Further reading

Books, magazines, inspiration and more musings

Books

Bourdain, Anthony. A Cook's Tour, No Reservations and Medium Raw. Medium Raw is my favorite of the trio. Bloody hilarious.

Dornenburg, Andrew and Page, Karen. Culinary Artistry and The Flavor Bible. Culinary Artistry provides the very basics of classic cooking; The Flavor Bible matches herbs, meat, produce and spices to one another. Love both of these books.

Dublanica, Steve. Waiter Rant. Never want to wait tables? Who cares. A good front-of-house perspective. Pretty damn funny, too.

Kamman, Madeleine. The (New) Making of a Cook. This woman is so fierce -- Gary Danko and Joanne Weir are two of her protegees. This book provides extremely thorough information, becoming indispensable to me over the last two years. She writes with such a firm, no-nonsense voice that I'm sure I would be shaking if I ever met her.

Kurlansky, Mark. Salt. Yes, salt. 450 pages of salt. Why? Because almost everything in the kitchen needs salt. I also found this history to be absolutely fascinating, so if you're obsessive like me, you too will be fascinated by this book.

Pepin, Jacques. Complete Techniques. Need to hold a knife properly? Julienne carrots? Not work all silly and slow? Here's all the stuff we learn in school. And Jacques is fantastic -- he and Julia were integral parts of my childhood, when PBS was still relevant.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Omnivore's Dilemma is a dense book (I have to read it again, come to think of it), but a must-read if you want to actually think about your food. In Defense of Food draws upon the same themes.

Ruhlman, Michael. The Soul of a Chef, The Making of a Chef and The Reach of a Chef. Chefdom, in three books. For a portion of the book, The Soul of a Chef follows Thomas Keller at The French Laundry. It was the first I'd read about him, and I was captivated.

Edited Witherspoon, Kimberly and Meehan, Peter. How I Learned to Cook: culinary education from the world's greatest chefs. Accounts from dozens of chefs about their first forays into cooking.

Magazines

Art Culinaire A quarterly; an extremely slick hardbound publication, has a firm handle on food industry trends. These are expensive, so a library is probably your best option.

Bon Appetit  Accessible food writing

Lucky Peach Another quarterly, somewhat "alternative," for lack of a better word; usually comes with hilarious journal entries. If you're familiar with McSweeney's or Dave Eggers, this is a food publication in the same vein.

Websites

Eater is on it. This link is to their national website, and they have 19 local editions that will keep any good foodie in the know. Also a decent place to find quality jobs in the food industry.

Tablehopper, run by Marcia Gagliardi, should probably be an SF foodie's first stop. Its sister, Deep Dishing, is Yelp! without Yelpers (can I get a "Hell yeah?!"), with a more organized format.

Michael Ruhlman's blog is well-written and accessible. And the recipes are tasty.