The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine

Steven Rinella

ISBN 10: 1401352375 / ISBN 13: 9781401352370

Published by Mirimax Books (Hyperion), 2005

About this Item

Scarce signed first edition, first printing (full print number line) of Steven Rinella's first book. Signed on the title page by Rinella, book and dust jacket are in As New (unread) condition. Dust jacket in protective mylar wrap.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1647827231190

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine
• Publisher: Mirimax Books (Hyperion)
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1401352375
• ISBN 13: 9781401352370
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

A combination memoir, cookbook, and travelogue describes one man's efforts to live on the land while attempting to re-create the recipes from Escoffier's 1903 magnum opus Le Guide Culinaire and searching for the frequently esoteric ingredients called for in the various dishes. 25,000 first printing.

Synopsis

Escoffier and the Holy Quail - one man's quest to get fed roadkill style. This work is a quirky memoir chronicling one man's quest to live off the land - literally - by collecting the bizarre ingredients for and recreating the recipes in a 100-year-old cookbook. Auguste Escoffier's "Le Guide Culinaire" is a 1500+ recipe compendium on haute cuisine published in 1903. Steven Rinella is a young food enthusiast and huntin' shootin' and fishin' aficionado. When the latter met the former as the result of it being given him by a friend, "The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine" was born. A scavenger is, simply, someone who lives as best he or she can off the land - and when that person has taken "Le Guide Culinaire" as a gastronomic bible (and has a strict vegetarian for a girlfriend) things get a little interesting. In an attempt to move his eating habits closer to nature (whilst enjoying compote of sheep's tongue), Rinella devoted a year of his life to capturing the bizarre and often impossible-to-locate ingredients in Escoffier's recipes (rabbit blood for coup base; wild duck's bladder; crayfish innards; sparrows...)

, in order to recreate the culinary delights of dishes like truffled pig's feet and venison sweetbread pate. His journey leads him across the country in a series of adventures and encounters - he fishes for stingrays on a Florida beach crowded with Spring Breakers; skins eels with an upstate New Yorker who keep an emu as company; hunts elk with a bow and arrow on the snowy cliffs of Alaska's Chugach Range. He even flies from Montana to Michigan to collect a 15-lb snapping turtle his mother found on the highway. His search for adventure and weird food results in a fascinating read dissecting America's obsession with convenience, speed and cleanliness in food preparation - and a deeper understanding of the way the natural world affects the way we live.