Some stories made her sound so cocky and bitter that it was hard to sympathize when her marriage went south. She comes across as both empathetic and also arrogant. Sometimes Gabrielle explains herself well, other times she is maddeningly vague and obtuse. Some parts were well-written and engaging, and other parts were so tedious that I couldn't wait to be done with the book. I thought Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir was uneven and a bit messy. ( From the publisher.On my copy of this book, there was a gushing quote from Anthony Bourdain: 'Magnificent.

By turns epic and intimate, it marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent. Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.īlood, 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.īlood, Bones & Butter is an unflinching and lyrical work. 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. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Preferably gin.īefore 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. In ecstatic farewell to my years of corporate catering, we would never serve anything but a martini in a martini glass. There would be no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food, just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry.

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. Winner, 2012 James Beard Foundation Award for Writing & Literature Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Blood bones and butter book