Cooking, Food & Wine Audiobooks

For readers of Braiding Sweetgrass and How to Do Nothing—books that invite us to imagine better ways to live (and live with each other)—comes a spirited and charming exploration of group living from a child of the counterculture that encourages us to redefine the meaning of home and family. Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Her mom—energetic and intense at work and at play, whether at her job marketing for an agricultural co-op or paddling down a river, fat spliff in hand—had spent her life revolting against the strictures of her American and Filipino upbringing. Her dad, a child of the eastern Oregon desert, was a jovial documentary filmmaker and historian who loved to collect ephemera. Both threw open the doors of the Holman House, their rambling home in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests in need of a place to stay. Years later, after college and after her parents’ separation, Milholland returned home. There, she joined her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—in choosing to further the experiment of communal living into a new generation. Group Living and Other Recipes tells the story of the residents of the Holman House—of transcendent meals and ecstatic parties, of colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation, of a shared life that is appealing, humorous, confounding, and, just maybe, utopian—with a wider exploration of group living as a way of life. Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes provides a convincing case that “now is always the right time to reimagine home and family”—and introduces a gifted memoirist and food writer in the tradition of Laurie Colwin, Ruth Reichl, and M.F.K. Fisher. Includes a PDF of all recipes in the text.

Big Heart Little Stove is your new go-to inspiration for cooking thoughtful yet simple meals. With personal stories, her favorite hospitality "signatures," tips for cooking, presentation ideas, and audio-exclusive interviews (with Ina Garten & more), Erin French—author of The New York Times' bestseller Finding Freedom—invites listeners to bring pieces of her beloved restaurant, The Lost Kitchen, home with them. With tips and tricks French has used in her own dining room—at home and in the restaurant— along with audio exclusive interviews with Erin's mother, Deanna, her co-worker, Ashley, her husband, Michael, and her dear friend, Ina Garten, this extended edition is your invitation to get inspired and use what’s around you to create meaningful moments, from setting a table with found treasures, to adorning dishes with edible flowers, to thoughtful gestures such as offering a cold cloth on a hot day. Full of warmth and spirit, Big Heart Little Stove will show you how to create more joy and connection around your table. With dishes pulled from French’s family recipe box and the menu at The Lost Kitchen, ranging from irresistible nibbles; to luscious soups; to heaping platters of family-style salads and sides; to show-stopping main courses; this extended audio cookbook has all the tools you need for assembling a seamlessly special meal. And to round things out, there are beverages to sip as dinner comes off the stove and desserts to make your guests feel truly looked after. Regardless of whether it’s a dressed-up affair or a quick weeknight meal, French’s recommendations are the same: Start with the best ingredients you can find, keep it simple, and serve with love. A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.

From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from nature In Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances—a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia. Nezhukmatathil restores our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounters with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory. Bite by Bite offers a rich and textured kaleidoscope of vignettes and visions into the world of food and nature, drawn together by intimate and humorous personal reflections.

One of BookPage's Best Audiobooks of 2023 "Loftus is a charming narrator...goofy, engaging, and always game to do a silly voice." —The New York Times "There’s something terribly irresistible about her narration, which is often incredibly funny." —BookPage Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique—comedian Jamie Loftus's debut, Raw Dog, will take you on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2021, and reveal what the creation, culture, and class influence of hot dogs says about America now. “Wise and funny” —ANDY RICHTER • “Gonzo yet vulnerable” —GABE DUNN • “Hot dog Moby-Dick” —BRANSON REESE • “Revealing, funny, sad, horny, and insatiably curious” —SARAH MARSHALL • “A wild ride” —ROBERT EVANS • “Deeply incisive and hilariously honest” —JACK O’BRIEN Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re kids' food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America's Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog. Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelogue documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It’s a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest. So grab a dog, lay out your picnic blanket, and dig into the delicious and inevitable product of centuries of violence, poverty, and ambition, now rolling around at your local 7-Eleven. “One of the freshest and most insightful new comedic voices of this decade.” —LINDSAY ELLIS A Macmillan Audio production from Forge Books.

