The Making of a Chef : Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America

New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1997. SIGNED by the AUTHOR on the half-title page (signature only, NOT personalized to anyone). Very Good condition in a Very Good Dust Jacket. NOT price clipped ($27.50). NOT a library discard. Bright, shiny, square, and tight. NO owner's name or bookplate. NOT a remainder. Pages are creamy white and unmarked. Hardcover. Bound in the original gray boards, with a black spine stamped in shiny gold. From the Dust Jacket: "In the ultimate food-lover's fantasy journalist Michael Ruhlman don's chef's jacket… to join students in Skills One at the Culinary Institute of America… His goal is to document the training of America's chefs from the first classroom to the Culinary's final kitchen, the American Bounty Restaurant… Ruhlman learns to cook as though his future depends upon it, and this complete immersion enables him to create the most vivid and energetic memoir of a genuine culinary education on record. A brick monastery on the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York, is the country's oldest, biggest, best-known cooking school, and is the only residential college in the United States devoted solely to the study of the culinary arts. THE MAKING OF A CHEF takes us to the heart of this food-knowledge mecca… He learns fundamental skills and information about the behavior of food that make cooking anything possible… Ultimately Ruhlman propels himself and his readers through a score of kitchens and class-rooms, from Asian and American regional cuisines to lunch cookery and even table waiting, in search of the elusive, unnameable elements of great cooking." . SIGNED by the AUTHOR. Later printing. Hardcover. Very Good condition/Very Good dust jacket. 8vo. (xiv), 306pp.