Appetites: A Cookbook

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Even though most of these recipes weren’t anything I would cook or eat, mostly being meat based, I still loved his snippets of backstories and cooking tips, and most of all, his humor. Recipes range in inspiration from classic French to Vietnamese street food to homestyle Italian cooking, which will surprise no one familiar with Bourdain’s culinary explorations and predilections. I can't even get hold of this book before it's available, but I just wanted to point out a fact about this book that many people might miss. A classic chicken salad, I used leftover grilled chicken with flavors similar to his poaching liquid, and omitted the tarragon.

The recipes are what you would expect from his personal collection, a mix of high and lowbrow cuisine from near and far. Like many other celebrity-authored cookbooks of late, Bourdain tackles the subject of home entertaining head-on.

I am a bit hesitant to comment because I set out with the best intentions but I bailed early re: the huge quantity of butter. This is like that, except with cool foods you might have eaten from time to time at really good regional restaurants around the world. a boned seabass, its skeleton holding the tail and head (blanked-eyed, shocked expression still on its face), a Macau-style pork chop sandwich with a bite taken out and tossed on the floor, a partially deboned veal chop stood on end amid a pile of sliced mushrooms, a plate of seasoned cauliflower with inexplicable dark stains on the tablecloth next to it (the sesame sauce; or something much worse?

The recipe captions and supplemental writing are half-assed, at best, and the photography ranges from modernist to unhelpful to just plain gross.While they do lean practical, it's still a time investment I'm not able to make very often and some of the ingredients, particularly in the seafood section, are not easily acquired. As a restaurant professional, Bourdain spent his life on the fringes of normality - he worked while normal people played, and played while normal people slept. Bourdain freezes the stick of butter first, lets it sit at room temp for 5 minutes, and then cuts into cubes. I like an acid counterpart so added sliced peperoncini to an open-faced sandwich on rustic sourdough bread.