In Taste of Love, celebrated chef, cookbook author, and ultimate balaboosta Einat Admony serves up a delicious love story against a backdrop of glamorous Michelin-starred restaurants and dingy rental apartments, the heat of a first kiss, and the heartbreak of broken promises. Part memoir and part kitchen confessional, Taste of Love blends stories of Einat’s culinary achievements with inspiring examples of personal growth and tender moments of real romance. She thought she had all the right ingredients for her career and her future: a husband in the same line of work; culinary experience in Israel, New York City, and Miami; and a powerful connection to the foods and spices of her ancestors that brought her joy. She was caught off guard when her ambitious, but unfaithful, husband left her with an empty apartment in Tel Aviv and a career of her own that she’d kept on the back burner. Driven by a sense of instinct, she takes a leap of faith and returns to New York City where she uses her resilience, creativity, and determination to make a name for herself in the culinary capital of the U.S. — and find true love and partnership in her soulmate, Stefan. Savor every step of the journey as Einat finds she can, in fact, take the heat in any kitchen as she works her way from cooking school to the appetizer station at a restaurant owned by the Wolfgang Puck of Israel, to waiting tables at a dive in Florida, to cooking in the hottest spots in Manhattan, to opening falafel chain Taïm. All while serving up tasty meals and offering sage advice for happy relationships. Einat’s story is infused with the charm and humor of Julia Child, the blunt honesty of Anthony Bourdain, and the spice and zing of your favorite takeout. As the author says, “food is joy,” and so is this entertaining memoir of blending cultures, defining one’s identity, and creating the perfect recipe for lasting love.

"Trained in acting and a lifer in the restaurant business, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina doles out opinions in the tone of an authentic New Yorker. He narrates with a good pace and rhythm. The inner workings of the restaurant world as revealed are exhilarating but often sordid and salacious....this is an entertaining and insightful audiobook."- AudioFile This program is read by the author. A front-of-the-house Kitchen Confidential from a career maître d’hotel who manned the front of the room in New York City's hottest and most in-demand restaurants. From the glamorous to the entitled, from royalty to the financially ruined, everyone who wanted to be seen—or just to gawk—at the hottest restaurants in New York City came to places Michael Cecchi-Azzolina helped run. His phone number was passed around among those who wanted to curry favor, during the decades when restaurants replaced clubs and theater as, well, theater in the most visible, vibrant city in the world. Besides dropping us back into a vanished time, Your Table Is Ready takes us places we’d never be able to get into on our own: Raoul's in Soho with its louche club vibe; Buzzy O’Keefe’s casually elegant River Café (the only outer-borough establishment desirable enough to be included in this roster), from Keith McNally’s Minetta Tavern to Nolita’s Le Coucou, possibly the most beautiful room in New York City in 2018, with its French Country Auberge-meets-winery look and the most exquisite and enormous stands of flowers, changed every three days. From his early career serving theater stars like Tennessee Williams and Dustin Hoffman at La Rousse right through to the last pre-pandemic-shutdown full houses at Le Coucou, Cecchi-Azzolina has seen it all. In Your Table Is Ready, he breaks down how restaurants really run (and don’t), and how the economics work for owners and overworked staff alike. The professionals who gravitate to the business are a special, tougher breed, practiced in dealing with the demanding patrons and with each other, in a very distinctive ecosystem that’s somewhere between a George Orwell “down and out in….” dungeon and a sleek showman’s smoke-and-mirrors palace. Your Table Is Ready is a rollicking, raunchy, revelatory memoir. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

An irreverent, surprising, and entirely entertaining look at the little-known history surrounding the foods we know and love Is Italian olive oil really Italian, or are we dipping our bread in lamp oil? Why are we masochistically drawn to foods that can hurt us, like hot peppers? Far from being a classic American dish, is apple pie actually . . . English? “As a species, we’re hardwired to obsess over food,” Matt Siegel explains as he sets out “to uncover the hidden side of everything we put in our mouths.” Siegel also probes subjects ranging from the myths—and realities—of food as aphrodisiac, to how one of the rarest and most exotic spices in all the world (vanilla) became a synonym for uninspired sexual proclivities, to the role of food in fairy- and morality tales. He even makes a well-argued case for how ice cream helped defeat the Nazis. The Secret History of Food is a rich and satisfying exploration of the historical, cultural, scientific, sexual, and, yes, culinary subcultures of this most essential realm. Siegel is an armchair Anthony Bourdain, armed not with a chef’s knife but with knowledge derived from medieval food-related manuscripts, ancient Chinese scrolls, and obscure culinary journals. Funny and fascinating, The Secret History of Food is essential reading for all foodies. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

When a New Jersey native moves to Minnesota, she discovers a local food movement strong enough to survive the toughest winter. Fascinating and heartfelt, this memoir demonstrates that even in a place with a short growing season, food grown locally and organically can be healthy, community-based, environmentally conscious, and—most of all—delicious.

