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Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. 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; 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 prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.
Features a new essay by Gabrielle Hamilton at the back of the book
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Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2011: Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, is just what a chef's story should be--delectable, dripping with flavor, tinged with adrenaline and years of too-little sleep. What sets Hamilton apart, though, is her ability to write with as much grace as vitriol, a distinct tenderness marbling her meaty story. Hamilton spent her idyllic childhood on a wild farm in rural Pennsylvania with an exhilarant father--an artist and set builder--and French mother, both "incredibly special and outrageously handsome." As she entered her teens, however, her family unexpectedly dissolved. She moved to New York City at 16, living off loose change and eating ketchup packets from McDonald’s; worked 20-hour days at a soulless catering company; traveled, often half-starved, through Europe; and cooked cooked for allergy-riddled children at a summer camp. The constant thread running through this patchwork tale, which culminates with the opening of her New York City restaurant, Prune, is Hamilton's slow simmering passion for cooking and the comfort it can bring. "To be picked up and fed, often by strangers, when you are in that state of fear and hunger, became the single most important food experience I came back to over and over," Hamilton writes, and it's this poignant understanding of the link between food and kindness that makes Blood, Bones & Butter so satisfying to read. --Lynette Mong
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
“Dazzling . . . brilliantly written . . . [Hamilton] is as evocative writing about people and places as she is at writing about cooking.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Rhapsodic, profane, wonderful . . . A fabulously talented writer-cook, Gabrielle Hamilton is also a contrarian one, and you never know quite what will come next.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Hamilton’s writing about food is so vivid it could make you half-crazed with hunger, leaving you in front of the open fridge with a cold chicken leg in one hand and the book in the other.”—The Boston Globe
“Luminous . . . [Readers will] marvel at Hamilton’s masterly facility with language.”—The Washington Post
“The author/chef is an original—tough, tender, gritty, dreamy. . . . She has written Blood, Bones & Butter with her whole, generous heart.”—The Miami Herald
“Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.”—Anthony Bourdain
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Reader Writer Runner
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
"It must have been my mother, the cook, who was in the kitchen with the six burners and the two-bin sink...doing 'the bones' as my father called it. But it was from him...we learned how to create beauty where none exists, how to be generous beyond our means, how to change a small corner of the world just by making a little dinner for a few friends."
So begins Gabrielle Hamilton's idyllic childhood in rural Pennsylvania, one centered around agriculture, artistry and an annual spring lamb roast for 200 people. Such sublimity is shattered, however, when Hamilton's parents divorce and split the family in two. The break-up impels her to seek independence, landing a kitchen job at age 13 and embarking on a lifetime of culinary adventure.
Blood, Bones & Butter waxes rhapsodic about food but reaches a much larger audience than just the foodie crowd. Hamilton has an M.F.A. in fiction writing and employs her scholarly, effortless style to evocatively describe surviving poverty in Manhattan, reconnecting with her estranged mother and visiting the south of Italy.
At the heart of her memoir is Hamilton's decision to open her own restaurant (the famous Prune in NYC) in 1999. Despite some disorienting gaps, chronological disorderliness and perhaps too much detail about her dysfunctional marriage, Hamilton provides an engrossing, tactile and aromatic chronicle of her experiences cooking and eating around the world.
So begins Gabrielle Hamilton's idyllic childhood in rural Pennsylvania, one centered around agriculture, artistry and an annual spring lamb roast for 200 people. Such sublimity is shattered, however, when Hamilton's parents divorce and split the family in two. The break-up impels her to seek independence, landing a kitchen job at age 13 and embarking on a lifetime of culinary adventure.
Blood, Bones & Butter waxes rhapsodic about food but reaches a much larger audience than just the foodie crowd. Hamilton has an M.F.A. in fiction writing and employs her scholarly, effortless style to evocatively describe surviving poverty in Manhattan, reconnecting with her estranged mother and visiting the south of Italy.
At the heart of her memoir is Hamilton's decision to open her own restaurant (the famous Prune in NYC) in 1999. Despite some disorienting gaps, chronological disorderliness and perhaps too much detail about her dysfunctional marriage, Hamilton provides an engrossing, tactile and aromatic chronicle of her experiences cooking and eating around the world.
By LDP
Format:Hardcover
I just loved this bio I thought that she was very honest about everything and I connected with Gabrielle in every way. I always thought that I missed my dream of being a chef maybe a restaurant owner... but now I'm happy to be a mother and teacher. When I'll go to New York I will go to Prunes. This would make a great movie.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Boulanger
Format:Hardcover
She is a VERY good writer but if you are expecting a gritty exposé of restaurants behind the scenes (like Bourdain) rather than personal, autobiographical stuff, you will be disappointed.
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