The Chef at War

The Chef at War
Author: Alexis Soyer
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2011-04-07
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0241950929

The flamboyant Frenchman Alexis Soyer was the most renowned chef in Victorian England. This is his colourful account of his time at the front in the Crimean War, where he joined British troops in order to improve the quality of the food they were eating. Divulging the secrets of preparing stew for 1000 soldiers, sharing sweetmeats with a Turkish Pacha, and teaching a Highland regiment to cook with his pioneering gas-fuelled 'field stove' that would be used by armies up until the Second World War, Soyer gives a vividly enjoyable lesson in making a little go a long way.

Soyer's Culinary Campaign

Soyer's Culinary Campaign
Author: Alexis Soyer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 636
Release: 1857
Genre: Balaklave (Ukraine)
ISBN:

Soyer volunteered his services in the Crimea in 1855 to improve military cooking. This work gives a vivid account of his efforts to prepare nutritious meals for the soldiers using a newly invented portable field stove, which remained in use until the Second World War. In two visits to Balaklava, he, with Miss Florence Nightingale and the medical staff, reorganized the victualling of the hospitals. Consult Dictionary of National Biography.

Relish

Relish
Author: Ruth Cowen
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781474609425

Alexis Soyer (1810-1858) was a working-class Frenchman from an unremarkable town north-west of Paris, but his exceptional cooking skills and ebullient personality turned him into Britain's first true celebrity chef. He was the first to publish a succession of best-selling cookbooks - one selling more than a quarter of a million copies, an extraordinary figure for the mid-nineteenth century. He was also the first to produce branded merchandise, including a remarkably ingenious stove that fitted in the pocket and bottled sauces decorated with his recognisable portrait. Ahead of his time, he nurtured a flamboyant public profile through a combination of brilliant self-publicity and shameless press manipulation. But his life's purpose both came into focus and found its dramatic climax when he renounced his sybaritic lifestyle and elected to travel, for no pay and in the face of real danger, across Europe first to Scutari and later to Balaclava, where thousands of British troops had died of disease and malnutrition during the first long, bitter winter of the Crimean war. One of the first to understand fully the rudiments of good nutrition and mass catering, Soyer had already introduced new principles of large-scale cookery to Ireland during the potato famine of 1847, and he extend his expertise to the British army with spectacular results. Long overlooked by historians, Ruth Cowen vividly recounts the life of a unique personality with a scholarly slice of Victorian history.

The Adventurous Chef: Alexis Soyer

The Adventurous Chef: Alexis Soyer
Author: Ann Arnold
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2002-09-19
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780374316655

In 1837, when Alexis Soyer was just twenty-five years old, he became head chef at the exclusive Reform Club in London on the condition that he be allowed to participate in the design of the kitchen. The result was a showplace filled with Soyer's clever inventions, such as the drainer and the multi-egg poacher, and it became the most talked about kitchen in all of Europe. Soyer quickly established himself as a star, but for all his flamboyance he was practical and large-hearted, cooking for the starving populace as well as the aristocracy, opening soup kitchens during the Irish potato famine, and teaching the army how to feed itself in the Crimean War. Filled with biographical detail and lively illustrations, The Adventurous Chef tells the story of a remarkable man who was determined to revolutionize the culinary world and who remains one of the greatest cooks of the nineteenth century.

The Kitchen Front

The Kitchen Front
Author: Jennifer Ryan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593158822

From the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable novel of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition and the four women who enter for a chance to better their lives. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • “This story had me so hooked, I literally couldn’t put it down.”—NPR Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest—and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives. For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For a lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all—even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together only serve to break it apart?

