'Kitchen Confidential:Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly'

 If you are short of a Christmas gift for a partner or friend who loves to cook then treat them to a copy of 'Kitchen Confidential:Adventures of Culinary Underbelly' written by Chef Anthony Bourdain...this book was thrown at me by a friend who as I departed from their house in London recently and I am loving it! A bit crass and crude in places it gives a fascinating insight of behind the scenes of the life and work of a professional chef. Delivered with great wit and humour it romps along at a great pace with a surprise at every turn. The chapter on how to kit your kitchen up so you can cook like the pros makes essential reading for anyone who is self taught and aspires to deliver a restaurant standard in their own home...a funny easy read that will make you laugh out loud...only a third into the book I look forward to dipping into it at every opportunity. Reviewed below this sums up the madness....

"When Chef Anthony Bourdain wrote "Don't Eat Before You Read This" in The New Yorker, he spared no one's appetite, revealing what goes on behind the kitchen door. In Kitchen Confidential, he expanded that appetizer into a deliciously funny, delectable shocking banquet that lays out his 25 years of sex, drugs, and haute cuisine.
From his first oyster in the Gironde to the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, from the restaurants of Tokyo to the drug dealers of the East Village, from the mobsters to the rats, Bourdain's brilliantly written, wild-but-true tales make the belly ache with laughter."

click to look inside

This book comes in many covers but I prefer this one!

While new to me this New York Times Bestseller has been around for a while and if you enjoy the dry wit and mad 'bad boy' chef humour then they also have a TV Series based on the book which I am certainly going to seek out...Fox produced the series and even though only 13 episodes were made, and it does look a lot more clean cut than then images in my head as I read the book, it rates with 4 stars so worth giving it go!