RuPaul’s Drag Race superstar Ginger Minj shares her favorite recipes, best advice, and wildest stories in this hilarious book that’s part memoir, part cookbook. Perfect for fans of Trixie and Katya’s Guide to Modern Womanhood. Drag icon Ginger Minj brings her signature humor and sass to this tongue-in-cheek memoir-cum-life manual-cum-cookbook. Featuring Ginger’s favorite Southern-inspired recipes, Southern Fried Sass showcases some of her most vulnerable and celebratory moments, revealing the most valuable lessons she’s learned after years in drag and the pearls of wisdom she’s gleaned from her grandmother’s personal brand of Southern resilience. You’ll cheer for Ginger as she spills the tea with exclusive behind-the-scenes details from three seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race and offers her best advice on everything from contouring to cooking and setting the table for a full-on Southern-style Thanksgiving dinner. Did we say dinner? Here, you’ll find more than fifty recipes, including The Minx’s Sick’ning Scalloped Pineapple Paradise, Red Barn BBQ Ribs platter, Better Than Sex cake, and countless other decadent desserts. From fighting for what you’re worth to looking good on a motorcycle as a big girl to finding love while also making damn good cupcakes, this is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to live their best life.

The obsessive mastermind behind one of the decade's bestselling cookbooks returns with the definitive English-language guide to the science and technique of cooking in a wok. J. Kenji López-Alt's debut cookbook, The Food Lab, revolutionized home cooking, selling more than half a million copies with its science-based approach to everyday foods. And for fast, fresh cooking for his family, there's one pan López-Alt reaches for more than any other: the wok. Whether stir-frying, deep frying, steaming, simmering, or braising, the wok is the most versatile pan in the kitchen. Once you master the basics—the mechanics of a stir-fry, and how to get smoky wok hei at home—you're ready to cook home-style and restaurant-style dishes from across Asia and the United States, including Kung Pao Chicken, Pad Thai, and San Francisco-Style Garlic Noodles. López-Alt also breaks down the science behind beloved Beef Chow Fun, fried rice, dumplings, tempura vegetables or seafood, and dashi-simmered dishes. Featuring more than 200 recipes—including simple no-cook sides—explanations of knife skills, and how to stock a pantry, The Wok provides endless ideas for brightening up dinner.

“At last, the feminist history of booze we’ve been waiting for!” —Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist From Los Angeles Times bestselling author Mallory O’Meara comes a lively and engrossing feminist history of women drinking through the ages Strawberry daiquiris. Skinny martinis. Vodka sodas with lime. These are the cocktails that come in sleek-stemmed glasses, bright colors and fruity flavors—these are the Girly Drinks. From the earliest days of civilization, alcohol has been at the center of social rituals and cultures worldwide. But when exactly did drinking become a gendered act? And why have bars long been considered “places for men” when, without women, they might not even exist? With whip-smart insight and boundless curiosity, Girly Drinks unveils an entire untold history of the female distillers, drinkers and brewers who have played a vital role in the creation and consumption of alcohol, from ancient Sumerian beer goddess Ninkasi to iconic 1920s bartender Ada Coleman. Filling a crucial gap in culinary history, O’Meara dismantles the long-standing patriarchal traditions at the heart of these very drinking cultures, in the hope that readers everywhere can look to each celebrated woman in this book—and proudly have what she’s having.

