Review: Gabrielle Hamilton’s “Blood, Bones & Butter”
Never have I seen a contestant on Iron Chef: America become as popular as mild mannered Gabrielle Hamilton. She has been one of the most searched for subjects on my blog for three years. Chef Hamilton wowed judge’s Karine Bakhoum, Louisa Chu and Michael Ruhlman en route to a 53-49 victory over Iron Chef Bobby Flay in Battle: Zucchini. Gabrielle’s modest Zucchini Tian was one of the most searched-for recipes on the Online for months after that appearance.
For those who don’t know Hamilton, she is the chef/owner of Prune, a popular bistro in New York’s East Village. Prune is known for churning out scratch-made Continental Cuisine with an unassuming and decidedly cozy feel. The chef draws on her travels abroad and her dysfunctional childhood for the inspiration on her menu.
It is that childhood that provides the backdrop for both her success as a chef and as the subject matter of her chef memoir Blood, Bones & Butter (available in the Wannabe TV Chef Store). Since its release this past spring it has been one of the hottest food-oriented books on the market. So popular in fact that the publisher actually had to dig a little to come up with a review copy to send me.
The praise for Blood, Bones & Butter has been exceptional. Dig some of these quotes:
“I will read this book to my children and then burn all the books I have written for pretending to be anything even close to this.”
Mario Batali
“I have long considered Gabrielle Hamilton a writer in cook’s clothes and this deliciously complex…memoir proves the point.”
Mimi Sheraton
“Gabrielle Hamilton approaches storytelling the same way she does cooking-with thoughtful creativity that delights the senses.”
Daniel Boulud
“Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.”
Anthony Bourdain
That’s high praise from some highly respected people. Though Bourdain’s quote demonstrates his adulation for Hamilton’s book, his own memoir Kitchen Confidential remains, for me anyway, the benchmark for all chef memoirs. Being a guy I like a little more raunch in my chef memoirs I guess. Still Blood, Bones & Butter is a terrific read that is filled with poignant moments and emotional leeching. It is wonderful story telling.
As with many of us in this industry, cooking did not start out as Hamilton’s Plan A. It was simply something she could do well enough to pay the bills and maintain a steady supply of drugs and alcohol. She worked her way to an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan by working as a catering chef. And while her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and Food & Wine it is for her rustic comfort food that she has gained most notoriety.
Blood, Bones & Butter may change all of that. Hamilton’s gift with words is equal to her talent in the kitchen. She has passages that are almost lyrical as she recites the life’s events that led to opening her renowned Manhattan eatery, her transition from lesbian feminist to loving mother and business woman not to mention the sordid affair (with a man no less) that eventually lead to marriage.
The best section of the book is at the end where she regales the reader with tales of her annual vacation to her husband’s family home in Southern Italy. Her admiration for her mother-in-law Alda forms the heart of her love of everything about her new Italian family, the family she never had growing up. Why don’t I let her tell you:
[mp3j track=”Excerpt-Blood-Bones-Butter.mp3″]
Blood, Bones & Butter is a great memoir, chef or otherwise, that will genuinely entertain. Fans of Hamilton will not be disappointed. Unless of course they are looking for the recipe to her Zucchini Tian.
My Summer Reading List: Heat
Originally posted on July 08, 2009.
Last time on My Summer Reading List, I reviewed Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Cheflebrity Anthony Bourdain. Beyond all of the hype Kitchen Confidential is simply a book about a chef who becomes a writer. This time around I am reviewing Heat by Bill Buford. All awards and accolades aside Heat is simply a book about a writer who becomes a chef.
Oh those midlifes. In my first 40 years on earth I’ve been a musician, a dot com guy, a writer and a chef. I wonder what 50 holds for me?
I could sit here all day trying to wax poetic about the transformation Buford made from literati to culinarian. but I don’t have to. I’ll just steal Buford’s words, “In the beginning, there was a writer, the ghost was the chef. In the end, there was the chef, the ghost was the writer.” Heat reads like two different books. The first is one of those culinary adventures that are so en vogue and the other a biography of Mario Batali.
The idea for Heat began when Buford threw a dinner party back in 2002. Batali was a guest at that party but by the time it ended the then-editor at the New Yorker had decided that someone needed to do a profile of the Iron Chef. Unfortunately Buford got no takers so he resolved to do the story himself. A fateful decision to say the least.
Buford elected to take six months to work in the kitchens of Babbo, Batali’s three star Italian restaurant located in New York’s Greenwich Village. When the story was done, Buford wasn’t. He resigned his post at the magazine to continue work his way up the ladder at Babbo. Before long he was on a plane to Italy to learn the old ways. His journey would find him hanging with Marco Pierre White in London, hand rolling pasta in Tuscany and butchering a pig in his New York apartment.
Heat is very well written as one would imagine from a writer of Buford’s experience and does a wonderful job of showing his journey from white collar to chef whites. Those thinking of making the career change to the culinary arts would be well served to read this book before turning in that letter of resignation.
Next: The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffery Steingarten.
My Summer Reading List: Kitchen Confidential
Originally published on June 17, 2009.
Last time on My Summer Reading List I reviewed Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, the beautiful story of a little girl in love with food who grows up to be a renowned food writer. Tender is a romantic telling of a life spent in food. Kitchen Confidential is a whole other beast.
Semi-retired chef Anthony Bourdain shocked the world with his tome on the inside workings of the restaurant industry, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. As the story goes, Kitchen Confidential blew the lid of the industry upon it’s release in 2000 by revealing the drunken, drug-laden debauchery that exists in American professional kitchens. I question how many people were genuinely surprised by the revelations in Bourdain’s work, after all the restaurant industry employs more people than any other industry in the nation, save the Federal government, over 12 million jobs nationwide.
I believe that most of the hullabaloo was feigned. After all, of those in the media not currently employed in the Life (as Bourdain calls it) most at least used to be employed in it. To a lifer like myself the book was comfortable. It was like sitting down with an old friend over a bottle of Johnny Walker getting three sheets while reliving memories and swapping tales.
Bourdain paints a perfect picture of life in the kitchen, testosterone driven trash talking, seducing servers and drinking way too much. But what surprised me was the author’s love of food. Images sketched in words of his first raw oyster freshly plucked from the brine while only a lad to his experiences with the amazing creations of Scott Bryan, Eric Ripert and Ferran Adrià. Throughout the text I was constantly reminded of both Bourdain’s love affair with food and his sheer talent for the smithing of words.
The boy’s got chops. At the time of its publishing I don’t think Bourdain knew just how good a writer he was. The book was so explosive, so popular that it actually was made into a television series, all though it was a short lived one. Fast forward nearly a decade and Tony is no longer commanding the kitchen at Les Halles, no longer going on three-day coke benders (I hope) and no longer chasing tail. He has become what he loathed and found it’s a pretty nice gig, this celebrity chef thing.
I made sure to put Kitchen Confidential on my summer reading list because I knew how important a book it is. What I did not expect was how much I would learn from it. In fact, I have gotten a whole new reading list from it. Bourdain emphasizes how important it is for any chef to read the classics, if you will, of our profession.
In sports the greats of the game are known by just one name: Hank, Bo, and Michael. Sports fans know of whom I speak. The culinary world is no different and it is these chefs of which Bourdain speaks. Works of literature produced from chefs so revered that they are known by just one name, Escoffier and Bocuse. So thank you, Tony. Not only have you penned a great book, but you have also made my summer reading project a little longer.
Next: Heat by Bill Buford.