Shaya

Shaya
Author: Alon Shaya
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0451494172

An exciting debut cookbook that confirms the arrival of a new guru chef . . . A moving, deeply personal journey of survival and discovery that tells of the evolution of a cuisine and of the transformative power and magic of food and cooking. From the two-time James Beard Award-winning chef whose celebrated New Orleans restaurants have been hailed as the country's most innovative and best by Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Saveur, GQ, and Esquire. • "Alon's journey is as gripping and as seductive as his cooking . . . Lovely stories, terrific food." --Yotam Ottolenghi, author of Jerusalem: A Cookbook • "Breathtaking. Bravo." --Joan Nathan, author of King Solomon's Table Alon Shaya's is no ordinary cookbook. It is a memoir of a culinary sensibility that begins in Israel and wends its way from the U.S.A. (Philadelphia) to Italy (Milan and Bergamo), back to Israel (Jerusalem) and comes together in the American South, in the heart of New Orleans. It's a book that tells of how food saved the author's life and how, through a circuitous path of (cooking) twists and (life-affirming) turns the author's celebrated cuisine--food of his native Israel with a creole New Orleans kick came to be, along with his award-winning New Orleans restaurants: Shaya, Domenica, and Pizza Domenica, ranked by Esquire, Bon Appétit, and others as the best new restaurants in the United States. These are stories of place, of people, and of the food that connects them, a memoir of one man's culinary sensibility, with food as the continuum throughout his journey--guiding his personal and professional decisions, punctuating every memory, choice, every turning point in his life. Interspersed with glorious full-color photographs and illustrations that follow the course of all the flavors Shaya has tried, places he's traveled, things he's experienced, lessons he's learned--more than one hundred recipes--from Roasted Chicken with Harissa to Speckled Trout with Tahini and Pine Nuts; Crab Cakes with Preserved Lemon Aioli; Roasted Cast-Iron Ribeye; Marinated Soft Cheese with Herbs and Spices; Buttermilk Biscuits; and Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Whipped Feta.

World War 1 Commemorative Cook Book

World War 1 Commemorative Cook Book
Author: Cath Hopgood
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2014-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1922132829

More than just a cookbook! This is a culinary journey through the period when the Anzac legend was born. This cook book showcases the hearty style of cooking evocative of the time, and presents simple, traditional recipes with a modern twist. Featuring a combination of classics like Anzac Biscuits, Turkish Delight and Osso Bucco Potato Pie together with appealing recipes like ‘Roo Tail Stew and Herb Damper and Harissa Spiced Lamb Backstrap Salad, this is a collection of delicious recipes influenced by the era and wartime locations of the Great War. Combined with a brief history of the contributions of the Anzacs, this cook book commemorates and honours our WWI soldiers.

The Lost Southern Chefs

The Lost Southern Chefs
Author: Robert F. Moss
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0820360848

In recent years, food writers and historians have begun to retell the story of southern food. Heirloom ingredients and traditional recipes have been rediscovered, the foundational role that African Americans played in the evolution of southern cuisine is coming to be recognized, and writers are finally clearing away the cobwebs of romantic myth that have long distorted the picture. The story of southern dining, however, remains incomplete. The Lost Southern Chefs begins to fill that niche by charting the evolution of commercial dining in the nineteenth-century South. Robert F. Moss punctures long-accepted notions that dining outside the home was universally poor, arguing that what we would today call “fine dining” flourished throughout the region as its towns and cities grew. Moss describes the economic forces and technological advances that revolutionized public dining, reshaped commercial pantries, and gave southerners who loved to eat a wealth of restaurants, hotel dining rooms, oyster houses, confectionery stores, and saloons. Most important, Moss tells the forgotten stories of the people who drove this culinary revolution. These men and women fully embodied the title “chef,” as they were the chiefs of their kitchens, directing large staffs, staging elaborate events for hundreds of guests, and establishing supply chains for the very best ingredients from across the expanding nation. Many were African Americans or recent immigrants from Europe, and they achieved culinary success despite great barriers and social challenges. These chefs and entrepreneurs became embroiled in the pitched political battles of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and then their names were all but erased from history.

Cooking for Kings

Cooking for Kings
Author: Ian Kelly
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2005-09-01
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0802777317

A recipe-enhanced profile of one of history's most prolific culinary writers draws on the subject's memoirs to trace his rise from Paris orphan to international celebrity, a journey during which he traveled throughout Europe and Russia and prepared sumptuous feasts for royal families. Reprint.