Unknown.
DCL
According to Alex Koppelman at Salon these are the five books that you need to become a chef by the new year.
1. Cooking: 600 Recipes, 1,500 Photographs, One Kitchen Education by James Peterson (2007, Ten Speed Press)
2. Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual by Peter Hertzmann (2007, W. W. Norton)
3. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food by Mark Bittman (2003, Wiley)
4. The Seventh Daughter: My Culinary Journey From Beijing to San Francisco by Cecilia Chiang with Lisa Weiss (2007, Ten Speed Press)
5. Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink edited by David Remnick (2007, Random House)
This pretty much covers the field of what you might want from books about food: recipes, great photos, a memoir, knife skillsm and the writings of Calvin Trillin.
I think I'm going to have to have a look at the Knife Skills Illustrated. I once cut the tip of my thumb off cutting artichokes. so I could probably use the guidance.
I've been looking forward to checking out How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. I often use Mark Bittman's recipes from The New York Times and they are always well-written and pretty tasty. I'm big on taking the fear out of vegetarian cooking, and Mr. Bittman knows how to do that.
I know I can recommend The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink because I've read quite a lot of these pieces from the magazine over the past year and some of them are quite wonderful. I haven't read The Seventh Daughter, but Mr. Koppelman says "it's...a decent, sometimes heart-wrenching, read".
So it looks like you have your work cut out for you over the next three weeks if you are going to achieve chef status. If the pressure is too much, then kick back and read Anthony Bourdain's funny culinary mystery A Bone in the Throat (2000, Bloomsbury USA).
Difficulty level: Easy
