Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Gabrielle Hamilton

Random House Publishing Group, Mar 8, 2011 - Cooking - 291 pages

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • Newsday • The Huffington Post • Financial Times • GQ • Slate • Men’s Journal • Washington Examiner • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews • National Post • The Toronto Star • BookPage • Bookreporter

“I wanted the lettuce and eggs at room temperature . . . the butter-and-sugar sandwiches we ate after school for snack . . . the marrow bones my mother made us eat as kids that I grew to crave as an adult. . . . There would be no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food, just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry. In ecstatic farewell to my years of corporate catering, we would never serve anything but a martini in a martini glass. Preferably gin.”
 
Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than one hundred friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.

Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

Blood, Bones & Butter is an unflinching and lyrical work. Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. By turns epic and intimate, it marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent.

What people are saying

Review: Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

User Review  - Tracy - Goodreads

I was totally in love with this book for the first two sections. I found Hamilton's writing completely engaging and her story as told through the various kitchens of her life truly compelling. There ...

Review: Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

User Review  - Colleen - Goodreads

I really loved this book. I think it's challenging to tell a story before it's finished, and she still has a lot of story left.

About the author

Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York's East Village. She received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and Food & Wine. Hamilton has also authored the 8-week Chef Column in The New York Times, and her work has been anthologized in six volumes of Best Food Writing. She has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and the Food Network, among other television. She lives in Manhattan with her two sons.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
• Author: Gabrielle Hamilton
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2011
• ISBN: 140006872X, 9781400068722
• Length: 291 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Culinary; Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography / Women; Cooking / General