150 miles of them, for one year. Throughout the prose of the Kingsolvers raising chicken and turkeys, gardening everything from apples to asparagus, and making bread, cheese, and pasta, is the literature that sticks in my mind: the why. The book tells why the family is growing their own food(because they can, and because food travels on average 1500 miles to get to your local store). It explains why the family raises their own turkeys(because almost extinct heritage varieties can reproduce on their own unlike the genetically modified grocery store version that must be fertilized with human help). And it answers why the family choose to do this at all(because living off of their land means growing vegetables in a way that nurtures their surroundings, creating products without additives). It’s enough to make you want to buy your own plot of land and start fresh.

One of Kingsolver’s main focuses is eating what is in season, because those of us who don’t have the luxury of our own farms must buy from the store or market. When you eat what is in season(i.e. tomatoes in July and August), it is likely the produce has been grown locally and not stored in electricity-draining refrigeration or shipped from a warmer climate. Asking your supplier, where and when the produce is grown is even better, as Kingsolver repeatedly discusses how most produce found in grocery stores nationwide is shipped hundreds of miles from California.

California. Where I am lucky enough to live. As much as I have focused on farmers markets and shopping sustainably, the fact of the matter is, I live in a state and a region, where I can find the best of the country’s produce available for the most amount of time. Produce that makes a New England farmer jealous. Right here, everyday, I can shop at one of the many Los Angeles farmers markets. Unlike other areas, most of the produce sold in California grocery stores is local, because it can be. And all this time, I’ve just been taking advantage of it. Shopping at stores who may not offer me local goods, buying produce with a blind eye.

And it’s almost over. As I close in on my last weeks in Los Angeles, reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I realize how spoiled I’ve been. While it may be only a few days, all I can do is make up for lost time and try to go local. This week I’ll eat only farmers market produce, buy my chicken and beef from local, sustainable producers, and make my own bread and cheese. In every way I can, I’ll buy local, sustainable products, savoring the fact that it is so easy to do in California.

What does going local really mean?It’s simply doing what you can to buy goods from people producing near you, shopping at farmers markets, and eating in-season produce. It may not be possible to do as the Kingsolver’s and move onto a rural farm to produce your own food, but you can grow your own herbs, buy local produce and meat from markets, and make many of your own products. Even in areas not as blessed with sunny weather as California, you can ask your grocery stores for local items, and buy more from these sections. Sustainable producers treat the land in a way the enriches minerals and keeps it healthy. These farmers grow heritage and heirloom varieties, not genetically modified produce and meats. They treat the land better, and in the process create better products. By supporting local, sustainable producers, you are helping the environment, eating better, and positively affecting our food system. So why not choose local?