May 17, 2011 • Category: Blog, Excerpts, Promotions
18 COMMENTS
Share This
I’ll be honest here—one of my secret vices is foodie literature. I’ve devoured them all: Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, Ruth Reichel’s Tender at The Bone, Bill Buford’s Heat, Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte. There’s something about reading other people’s adventures with food—the cleaving, the cooking, the cleaning—that mystifies and entrances me. Perhaps that’s why I have a stack of Gourmet magazines tucked away in the cupboard, while in reality, I can cook a total of about eight to ten good dishes.
Today, John Donohue’s extraordinary anthology Man With A Pan: Culinary Adventures of Fathers who Cook for their Families is on sale and I, for one, am recommending this to every person I know. Donohue has gathered an impressive collection of original essays from some of today’s hottest writers and chefs: Mark Bittman, Jim Harrison, Mario Batali, Mark Kurlanksy, Stephen King, and Thomas Beller, to name just a few. Complete with hilarious New Yorker cartoons and loaded with recipes (Double-Crispy Roast Chicken, Herbed New Potatoes, Peanut Butter Soup, Lone Star State of Mind Chili, Mexican Chocolate Pie) that are easy and fun to follow, this book is one I plan to turn to time and time again.
The national media response for Man with a Pan has been nothing short of spectacular: coverage includes features and excerpts in the New York Times (3 different pieces!), Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Gourmet, Saveur, Playboy, Reader’s Digest, and more!
In honor of Donohue’s publication, we’re giving away three copies of the book. To enter, just leave a comment below or on our Facebook page telling us about your favorite cooking memory.
For more John Donohue, be sure to check out his awesome blog, Stay at Stove Dad, which chronicles his daily adventures cooking for his family. And don’t miss the hilarious Man with a Pan video trailer, created in conjunction with the amazing crew at ParentEarth.
–Megan Fishmann
Praise for Man With a Pan:
“Throughout the book, what comes across strongest is the authors’ love for the joy of providing for their families in a newly satisfying way. Mario Batali explains it perfectly: ‘The best reason to cook, besides its being delicious and good for you, is that it will automatically make you look good. You’ll look like a hero every day.’ It’s a wonder, in fact, that we let women in the kitchen at all.”—Saveur
“It’s high time someone gave voice to the army of men at the stove. John Donohue does so brilliantly by marshaling an A-list of writers who share riveting tales of culinary love and war.”—Amanda Hesser, author of The Essential New York Times Cookbook
“Never before have so many men cooked so often and so proudly, not to say loudly. Now, all the comedy, the absurdity, the virtue, the undue pride and the sheer simple pleasure of men doing what was once women’s work is placed between covers in this lovely anthology of appetite.”—Adam Gopnik, author of Paris to the Moon
Tags: Adam Gopnik, Amanda Hesser, Anthony Bourdain, Bill Buford, Jim Harrison, John Donohue, Man with a Pan, Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, New Yorker, New Yorker cartoons, Parent Earth, ParentEarth, Ruth Reichl, Stay at Stove Dad, StayAtStoveDad, Stephen King, Thomas Beller
Debbie W. says...
My favorite cooking memory is of my dad cooking breakfast on a grill on the North Shore of Oahu. We would all get up early to go surfing and he would bring everything for breakfast. What a great childhood memory!
May 17, 2011@ 1:01 PMDana Burgess says...
My favorite cooking memory was when I was quite young and my mom would make apple pies on Sunday afternoons. I always got to ‘help’. That’s likely where my love of cooking started. This sounds like a great book! Thanks for the giveaway!
May 17, 2011@ 12:47 PMSusan Johnson says...
I almost hate to admit it, because it is so anti-foodie, but one of my favorite cooking memories is making hot dogs in the summer. My brother and I had made “buddy burners” and would actually cook hot dogs outside on an inverted coffee can. Cooking outdoors, doing it ourselves, the almost-grilled flavor – or the combination of these – made for permanent smiles. Fortunately my husband is a much better cook than that, and we both would love this book!
May 17, 2011@ 11:42 AMRuthie B says...
My hubby is not a cook but when the kids were young he made tuna salad every Sunday night for dinner & I must say it was very good! He added things he enjoyed like olives & cooked egg to it…& some other things I never quite figured out because it was his “secret recipe”!
May 17, 2011@ 10:52 AMAlsek says...
My favorite cooking memory was preparing dinner for our wedding rehersal dinner. We had lobsters flown in from Maine, corn on the cob, cole slaw, and lots of wine. The lobsters and corn were cooked on multiple Coleman stoves outside. A great time was had by all.
May 17, 2011@ 10:41 AMCathrine West says...
My favorite cooking memory is of my dad bringing home a sackful of live crayfish (lobster to readers in the US) and cooking them in a huge pot while family and neighbors sat around waiting! Crayfish were plentiful those days! It was hardly gourmet cooking but what I wouldn’t give to sit down to my own whole crayfish, salt and pepper and white bread and butter! Yum!
May 17, 2011@ 10:40 AMCharlotte Cecilia says...
My favorite cooking memory is the one when I teach my 11-year-old daughter to cook macaroni and cheese following Jamie Oliver’s recipe. We did it together and the result dish was phenomenal! She is now 13 and loves to cook.
May 17, 2011@ 10:35 AMrhonda says...
first meal i ever cooked for my husband.42 years later still trying!!
May 17, 2011@ 10:33 AMAnna Harris says...
This book looks amazing – can’t wait to read it. My favorite cooking memory is actually a set of occurrences revolving around my mother, a fantastic mother but horrible cook. She hated working in the kitchen, and did her best to stay out of it if at all possible. My dad is the culinary artiste of the family, but he worked long hours when I was a kid, and only had time to cook on the weekends. Thus it was my mother’s job to pull something together for dinner on the weeknights. She had a revolving menu of disgusting dishes, from a congealed and wobbly beef stew over rice, to electric orange yet somehow flavorless spaghetti, to my favorite – tuna surprise.
Tuna surprise consisted of macaroni noodles, mayonnaise, tuna, and assorted crispy veggies. As it was the easiest thing for her to make, she tried to sneak it in two or three times a week. My dad hated it, a fact of which Mom was completely aware (and banking on). As I got older, the frequency of tuna surprise on the dinner menu increased – as did our trips out to eat. Mom had learned that Dad would rather take us out for dinner than have to eat the tuna surprise, and ‘Surprise, it’s tuna!’ became the rallying cry for slipping into something appropriate for a restaurant trip. Dad never seemed to realize that she was playing him.
Understandably enough, I’ve never even attempted to make tuna surprise as an adult. My frequent restaurant trips as a kid really turned me off of dining out. To my mom’s horror, I’ve become a pretty decent cook
May 17, 2011@ 10:31 AMAriel Lawhon says...
This book looks so cool. Hands down favorite cooking memory: making a batch of horrible rolls which then became ammunition for a family food fight. My husband and kids still talk about it.
May 17, 2011@ 10:07 AM