The bestselling, “unvarnished” (The New York Times), “engrossing” (The Guardian), “gritty, well-researched” (The Economist)—and definitely unauthorized—biography of the celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain, based on extensive interviews with those who knew the real story. Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide in June 2018 shocked people around the world. Bourdain seemed to have it all: an irresistible personality, a dream job, a beautiful family, and international fame. The reality, though, was more complicated than it seemed. Bourdain became a celebrity with his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential. He parlayed it into a series of hit television shows, including the Food Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown. But his bad boy charisma belied a troubled spirit. Addiction and an obsession with perfection and personal integrity ruined two marriages and turned him into a boss from hell, even as millions of fans became enamored of the quick-witted and genuinely empathetic traveler they saw on TV. At the height of his success Bourdain was already running out of steam, physically and emotionally, when he fell hard for an Italian actress who could be even colder to him than he sometimes was to others, and who effectively drove a wedge between him and his young daughter. Down and Out in Paradise is the first book to tell the full Bourdain story, and to show how Bourdain’s never-before-reported childhood traumas fueled both the creativity and insecurities that would lead him to a place of despair. “Filled with fresh, intimate details” (The New York Times), this is the real story behind an extraordinary life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Wherever I travel, be it a different state, country, or continent, I always call Phil when I need to know where and what to eat. He’s the food guru of the world.” —Ray Romano The ultimate collection of must-have recipes, stories, and behind-the-scenes photos from the beloved Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil. Phil Rosenthal, host of the beloved Netflix series Somebody Feed Phil, really loves food and learning about global cultures, and he makes sure to bring that passion to every episode of the show. Whether he’s traveling stateside to foodie-favorite cities such as San Francisco or New Orleans or around the world to locations like Saigon, Tel Aviv, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, or Marrakesh, Rosenthal includes a healthy dose of humor to every episode—and now to this book. In Somebody Feed Phil the Book, Rosenthal presents never-before-heard stories from every episode of the first four seasons of the series, along with more than sixty of viewers’ most requested recipes from acclaimed international chefs and local legends alike (including Rosenthal’​s favorite sandwich finds from San Francisco to Tel Aviv), so you can replicate many of the dishes from the show right at home. There are also “scripts” from some of Rosenthal’s video phone calls from the road with his family making this the ultimate companion guide for avid fans of the show as well as armchair travelers and adventurous at-home chefs.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Food Network: One of the 10 Best Vegan Cookbooks of the Year More than 125 plant-based recipes and a practical approach to making deeply flavorful food for feeling your best. “What you eat—along with your daily habits and the thoughts you think—has the ability to completely transform every aspect of your health.” —Radhi Devlukia-Shetty “There’s a lot we love about this book, but we’re particularly smitten by the way the collection of recipes reflect the rhythms of everyday eating and living. That, coupled with author Radhi Devlukia-Shetty’s approachable tone and nutritionist credentials, makes for a cookbook we can see reaching for again and again.” —The Food Network A passionate self-taught cook and nutritionist, Radhi Devlukia-Shetty’s JoyFull is abundant and inviting. With more than 125 plant-based recipes, it is designed to balance health and satisfaction; her wide-ranging dishes bring vibrant flavors to every meal of the day and rely on accessible ingredients. This go-to collection includes the following chapters and recipes: -Morning Nibbles: Loaded Toast Four Ways, French Toast Casserole, Veggie Frittata Muffins -Grounding Grains: Rainbow Grain Bowl, One Pot Lemony Spaghetti, Mexican Lasagna -LBPs (Lentils, Beans, and Pulses): Creamy Red Lentil Daal; Baked Falafel Pita; Sweet Potato, Cauliflower, and Cashew Curry -Bread is Life: Pull Apart Cheesy Bread, Spicy Bean Burgers, Tandoori Tacos, Pizza Quesadilla -Salads: Butterbean and Tomato, Chilled Soba Noodle, Mum’s Old School Potato Salad -Sun to Moon Soups: Cheesy Broccoli, Beet and Dill, Cannellini Bean and Tomato -Hero Veg: Sweet and Sour Broccolini, Crispy Sunchokes, Bombay Potatoes -Drinks: Masala Chai, Strawberry Mint Lemonade, Tahini Matcha Latte -Sweet Treats: Chocolate Mud Pie, Oatmeal Cookies, Pecan Upside Down Cake And because food alone cannot sustain us completely, Radhi shares her daily wellness practices: her revitalizing morning skincare routine, ancient rituals to nourish and strengthen your hair, meditations and prayers for staying present, and breathwork that will carry you through each phase of the day. Radhi shares its transformative principles in a way that's easy for anyone to incorporate into their life. She offers mindful practices around cooking and explains how, as we connect to our food and understand our body, we can improve our health. Whether satisfying comfort food or a gentle bowl of grains and veggies, each dish—and ritual—in JoyFull is intended to bring harmony to you and your body. Written with generosity and kindness, Radhi takes you on a journey towards a JoyFull life.

