Cleveland Heights author Michael Ruhlman, who earned a following with “The Soul of a Chef” and “The Making of a Chef,” continues his portrait of the culinary world in “The Reach of a Chef” (Penguin, 338 pp., $15). Here, he examines the changes brought on by chef branding, cooking as TV entertainment and the rise of the multivenue, jet-setting celebrity chef who often has little time left to cook.
In a chatty, entertaining style Ruhlman takes readers behind the scenes at the Culinary Institute of America, the Food Network and some of the country’s most famous restaurants. He portrays several chef-gurus, including the down-to-earth Melissa Kelly, the wildly inventive Grant Achatz – whose “shrimp cocktail” arrives at the table in a mouth spritzer on crushed ice – and the venerated Thomas Keller of the French Laundry.
Particularly fascinating is Masayoshi Takayama, chef-owner of Masa in Manhattan, perhaps the most expensive restaurant in the country. Patrons pay upwards of $350 each for the cuisine of perfectionist Masa, one of the rare chefs Ruhlman would call an artist.
Foodies will likely devour this quickly and come away hungry for more.
Also recently released:
• “The Caprices,” by Sabina Murray (Grove Press, 210 pp.), $13
Murray, who was born in the Philippines, sets her debut collection of short stories in World War II-era Southeast Asia amid the chaos of ruined cities, prisoner-of-war camps and oppressive jungles. The book, which won a PEN/Faulkner award for fiction, drew wide praise from critics. The Washington Post called it unflinching and majestic.
• “Longing for Darkness,” by China Galland (Penguin, 350 pp.), $16
Texan Galland takes a spiritual odyssey through Nepal, India, Switzerland, France and Eastern Europe, where she seeks the feminine aspects of divinity, such as the Black Madonna and Tara, the female Buddha. Adventure and pilgrimage combine in an intensely personal account the New York Times called “vivid, vulnerable and courageous.”
• “Between, Georgia,” by Joshilyn Jackson (Warner, 294 pp.), $13.99
Caught in a feud between her birth and adoptive families, Nonny Frett has little room to escape in the town of Between, population 90. Exposed secrets and tough choices force Nonny to re-examine her life. Critics liked the novel’s Southern warmth and sass, quirky characters and clever exploration of family ties.
• “Ghost Hunters,” by Deborah Blum (Penguin, 321 pp.),$15
Blum, who won acclaim for “Love at Goon Park,” turns her attention to William James and his turn-of-the-20th-century attempt to prove the existence of ghosts, spirits and psychic phenomena. In its starred review, Publishers Weekly declared the book “a first-rate slice of cultural history.”
• “The Catastrophist,” by Lawrence Douglas (Harcourt, 274 pp.), $14
The protagonist of this dryly witty debut novel is Daniel, a promising young art historian at a fictional New England college who tells a tale of astoundingly bad personal and professional decisions. Kirkus Reviews named this a Best Book of 2006, calling it “an acerbic comedy of manners with serious issues at its solid core.”
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