First published 2015
Gabrielle Hamilton transforms her self-taught cooking skills into a James Beard Award and a restaurant that draws crowds to New York's Lower East Side. At Prune, she takes home cooking fundamentals and reshapes them into something unexpected. This cookbook mirrors the kitchen binders Hamilton's line cooks use daily. She addresses readers as if they work in her kitchen, delivering instruction mixed with encouragement and the occasional reprimand. The book contains over 250 recipes that have been tested repeatedly, from Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter to the restaurant's famous Bloody Mary in 10 variations. Hamilton includes a chapter called "Garbage" that shows how to transform scraps other kitchens would discard into worthwhile dishes. Her approach suits both home cooks and professionals, offering warnings about common mistakes and signals that indicate when techniques go wrong.
Genres: cooking, 21st-century, food-and-drink, food-writing
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: instructional, memoir
Setting: Lower East Side, New York
Period: 21st Century
576 pages · Hardcover · Hardie Grant Books