Like Water For Chocolate

This is one of my all-time favorite books. Originally written in Spanish as Como Agua Para Chocolate, it is a love story, recipe book, and ethnic soap opera all rolled into one.
The book tells the story of Tita, the youngest of the three de la Garza sisters, who is forbidden from marrying, since family tradition [...]

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I must say that I avoided adding my thoughts on this book to the FTB blog until arm-twisted into doing so by three persuasive readers. Why? Well, just because a book features spices as an integral part of its name (and plot), doesn’t necessarily mean the book has anything to do with food.
However, several interesting [...]

A Cook’s Tour

Anthony Bourdain will do anything in his quest for the perfect meal, even it means traveling with gun-toting maniacs in Khmer Rouge territory in Cambodia, slaughtering a pig in Portugal, eating a beating cobra’s heart – even selling his soul to TV (in his own, albeit borrowed, words: “We’ve already established you’re a whore. Now [...]

Kitchen Confidential

If you’ve watched ‘No Reservations’, the television travel show hosted by Anthony Bourdain, you probably think of him as a chilled-out and somewhat zany seeker of gastronomic pleasures, willing to try anything once, and prepared to go to any lengths to try it.

What you probably don’t know (I certainly didn’t!) is that he [...]