The world's most sophisticated gastronomic culture, brilliantly presented through a banquet of thirty Chinese dishes. Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication—but today that is beginning to change. In Invitation to a Banquet, award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop explores the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. In each chapter, she examines a classic dish, from mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles to braised pomelo pith, to reveal a distinctive aspect of Chinese gastronomy, whether it's the importance of the soybean, the lure of exotic ingredients, or the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting food producers, chefs, gourmets, and home cooks as she tastes her way across the country, Fuchsia invites listeners to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is cooked, eaten, and considered in its homeland.

You're standing in front of your refrigerator, a week after your last trip to the supermarket. You've got a bunch of random veggies, some wrinkly fruit, near-expired milk, and those pricey fresh herbs you bought for that one recipe. For a split second you picture yourself throwing everything away and ordering takeout. But instead . . . you pick up this cookbook. You're saving food, shrinking that grocery bill, and learning some key skills for making the most of what you have. It's exciting to be able to create new dishes and waste less food, and most importantly—a delicious dinner is on the table! Perfectly Good Food is a book for those moments everyone has, whether you cook for one or a whole household. Chock-full of ingenious use-it-up tips, smart storage ideas, and infinitely adaptable recipes, this book will teach you: why smoothies are your secret weapon; how to freeze (almost) anything; and why using your senses in the kitchen is more important than so-called shelf-life. Written by the chef-sisters behind Boston's acclaimed Mei Mei Dumplings, this is a crucial resource for the thrifty chef, the environmentally mindful cook, and anyone looking to make the most of their ingredients.

“Food, for me, is a constant pleasure: I like to think greedily about it, reflect deeply on it, learn from it; it provides comfort, inspiration, meaning, and beauty…More than just a mantra, ‘cook, eat, repeat’ is the story of my life.”  Cook, Eat, Repeat is a delicious and delightful combination of recipes intertwined with narrative essays about food, all written in Nigella Lawson’s engaging and insightful prose. Whether asking “what is a recipe?” or declaring death to the “guilty pleasure,” Nigella brings her wisdom about food and life to the fore while sharing new recipes that readers will want to return to again and again. Within these chapters are more than a hundred new recipes for all seasons and tastes from Burnt Onion and Eggplant Dip to Chicken with Garlic Cream Sauce; from Beef Cheeks with Port and Chestnuts to Ginger and Beetroot Yogurt Sauce. Those with a sweet tooth will delight in desserts including Rhubarb and Custard Trifle; Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake; and Cherry and Almond Crumble. “The recipes I write come from my life, my home,” says Nigella, and in Cook, Eat, Repeat she reveals the rhythms and rituals of her kitchen through recipes that make the most of her favorite ingredients, with inspiration for family dinners, vegan feasts, and solo suppers, as well as new ideas for cooking during the holidays.  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

A collection of the year’s top food writing, selected by guest editor Sohla El-Waylly and series editor Silvia Killingsworth.  Culinary creator, writer and community advocate, Sohla El-Waylly selects the best twenty articles published in 2021 that celebrate the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food. In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them.  The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism. As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul. Koshersoul includes recipes. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

In Catching Hell, longtime seafood mogul Allen Ricca and author Joe Muto take readers behind the scenes of the high-end restaurant world and the international market for seafood, and how that industry has been impacted perhaps like no other due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This book exposes the fact that the American diner is being lied to on a regular basis. The culprit varies – sometimes it’s a chef or restaurant owner trying to cut corners to save money; other times it’s an unscrupulous supplier looking to pass off poor product to an unwitting receiver. And the cost of that scam eventually gets passed on to the consumer, whether it be in the form of higher prices at restaurants and markets, lower quality (or even counterfeit) product getting delivered onto your plate, or – God forbid – food poisoning. Furthermore, Ricca argues, the pandemic has only increased corruption in this industry. This book serves as both an exposé and a call to arms, empowering consumers with the knowledge to make more informed choices when dining out.  Some of the things this explosive book reveals: -The one fish you should never order, one that’s always a rip-off. (And the one fish that’s always a delicious, virtually-unknown bargain.) -Why restaurants that advertise “fresh” fish are almost always lying. -How to get your favorite restaurant to treat you like royalty – without dropping thousands of dollars. -How the covid-19 pandemic has impacted our food supply chain and what it has meant for the everyday worker. 

