Cookies Cakes and Pies or Insatiable

Cookies, Cakes and Pies

Author: Robert Ros

In this collection of more than 50 recipes, you'll find scrumptious treats such as: Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Lemon Seed Poppy Loaf, Apple Torte with Almond Cream and much more.

Read also Back to Eden or Light Emerging

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess

Author: Gael Green

With her passion for fine food and, above all, her appetite for love and life, Gael Greene traces her rise from a Velveeta cocoon in the Midwest to powerful critic of New York magazine. Love and food, foreplay and fork play, haute cuisine and social history--all become inextricably linked as the author lifts the lid on her most provocative subject yet--herself. Along the way there are tales of her saucy erotic adventures and intimate portraits of the culinary icons of our time--Julia Child, André Soltner, James Beard, among others--and revealing dissections of New York's legendary "in" spots, including Elaine's, Le Bernardin, Le Cirque, Odeon, and Balthazar.

The New York Times - Liesl Schillinger

Greene's book is a gustatory napkin-ripper that charts the rise of epicurean tastes, trendy restaurants and celebrity chefs, using the frequent crescendos of her own pulse as counterpoint. When she describes the circus at Le Cirque in 1977, she also confides her affair with the chef, Jean-Louis. When she raves about the French chef Jean Troisgros, who gave tutorials to well-heeled foodies at a Napa retreat, she also applauds his performance in the bedroom. And her elegy for Gilbert LeCoze of Le Bernardin includes a recollection of his skill at unsnapping her bra.

Publishers Weekly

As the title of her longtime New York magazine column (which ran from 1968 to 2000) suggests, Greene was indeed an "Insatiable Critic" and not just where food was concerned. Her fun memoir spices up the standard chronicle of food supped and wine sipped with breathless descriptions of sexual trysts, travel tales and signature fashions. Greene's sensual appetite was voracious and her affairs as abundant and indulgent as her meals; her more famous lovers included Elvis Presley, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. With chapter titles like "Splendor in the Foie Gras" and "Bonfire of the Foodies," the book brims with vivid and gluttonously gossipy prose, though it's occasionally repetitive, especially regarding the recent growth of "foodie" culture. At heart a singular story of Greene's gustatory and personal development, the book is also a history of culinary culture since the 1960s. She mentions world events that were occurring as she pursued her sybaritic lifestyle; describes her idols, contemporaries and famous chefs; and depicts spectacular meals throughout France, New York and beyond. This delicious read tells the story of America's haute cuisine awakening as written by the woman who had a seat at the table. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

New York magazine contributing editor and former restaurant critic Greene (Blue Skies, No Candy) serves up a feast in this memoir chronicling her involvement in the history of both the culinary and the sexual revolutions in the United States. A self-proclaimed sensualist, she artfully blends food and sex, liberally spicing talk of restaurants that changed the way Americans ate, chefs who elevated cooking to an art form or launched culinary movements, and food celebrities such as Julia Child and Craig Claiborne with tales of her bedroom encounters. Chapters with titles like "A Peanut Butter Kid in a Velveeta Wasteland" and "Splendor in the Fois Gras" whet the appetite and contain recipes (e.g., Almost Like Mom's Macaroni and Cheese, Infidelity Soup) that capture a memory or reflect a particular decade. Greene's focus is mainly New York restaurants, and that, together with her prose, might be an acquired taste, but the book is still an engaging account of the food world. Recommended for public and academic libraries.-Christine Holmes, San Jose State Univ. Lib., CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An outrageously fun memoir from novelist and longtime New York magazine dining critic Greene that reads more like Who-I-Slept-With rather than What-I-Ate. Greene, an upper-middle-class girl from Detroit, apparently tall and buxom, talked her way into bedding Elvis by age 21, in 1956, and from then on, nothing would stop her in love and career. "I was born hungry," she declares, referring to her appetite for both sex and food. In amusing, provocative vignettes, many sealed with a cozy favorite recipe ("Danish Meat Loaf"), she scampers through her 30-year career as dining critic for New York magazine. She discusses her travels to France and sexual emancipation during the swinging '60s; her long marriage to New York Times cultural critic and fellow foodie Don Forst; and numerous spectacular adulteries during her heyday in the '70s. Her novels are inspired by her sexcapades, specifically Doctor Love, which tracks her romance with porn star Jamie Gillis. Early freelance journalism for Cosmopolitan and others allowed Greene to interview stars like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds, and she chronicles in purring detail her affairs with both ("Would I have done it just for the story?" she asks. "I wouldn't have not done it for anything"). Friendships with Craig Claiborne and Belgian publicist Yanou Collart opened doors for her and transformed her from a parvenu abroad into a veritable VIP; through James Beard, she first met Alice Waters, though Greene admits she admired the West Coasters from afar and remained a "hopelessly elitist voice speaking for a manic majority." Lively and large-spirited, her account sizzles. Name-dropping with relish.