Anthony Bourdain is a man of many appetites. And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends.
Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites – dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed “bad boy” of cooking, Mr. Bourdain has, in recent years, become the father of a little girl–a role he has embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he now enjoys entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, have caused him, in his words, to have “morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten.”
The result is a home-cooking, home-entertaining cookbook like no other, with personal favorites from his own kitchen and from his travels, translated into an effective battle plan that will help you terrify your guests with your breathtaking efficiency.
Anthony Bourdain & Laurie Woolever: Appetites
Anthony Bourdain is joined onstage by his co-author Laurie Woolever to chat about their latest cookbook, Appetites.
Appetites Quotes
“There is nothing remotely innovative about the recipes in this books. If you are looking for a culinary genius to take you to the Promised Land of next-level creativity, look elsewhere. That ain’t me.
Mostly, there recipes are direct lifts from imperfect memories of childhood favorites, things my mom fed me, things I liked or loved to eat during the happier moments of my life – the kind of food memories I like to share with my daughter – along with a few greatest hits from my travels, and some boiled-down wisdom on subjects like breakfasts and Thanksgiving dinner, presented in an organized and tactically efficient, stress-free way.”