Customer Reviews

The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The review in Publisher's Weekly made me curious about Rinella's book, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Given the title, I had half expected the book to be a collection of hunting stories, but what I found instead was an engaging narrative about one man's dedication to live responsibly off the land and to respect the passions and lifestyles of others, no matter how eccentric or random they might seem. Along with Rinella's often humorous and personal insights, he also weaves in social and scientific history to create a really fascinating read. I highly recommend that you put this book on your summer reading list!!

I found this book in the bookstore at the Culinary Institute of America while I was waiting for the college's tour to begin. The title caught my attention, and the first paragraph hooked me. After reading parts of it for 10 minutes, I bought it and finished reading it over the next three days. I took my time, savoring each chapter, each conversation, each morsel offered up by this delightful young author.

I have never hunted and rarely eat red meat, but I have backpacked and experienced nature in the raw. Reading Rinella's book, I felt so engaged, so alive, so thrilled with his adventures that it seemed I was living them myself. His sense of humor and his insightful observations about wide-ranging subjects [history, technology, human nature, wilderness, ecology, hunting and survival skills, animal behavior, the culinary arts] increased my pleasure. This was one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read.

This is the best book I've read in years. I had been hearing all the hype about it, and I wondered if I would like it since I don't normally read hunting and fishing books. But the author drew me in with his sense of humor, his elegant prose, and his deft way of weaving European history with his personal history. The narrative is gripping, the characters entertaining, and the concept brave and unique. If you read one book this year, read this one. It is a trip!

I don't read outdoor books, and am only mildly interested in food writing, but I really admire renegade DIY personalities. This book is all about people doing things their own way. From the author to the crazy characters he encounters, this book will inspire you to think about doing things yourself rather than having them done for you. Which is an interesting way of life, to say the least. Maybe I won't build an eel weir anytime soon, but I'm glad to have read about somebody who did.

The premise behind this book (at least for me) is a classic example of "Why didn't I think of that?". Anyone who is a fan of hunting, fishing, the outdoors, food or just laughing out loud will find this story entertaining in the extreme. In fact, "extreme", though sorely overused in today's vernacular, is at the very heart of this story. From the adventures had in gathering the ingredients, to the eclectic nature of the ingredients themselves, Rinella seems intent upon escorting the reader away from our ordinary (often self-imposed) limits. The writing is crisp, clear, wonderfully researched, and above all, entertaining. Taken as a whole, the story is thought-provoking, historically educational, sometimes-challenging, and utterly hilarious -- a rare bird indeed! This dish is fit for a king (or a peasant, or a trapper, or an accountant, or a hairdresser, or...).

This is not just a book for hunters, fishermen, chefs, food-lovers, or French history efficianados, although all of the above will love it. It is a book for anyone who enjoys a great book. It is an unusual, hilarious, surprising page-turner, complete with rich characters, an unlikely romance, and a narrative that grips the reader and won't let go. I have never read anything like this. It is completely unique. Everyone needs to read this book!!!

`The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine' by hunting and fishing sports writer, Steven Rinella is, as another reviewer points out, much less of a culinary memoir than the title may suggest, but that is not, I believe, a legitimate reason to give this memoir a low score.

I believe the really misleading aspect of this title is the word `Scavenger'. The book would have been much better served by replacing this hyena / buzzard evoking word with the more erudite term, `hunter / gatherer', which the author actually uses liberally in his text.

This book falls is less in the tradition of writings by Tony Bourdain, Jacques Pepin, or Ruth Reichl than it does the tradition of political essayist, George Orwell and his `Down and Out in Paris and London', where there are many interesting culinary observations, but the real point is much more about a lifestyle than about cooking. A minor theme of the book is a reflection of the recent culinary memoir `Julie & Julia' by Julie Powell. Instead of Julia Child, Rinella's culinary muse is the great French chef and culinary writer, Auguste Escoffier, and the inspiration is Escoffier's `Le Guide Culinaire'.

This meeting of `haute cuisine' and outdoorsman may seem odd, until Rinella reminds us that Escoffier (and most Continental chefs, even to this day) devote much of their attention to cooking with game and foraged ingredients, even if the `game' is from domestically raised bison, deer, rabbits, or fowl. In fact, this is one of two major points on which I would take issue with Rinella. The `hunter / gatherer' element in the culinary world is not nearly as isolated as he seems to indicate. It is just a lot more highly organized around collecting and marketing things like porcini, truffles, and game birds.

The second bone I have to pick with Rinella his claim that it was Escoffier which brought the Russian style of service to France and England, replacing the pre-Revolutionary French style of service. The latter put all the dishes out on the table on serving plates in what we may call `family style', and everyone picked from the service platters, at least those service platters they could reach. The former delivered to the table one course at a time, as we are familiar with in restaurants today. According to `Cooking for Kings', a biography of Antonin Careme, Ian Kelly states that Careme began introducing the Russian style of service back in the days of Napoleon. And, I suspect his introduction was hastened by the collapse of the nobility caused by the French Revolution (which simultaneously lead to the rise of restaurants, since all those chefs of noble houses had to find some gainful employment).

The similarity with Julie Powell is based on the fact that the book is organized around Rinella's preparing a massive dinner based exclusively on Escoffier's recipes for game meats.

While this book may have equal or greater appeal to outdoorsmen than to urban foodies, it is not without its culinary charms, especially in those pieces where our hero has to deal with his vegetarian girlfriend in a world of game meats and home butchering.

This has very little to do with Charlie Rose. I don't know if he has read The Scavengers Guide to Haute Cuisine, but hopes he reads and interviews S Rinella.
Story telling of this nature is so damn limited...S Rinella tells tales that make you squirm, laugh and realize that food is a quest, not only at hip restruants, not to the grocery stores, but to the elemental aspects of finding your food (hunting) and making it damn pleasurable.

I found this to be a surprisingly readable book. The author, Steven Rinella, is a writer for sports magazines, and he and his friends spend much of their free time hunting and fishing. When he got a copy of The Escoffier Cookbook, it started him on a year-long quest to create a fabulous feast for his friends using wild game and products he scrounges up over the course of a year. With detailed information about his successes and failures (including the dreaded food poisoning), as well as the prosaic and interesting adventures he has to get the goods for his feast, I had a hard time putting the book down. He goes above and beyond what most of us would ever imagine doing for a holiday feast. While the author does relish in his intimate knowledge of exactly where his food comes from, this book is definitely not for the squeamish. And, make no mistake, there's not a single recipe in this book.

This is, at heart, a book about cooking...but with a very interesting twist. The author is an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and decides to recreate the recipes from a long ago chef using the animals that he can find in North America. In his pursuit he connects us to the wilderness and shows us how deeply disconnected we are from our food. In the end Rinella has given us a tour of the country, acquainted us with the wildlife from which he culls, and gives us a mental and emotional connection to the way in which generations have provided for their families. He does recreate these recipes for a final, large meal, however, the meal becomes anti-climactic, as the pursuit of the meal's ingredients becomes the story.

Rinella is now featured in "The Wild Within", a travel/adventure show in which he shows the viewer, rather graphically at times, what it takes to fill your freezer and not set foot in a grocery store. It has inspired me to begin taking a second look at hunting as a way to establish a much closer connection to the land,and to more fully understand precisely where food originates.