Gastronomy

More than just a companion to the hugely popular Travel Channel show, No Reservations is Bourdain's journal of his far-flung travels. The book traces his trips from New Zealand to New Jersey and everywhere in between, with Bourdain's outrageous commentary on what really happens when you give a bad-boy chef an open ticket to the world.

This is a tale of pursuit through the kitchens of New York City at the turn of the century. By the late nineteenth century, it seemed that New York City had put an end to the outbreaks of typhoid fever that had so frequently decimated the city's population. That is until 1904, when the disease broke out in a household in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Authorities suspected the family cook, Mary Mallon, of being a carrier. But before she could be tested, the woman, soon to be known as Typhoid Mary, had disappeared.

The First American Cookbook: A Facsimile of "American Cookery," 1796 by Amelia Simmons is a historic culinary landmark, recognized as the first cookbook written and published in America. Originally released in 1796, this work provides a fascinating glimpse into early American cooking, blending traditional English recipes with indigenous ingredients such as cornmeal, squash, and turkey. Notably, it includes the earliest recorded recipe for pairing turkey with cranberries and introduces the use of pearlash, a precursor to modern baking powder, revolutionizing baking techniques of the time.

Food historian and chef Neil Buttery takes the listener on a journey exploring the creation, evolution and cultural importance of some of our most beloved baked foods, whether they be fit for a monarch's table, or served from the bakestone of a lowly farm labourer. This book charts innovations, happy accidents and some of the most downright bizarre baked foods ever created.

The eastern oyster, the humble bivalve and delicious treat, are the living bones of the Chesapeake, as well as the ecological and historical lifeblood of the region. When colonists first sailed these impossibly abundant shores, they described massive shoals of foot-long oysters but the bottomless appetite of the Gilded Age and great fleets of skipjacks took their toll. Disease, environmental pressures and overconsumption decimated the population by the end of the twentieth century.