Don't Try This at Home

Don't Try This at Home Edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman Grade: B- Although I'm not much of a cook and don't enjoy cooking myself - and now that I'm a proud wearer of a lap-band, I'm not much of an eater either - I love watching other people cook and am fascinated by the professional cook.

Last December I reviewed Heat, about an amateur cook's (Bill Buford) adventures over a period of a year as line cook to Mario Batali and apprentice to a series of Italian cooks and butchers. A few months before that, I reviewed Garlic and Sapphires, the memoirs of the years Ruth Reichl, currently editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, spent as food critic for the New York Times. Both were good reads; Heat earned a qualified recommendation, but Garlic and Sapphires came close to being a DIK.

Don't Try This at Home is another good read, but like Buford;s book, it earns a B- from me. The idea for this compendium of short essays by a plethora of high-end chefs (although I know Tony Bourdain considers himself a journeyman cook rather than a chef) is a great one. Each chef penned an essay of their worst culinary catastrophes. The execution doesn't quite live up to the idea, though. Most chefs are good story-tellers, but some are better than others at putting their stories into written form, and that, along with the fact that some didn't exactly share catastrophes, meant that as reads go, this was uneven. That said, none of the essays were bad, and some were highly entertaining.

Although I just finished writing that one of the book's flaws was that not all the chefs shared catastrophes, I think my favorite story was The Trojan Cookie, written by Tom Valenti. His memory of assuming command at a top restaurant in New York and taking passive-aggressive revenge on the wait staff who refused his direction was utter genius. Pino Luongo's re-telling of the period surrounding his opening of an outpost in The Hamptons showcases a wicked sense of humor as well. Another standout was Michelle Bernstein's disastrous experience with a foie gras terrine during her first stint as a line cook.

My least favorite essay was provided by Michael Lomonaco, whose pomposity on TV's Epicurious is far exceeded by his this-is-not-a-catastrophe remembrance of cooking for the legendary Pavarotti.

If you're at all a foodie, do consider Don't Try This at Home. In addition to some terrific story-telling, it's pretty fun adding up how many of the chef's names with which you are familiar.

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

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