On Apr 13, 2:38?pm, "Nunya Bidnits" wrote:
I think he has slightly more 'cred' than you........ and I don't see
anything in there about the CIA. Must be more bullshit made up by the
knockers, such as you, who are too scared to try anything in case you
catch "germs".
http://ruhlman.com/about
The best things in life happen when you get carried away. I went into
a cooking school to write about what it means to be a chef, and
instead I became a cook, got a job line cooking, lucked into one of
the great restaurants of the world to work with the chef on his book,
and I kept on writing about food. I got carried away, and it?s made
all the difference.
The facts are these: Born 1963 in Cleveland, graduated Duke in 1985
with a BA in literature, worked at The New York Times as a copyboy
where I managed to slip some stories into most sections of the paper,
departed after fewer than two years to pursue a desultory life of
writing, travel and odd jobs, returning to Cleveland with my wife,
Donna, a newspaper and magazine photographer, in 1991. Found work at a
local magazine covering arts and cultural scene and here began writing
about chefs and cooking.
My first book, Boys Themselves (1996), revealed life at an all-boy day
school that was defiantly all-boys at a time when anything all-boys
was considered toxic and anything all-girls was great for girls.
A committed cook since fourth grade, I proposed to the Culinary
Institute of America, the oldest and most influential professional
cooking school in the country, that I be allowed into its kitchen
classrooms in order to write a narrative of how the school trains
professional chefs. The school agreed, and I wrote The Making of a
Chef (1997), rereleased in 2009 in a new paperback edition.
I became so fascinated by the work of the professional cook and the
culture of the restaurant kitchen that I continued to pursue the work
and wrote a book about chefs and cooking, The Soul of a Chef (2000). I
co-wrote The French Laundry Cookbook (1999) with Thomas Keller at the
same time, and he and I subsequently wrote a food column for the Los
Angeles Times for two years.
In February 1999, I moved with my family to Martha?s Vineyard to
research and report on life at a yard making plank-on-frame boats for
the book Wooden Boats: In Pursuit of the Perfect Craft at an American
Boatyard (2001). In October 2000, I began work at the Cleveland
Clinic?s Children?s Hospital for the book Walk on Water (2003). I
wrote it concurrently with A Return to Cooking (2002), with Eric
Ripert, chef-owner of Le Bernardin, the Manhattan four-star
restaurant.
Tony Bourdain lured me to Vegas for his show No Reservations; ever
image conscious, he was infuriated by my Cleveland pallor and insisted
I do something about it before we hit town.
Other books include House: A Memoir, about the purchase and renovation
of a 1901 house in Cleveland and an exploration of the nature of home
in our vagabond culture, and The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooks
in the Age of Celebrity. Other cookbooks include Bouchon, written with
Keller and the others from the French Laundry Cookbook team, about
French comfort food, and Under Pressure, the first American cookbook
to explore the possibilities of sous vide cooking. I was a contributor
to the Alinea, Grant Achatz?s tour de force on the new new cuisine. I
wrote Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing?a thinly
veiled love song to the pig, to animal fat and salt, sausages,
confits, pates, terrines?with my friend, the Michigan chef Brian
Polcyn.
I have been on several television shows, ?Cooking Under Fire? on PBS,
and, on the Food Network, I was a judge on the ?Next Iron Chef,?
appear occasionally as a judge on ?Iron Chef America,? and have been a
featured guest on the Travel Channel?s ?Anthony Bourdain?s No
Reservations,? Las Vegas and Cleveland episodes.
Judgment in the Next Iron Chef competition in Munich. From left, Bernd
Schmitt, myself, restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, editor Andrew
Knowlton, and host, Alton Brown interrogate San Francisco chef Chris
Cosentino. Photo courtesy of The Food Network
In 2007 I published The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Craft for
Every Kitchen, ?an indispensable compendium of cooking information for
both professional and amateur cooks constitutes a precise,
unpretentious, unencumbered culinary handbook? (Booklist). I realized
one day leaving a food writers symposium that I?d spent so much time
in kitchen and so much time with the country?s best chefs that I had a
huge amount of knowledge about cooking, information that would be
valuable to anyone who cared about cooking, from professional chefs to
committed home cooks. Needing a structure for all this information I
turned to one of my favorite books about the craft of writing, Strunk
and White?s The Elements of Style. The book contains essays on the
fundamentals of cooking and a deeply opinionated glossary of important
cooking terms we all need to know.
My most recent book is Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of
Everyday Cooking, a book devoted to understanding the relationships
between our most basic ingredients and how those relationships form
the backbone of the craft of cooking.
This fall two new cookbooks I?ve had a hand in will be published:
Thomas Keller: At Home with Ad Hoc, the fourth from this team, and
Symon Says: Live to Cook, a cookbook from my friend, fellow
Clevelander, Michael Symon, chef-restaurateur (Lola/Lolita) and an
Iron Chef Food on Network?s ?Iron Chef America.? Donna and I continue
to live in Cleveland Heights with our two kids, writing, shooting and
cooking.