High Bonnet: A Novel of Epicurean Adventures (Modern Library Food)

Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780375757563
Edition: 2001 Modern Library pbk. ed
ISBN: 0375757562
Item Dimensions:8505504429
Label: Modern Library
Languages:EnglishUnknownEnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 160
Publication Date: June 26, 2001
Publisher: Modern Library
Release Date: June 26, 2001
Studio: Modern Library

Features:

• ISBN13: 9780375757563
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The chef's towering white toque, the high bonnet, is the mark of achievement to which every young sauce-stirrer aspires. Idwal Jones's urbane novel follows the young provincial Jean as he attempts to master culinary art at the hands of Paris's most distinguished chefs. Jean will win his high bonnet and the royal bearing that accompanies it - but not until he's had many outrageous adventures, in the kitchen and out.

High Bonnet is a sly send-up of the seething politics, subtle artistry, and enslavement to the palate that constitute life behind the kitchen's swinging doors. First published in 1945 and out of print for more than four decades, High Bonnet will delight readers of Anthony Bourdain's bestselling Kitchen Confidential or of Ludwig Bemelmans's Hotel Splendide.

Amazon.com Review:
The high bonnet of Idwal Jones's book, published in 1945 and now reprinted by the Modern Library Food series, is the chef's toque, a symbol of his stature, of cooking itself. Achieving the high bonnet is the good fortune of the novel's Jean-Marie Gallois, a young confisseur (candy maker) from Provence who has earned an apprenticeship at Paris's famed Faisen d'Or restaurant. But Jean-Marie's ascension to glory is not the novel's central concern; revealing a world entirely devoted to food--getting it, eating it, and discussing it--is. In prose as sensually provocative as the dishes his characters enjoy, Jones acquaints readers with a world dedicated to pursuing pleasure at the table and the craft that makes it, in its culinary dimension at least, most possible. The joy and art of High Bonnet is that its readers instantly ally themselves with the characters--with their mania for dining high, low, and outrageous (on the perfect Potage Crécy and prehistoric muskox, for example). It's an exciting feat.

Early in the book, we meet the Baroness, who eats "with eyes half drooped, like a pigeon's in flight, allowing [a] croustade to splinter under her excellent teeth." Jones's splendid creation is also responsible for sending Jean-Marie to his apprenticeship, and thus to our encountering a Vietnamese anarchist; Guido, the roguish Italian kitchen expediter; a dwarf rôtissuer; an alcoholic waiter; a saffron-stashing sauce master, and many more extraordinary characters. Meals are enjoyed and stories are told, like that of a man "ruined by a dish," the creator of a legendary curry recipe who falls disastrously from great heights when he can no longer obtain the dish's "secret" ingredient. A philosophy is also put before us: "Never expect a perfect dinner to come from a clean kitchen," says a character; "as well as expect one from a laboratory." In our own age of mass cooking, it's particularly alluring to follow the adventures of Jean-Marie and company. High Bonnet is a window on a lost world and human activity that today cries for the book's vital passion. --Arthur Boehm

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