No food porn here, just entertaining writing, a fine collection of recipes designed for home cooks, and a book cover featuring a terrific Ralph Steadman painting. I have been so intrigued by this recipe for long, so since it's my birthday weekend, I finally decided I had to make it (despite the BF's protests about having to eat spam). And there's a lot of biographical text, so you feel like he's talking to you, or talking you through the book.

If you want a badass French cook with actually interesting yet attainable recipes, pick up Gabrielle Hamilton's Prune. Even my wife, who normally eschews recipes, found the cookbook very helpful in preparing for our first time hosting Thanksgiving.

I must admit I enjoyed the egg yolk surrounded by small dried fishes, an obvious and unsettling egg-and-sperm reference.

The ham hock and pig’s foot make this a particularly full-bodied and satisfying version of borscht, a soup you might have previously equated with dishwater. Anthony Bourdain is the temptation angel of our better natures, an unblinking guide to the deep pleasures of seared flesh, cooked muscle, boiled intestines, fried brains, and sauteed livers. We made this dressing for a tossed green salad for a barbecue, but used whatever fresh veggies we had on hand (radish, beets, cucumber).I love reading books about food, but full disclosure: I am vegan, so I'm never going to make most of these recipes.

The only other thing I couldn't see not doing was adding cheese - a slice of provolone went over the loaded bottom bun and was broiled until bubbly. I appreciate Bourdain as a voice in food, culture and their inevitable entwining, and am near certain to be unable to separate my bias as a result, but I found this cookbook engaging and interesting, drenched in his voice start to finish.This version has more vegetables (potatoes, carrots, parsnip, celery, and green pepper) than I've seen in goulash at cafes in Europe. Both the sausage and the redeye gravy in this book are a strictly meat and dairy/broth affair, no roux to be seen. Even though most of these recipes weren’t anything I would cook or eat, mostly being meat based, I still loved his snippets of backstories and cooking tips, and most of all, his humor. Bourdain freezes the stick of butter first, lets it sit at room temp for 5 minutes, and then cuts into cubes. It was delicious, the mustard, cayenne and Worcestershire added a lot of flavor as did the combination of the four cheeses.