Non-Fiction Books about Chefs/Cooks

By the time he was 27 years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened - and closed - one of the most talked-about restaurants in America. He had launched his own catering company with $20,000 that he made from selling candy on the subway, yet he'd been told he would never make it on television because his cooking wasn't "Southern" enough. In this inspiring memoir about the intersection of race, fame, and food, he shares the remarkable story of his culinary coming-of-age....

"From award-winning actor and food obsessive Stanley Tucci comes an intimate and charming memoir of life in and out of the kitchen"-- Tucci grew up in an Italian family that put great import on food: the quality of ingredients, the careful preparation, the passing on of family recipes and cultural culinary traditions. He has written cookbooks, become involved in food-related charities, and has probably spent more time focusing on food than he does...

"Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe-- many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy's original inventions"...

In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child's years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found "her true calling." From the moment she and her husband Paul, who worked for the USIS, arrived in the fall of 1948, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn't speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting...

""My entire life I have been less fat and more fat, but never not fat." According to family lore, when Rabia Chaudry's family returned to Pakistan for their first visit since moving to the United States, two-year-old Rabia was more than just a pudgy toddler. Dada Abu, her fit and sprightly grandfather, attempted to pick her up but had to put her straight back down, demanding of Chaudry's mother: "What have you done to her?" The answer was two full...

"Over the past several decades, globalization has homogenized what we eat, and done so ruthlessly. The numbers are stark: Of the roughly six thousand different plants once consumed by human beings, only nine remain major staples today. Just three of these-rice, wheat, and corn-now provide fifty percent of all our calories. Dig deeper and the trends are more worrisome still: The source of much of the world's food-seeds-is mostly in the control of just...