The debut cookbook from benny blanco—pop music super-producer, artist, actor on FXX’s Dave, and consummate food freak—teaches you everything you need to know about cooking, enjoying life, and throwing the greatest dinner party of all time. Hi, I’m benny blanco. I’m in a television show with my best friend Dave and I probably produced most of the songs you have heard on the radio from 2008 until now. When I was thirteen, my friend got a George Foreman Grill and it changed my life forever. We would invite friends over, get stoned, and make the most elaborate sandwiches our prepubescent minds could fathom. I became obsessed with food and cooking for friends.  I know what you are going to say, and I get it. Cooking is scary. But I promise you, once you get into it, it will be your new addiction. Slicing an onion is like taking a Xanax to me. I made this cookbook to teach you everything I know about food, cooking, and throwing the greatest dinner party of all time. There are the basics to get your kitchen ready, a little advice from my expert friends, then all of the dinner party menus I love to make, like:  5 Dishes to Get You Laid and One for the Morning AfterI Wish I Were an Italian GrandmaTake Me to the Cheesy RodeoF*ck Morton’s Steakhouse  Which are filled with insane recipes like:  Lose Your Mind Lobster Rolls“I Might Go Vegetarian” Veggie SandwichChicken Cutlets with Honey, Peppers, and Parm“I Hope We Didn’t Make a Baby” Breakfast Burrito.  I’ve been told some of the finest stories over meals. I’ve laughed so hard I thought I was going to actually die. I’ve fallen in love—sometimes with the food, sometimes with the person across the table. I’ve cried in good ways, and I’ve cried in bad ways. I hope you’ve been lucky enough to have all these same memories and then some. But if you haven’t, I can make you a promise. If you follow these three simple steps, it will all become a reality: Open this book. Open your heart. And open wide, baby. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Food & Wine editor Ray Isle does for wine what Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma did for food—showing readers how to choose more delicious, interesting, and environmentally friendly wines without breaking the bank. So much of today’s wine is mass-produced, industrially farmed, corporate-owned, and essentially, ordinary. In The World in a Wineglass, veteran wine writer Ray Isle explains that the way a wine is made, and who made it, can make a huge difference when you drink it—and why that information matters much more than knowing it scored 90 points. Or that it tastes like blueberries. Or “hints of violets and black pepper.” Drawing on his deep knowledge and genuine appreciation of winemaking, Isle takes us on a tour of several hundred independently owned wineries around the world—everywhere from France’s Burgundy to Oregon’s Willamette Valley to the Itata Valley in the southern reaches of Chile—bringing the local vintners to life and describing the different wines they produce in vivid detail. Isle’s enthusiasm for the grape growers and winemakers who are working sustainably or organically shines through as he shares his love for the way a glass of wine can express the place it comes from and capture the essence of the person who made it. Focusing on wines people can afford, rather than $500 rarities, Isle shows us where and how to find the most interesting bottles out there today. Whether you prefer a hearty cabernet, a crisp chardonnay, or something more off the beaten path, Ray Isle’s affable, accessible guide to finding unusual or undiscovered varieties offers a window into a whole new fascinating world for wine lovers everywhere.

From legendary chef Jacques Pepin, a book celebrating his lifelong love of chickens, featuring dozens of his celebrated paintings and more than 50 recipes, along with a treasure trove of poignant and often humorous stories. Chicken may not be an extravagant ingredient, but for master chef Jacques Pépin, it is the one he turns to most frequently—to cook and to paint. In this beautifully illustrated book, Jacques reminisces on his life through the lens of the humble bird, from his childhood in rural France, where he chased chickens and watched as his maman turned them into her poulet à la crème, to his demanding apprenticeship and long, illustrious career—cooking Chicken Chasseur for Charles de Gaulle and his family, turning down a chance to work as JFK’s White House Chef for a job at Howard Johnson’s, and appearing on television alongside food-world luminaries like Julia Child. Throughout are Jacques’ favorite chicken and egg recipes, conveyed as if he were sharing them over a dinner table. Most significantly, the book displays dozens of Jacques’ stunning paintings of chickens. “If it clucks or scratches, it’s likely that Jacques has painted it.” This unique book is the next best thing to a visit to Jacques’ home, which would include a tour of his art studio, captivating conversation as he cooks, and a toast with a glass of wine over a simple meal of perfect roast chicken.   Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.