Don't Try This at Home - Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Cooks and Chefs, av Kimberly Witherspoon och Andrew Friedman (redaktörer)

In this raucous new anthology, thirty of the world's greatest chefs relate outrageous true tales from their kitchens - these behind-the-scenes accounts are as wildly entertaining as they are revealing.

A delicious reminder that even the chefs we most admire aren't always perfect, Don't Try This at Home is a must-have for anyone who loves food - or the men and women who masterfully prepare it.

With the cult of personality that's sprung up in the past few decades around chefs, entities who used to work, for the most part, in anonymity, it's sometimes tempting to think of these exalted personages as larger than life. Well, think again, Foie Gras Breath. Editors Witherspoon and Friedman have convinced, cajoled or coerced some of the culinary world's
leading lights to come clean and admit that - at least on occasion - they have feet of clay.

There are tales of woe here from 40 chefs, running the gamut from Ferran Adria to Geoffrey Zakarian. The most recognizable among them - thanks to their visibility on the small screen, among other things - are Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali.

Bourdain relates a tale of mayhem on a New Year's Eve gone horribly wrong that could just as easily have been an excerpt from his own book, Kitchen Confidential. No customers are beaten up in Batali's yarn, which takes place in London, but rather it's the budding cook who finally gets fed up with rude treatment at the hands of an imperious chef and does something about it.

Pilgrimages to Mecca - err...France - and imperious chefs who might have been drill instructors in a former life figure into a number of these stories. Wylie Dufresne's pilgrimage story also includes an owl that doesn't know its proper place in the scheme of things, while Marcus Samuelsson changes things up a bit with a story about an icy reception and some
formidable language barriers in a Swiss, rather than French, kitchen.

Not surprisingly, there are a quite a few tales of dishes that did not turn out quite as planned and foodstuffs that just generally did not behave themselves, among them 3,200 lobsters "gone off", a tray of Canelones taking a dive into a fish tank, a terrine taking a dip into a bowl of chocolate and 1,200 servings of fermented pea soup. Oh, and Michel Richard, who takes the cake - literally - with a story about a ruined cake, a pair of hungry dogs and some quick thinking.

Other chefs recall catering weddings too nightmarish to be believed, entire restaurant staffs getting rip-roaring drunk and the night Pavarotti almost didn't come to dinner - though he certainly made up for lost time when he finally did.

A thread that ties many, perhaps even most, of these stories together is that they seem somehow to turn out right in the end. This is not due so much to the storytellers feeling the need to tack on a happy ending as it is that they work in an industry in which, as Daniel Boulud - the fermented pea soup guy - says, "failure is not an option".

“As uplifting as it is amusing; it's a reminder that - in real life as in the kitchen - guts are as important as genius.” / People

“If you liked Kitchen Confidential for its frank behind-the-scenes glimpses of kitchen life, you'll love this book.” / Los Angeles Times

“Once you've watched these masters of their universe drop a foie gras terrine into a bowl of warm chocolate sauce, restore a wedding cake accidentally covered with shards of glass, disguise a bag of dirty laundry with crème anglaise to stand in for a mound of fallen meringue - you'll realize you've probably gotten off easy.” / Washington Post Book World

“The chefs, now stars themselves, deserve credit for having managed to endure so much misery early in their careers, from tyrannical bosses, spoiled patrons, eye-rolling waiters and thuggish busboys. The best of the essays here conveys that spirit of determination, alongside the absurd theatre of it all.” / Wall Street Journal

Kim Witherspoon is a founding partner at Inkwell Management, a literary agency based in Manhattan, and the co-editor of How I Learned to Cook. She lives with her family in North Salem, New York.

Andrew Friedman specializes in books and articles about food, restaurants, and kitchen culture. He has authored or co-authored more than a dozen cookbooks.

Den häftade boken (limhäftad) i förlagets dekorerade pärmar är helt ny och i nyskick.

Dimensioner och utgivningsdata:

Höjd/bredd ca 198/130 mm
Ryggbredd ca 19 mm
Vikt ca 200 gram
Sidantal 274
Redaktörer Kimberly Witherspoon och Andrew Friedman
Förlag Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London
Språk engelska
Utgivningsår 2007
ISBN 978-0-7475-8543-5

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