John Birdsall

Food Writer

https://johnwbirdsall.tumblr.com/

Biography

John Birdsall is a food writer and ex-restaurant cook in Oakland, California. He received the James Beard Award for Food and Culture writing in 2014, and again in 2016.

Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook

Alice Waters

Distills the intelligence and playfulness of a movement that changed American food in the late 20th century. Jeremiah Tower goes essentially uncredited, though much of the book reflects him.

Delights and Prejudices

James Beard

Maybe the only book Beard wrote entirely by himself, this moves the cookbook-as-memoir genre far beyond where it existed in 1964.

Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book

Jane Grigson

Grigson draws on history, literature, and horticulture to deliver on the central mission of the cookbook: to suggest what to do with that bag of spinach in the fridge.

Simple French Food

Richard Olney

Makes the case for French food as an ethos and a feeling, not a compendium of exact formulas.

English Bread and Yeast Cookery

Elizabeth David

Fuses cookery, scholarship, and authorial personality in a way that's become common.

The Cuisines of Mexico

Diana Kennedy

In the 1970s, this book persuaded skeptical middle-class white Americans that Mexico has one of the world's great food cultures. It's a testament to Kennedy's immersion in her subject.

The French Laundry Cookbook

Thomas Keller

The recipes turn precise technique into joyful expression, an approach that has come to drive more than fine dining cookbooks.

Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking

Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

With calm professionalism, this book lends order to a sprawling subject.

The Fine Art of Italian Cooking

Giuliano Bugialli

Bugialli's not afraid to let his recipe stand naked, unfussed with, or fancied up—in other words, to be quintessentially Italian.

The Taste of Country Cooking

Edna Lewis

The recipes shine with grace and dignity, and the chapter intros and headnotes show like faded snapshots of a lost world.