Appetites: A Cookbook

Product Information

Since then he has settled (kind of) into family life and is cooking for the people he loves rather than people who pay. I also think that the dry chorizo was too overpowering and next time I will use fresh chorizo which has a milder, less smoky flavor. I love reading books about food, but full disclosure: I am vegan, so I'm never going to make most of these recipes.

And there's a lot of biographical text, so you feel like he's talking to you, or talking you through the book.

Then, when it came time to cook, I was afraid of overcooking the chicken--you use a grill pan (in our case, a large skillet) on high heat and cook the boneless skinless thighs for a full 7 minutes per side before transferring to a hot oven for an additional 10 minutes. If you're running a script or application, please register or sign in with your developer credentials here. What sets this mac n cheese apart is the addition of mustard powder, cayenne pepper and worcestershire to the béchamel. They are the recipes that ‘work,’ meaning they've been developed over time and have been informed by repetition and long -- and often painful -- experience. That means you get recipes for Sausage and Pepper Hero with a shot of Bourdain eating on the toilet (pants up; he’s no Zappa), and an explanation of how he can't resist this street food, "served at temperatures that would be probably be considered suboptimal by the New York State Department of Health, squashed on a dirty griddle and then piled into a squishy hero roll with some browned onions and peppers, the whole thing a greasy, soggy, unmanageable mess that generally falls apart in my hands before I can eat it.

The recipes vary quite a bit in terms of cuisine (totally expected) and difficulty and number of ingredients. If you want a badass French cook with actually interesting yet attainable recipes, pick up Gabrielle Hamilton's Prune. In what might be his most accessible book yet, Bourdain reveals his "Ina Garten-like need to feed the people around me" with a terrific collection of recipes for family and friends.And be prepared, should you have diet restrictions: these are riddled with gluten, dairy, meat, and all sorts of other things that aren't particularly good for you (but taste amazing). Written in collaboration with his longtime colleague Laurie Woolever, Appetites brings the reader into Bourdain’s home kitchen. The chapters are idiosyncratic: "Salads," "Soups," "Pasta," "Birds," "Hamburger Rules," "Party 101," "Fight! Like many other celebrity-authored cookbooks of late, Bourdain tackles the subject of home entertaining head-on.

Other than that, it's rare that I read a cookbook and actually want to save a recipe or two for future use, and I'd go a step further with this one and consider actually purchasing it (versus just taking it back to the library and forgetting all about it, which is what I usually do). Also, super awkward seeing his (now ex) wife plastered everywhere, usually sweaty and in the middle of a jujitsu match. No red onion, so I used a shallot, and our market doesn’t have navel oranges so I used Valencia, which fell apart when sliced due to so many seeds. Bourdain freezes the stick of butter first, lets it sit at room temp for 5 minutes, and then cuts into cubes. I felt like the sauce became a bit gloppy when mixed in with the cauliflower, when I wanted it to be light, more like a vinaigrette.

Anthony Bourdain is many things: He’s the host of the wildly successful CNN show Parts Unknown; he’s a father; he’s the author of best-sellers like Kitchen Confidential; and way back when, he was just another restaurant chef trying to make it through a shift.