The book begins We threw a party (and what else, really, does the staff of a restaurant do every night?), describing in loving and vivid detail the lamb roast her father orchestrated in the meadow behind their house every summer, in a voice that's funny, sharp, and profane. Hamilton, as she tells it in her memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, grew up during the early 70s in a sprawling, bohemian family in rural Pennsylvania, the Jersey border right across the river-five kids running wild, dad a set designer and scenic artist for trade shows and theaters, mom a perfectionist Frenchwoman who made her own cassoulet and served her bisteeya the proper Moroccan way, with olive-and-orange salad and sweet mint tea.

There had to be a story there.Īnd there is, but not the one you'd might expect. They'd been on the bar menu since the place opened, and they never budged.

But every time I walked in, my brain snagged on those sardines. Dinners there were brightly lit but festive, and whole sunny Sunday afternoons could float by in the wake of their justifiably famous Bloody Marys. When I lived in New York, quirky little Prune was a favorite restaurant of mine. But wait, sardines? Canned? Served with Triscuits and mustard?

Radishes with butter and sea salt, grilled lamb sausages, smoky eggplant and flatbread: just the kind of snacks you might expect, ready to be paired with a glass of Champagne or an expertly made Negroni at the tiny bar of a French-inspired, chef-owned bistro like Gabrielle Hamilton's Prune in New York City. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.Gabrielle Hamilton. Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family-the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chefīefore Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life.

Blood bones butter