The Man Who Ate Everything – Jeffrey Steingarten
This has been around for a while, but it’s one of my favourite books about food. In fact, if you’re crazy enough about food to be reading this site, you owe it to yourself to get hold of a copy.
The Man Who Ate Everything is a collection of Steingarten’s writings for American Vogue. It’s hilarious, informed and great therapy, all in one gulp. Why great therapy? No one could be quite this fabulously irrational about the minutiae of food.
I write a blog. Steingarten lives the life. How can any food writer measure up to him?
June 27th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Great you liked him too!
I really enjoyed the book especially the part which focuses on how to obtain the best fries. Pedantry to the extreme – someone’s got to do it.
He’s also wrtten a part two book which unfortuneatley isn’t as good.
Why isn’t Nigel Slater’s latest (or any of them for that matter) in your library?
Fuschia Dunlop for Sezchuan cookery
Hot sour sweet by Alford & Duguid. Brilliant South East Asian cookery and coffee table tome.
…mmm…am hungry now.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Thanks Lisa
I think the second book’s pretty good as well – I love the sheer unhinged passion of the man for, well, anything food-related.
Nigel Slater? I think one Nigel Slater is enough (sorry). I have Real Food, FWIW.
I have getting on for 140 cookery books, and one of the things I want to do is to post the best ones from time-to-time. The books in the sidebar are being test-driven from the local library, so that’s actually a separate part of the site.
I’ll definitely look into the Dunlop and the Alford & Duguid (is that the one with all the gorgeous photographs?).
David
June 29th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Hi,
Yep, Jeffrey would be a brilliant dinner party guest, or somebody to go food shopping with.
Not an N.S. fan? Why’s that?
Wow loads of cookery books! Have you had a chance to road test them (to varying degrees)? A review of the best ones would be good.
Have you read Mark Kurlansky’s ‘Cod’ and ‘Salt’ (Cod is the better of the two). If so can you recommend other titles written in a similar vein?
Yes, the A & G is the one with the gorgeous photos, and the recipes are authentic too.
Lisa
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:12 pm
NS? I loved the first book I picked up, but I find his books a bit samey. I also have a basic problem with ‘comfort food’, and Nigel is the king of comfort food.
I’ve road tested most of my books, but I have three that I still need to cook anything from. David Thompson’s Thai Food, which I bought recently after borrowing it from the library, Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating, and Michel Roux Jnr’s Matching Food and Wine.
I plan to review the books I like best here over time…
I haven’t read Cod or Salt – I’ll add them to the list.
So many books to buy – and you’re only making it worse