When high school football star Theo Claverback breaks his leg just weeks after a devastating break-up, he's forced to call an audible on his summer plans and put his college ones on hold. He soon finds himself in the most unlikely of places for a jock on crutches: the kitchen of an upscale French restaurant, where he'll work as a prep cook while his heart and leg heal.

But it's in the kitchen where Theo finds new purpose and a new romance. As he becomes a trusted employee to Chef and is welcomed into his inner circle, Theo begins to discover the true costs of running a restaurant--and what happens when you get into hot water with the wrong people.

Set in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980, If You Can't Take the Heat is a gritty look inside the belly of an upscale kitchen where love and danger boil behind closed doors.

New York Times bestselling author Michael Ruhlman applies the principles of his innovative book Ratio--about the relationships of ingredients to each other--in this delightful back-to-basics cocktail book, sharing the simple recipes and fundamental techniques that make for delicious and satisfying libations.

Did you know that a Gimlet, a Daiquiri, and a Bee's Knees are the same cocktail? As are a Cosmopolitan, a Margarita, and a Sidecar. When hosting a party wouldn't you enjoy saying to your guests, Would you care for a Boulevardier, perhaps, or a Negroni? These, too, are the same cocktail, substituting one ingredient for another. Or if you'd like to be able to shake up a batch of whiskey sours for a party of eight in fewer than two minutes, then read on.

As Michael Ruhlman explains, our most popular cocktails are really ratios--proportions of one ingredient relative to the others. Organized around five of our best-known, beloved, classic families of cocktails, each category follows a simple ratio from which myriad variations can be built: The Manhattan, The Gimlet, The Margarita, The Negroni, and the most debated cocktail ever, The Martini.

A practical reference of cocktail classics, a source of inspiration for putting a new spin on the usual gin and tonic, and an affable tribute to the pleasures of the cocktail hour, The Book of Cocktail Ratios shows you how to serve up delectable drinks in no time. Cheers!

When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe, it's instantly knowing a thousand.

Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want--chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.

Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin.

Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2--or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.

Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen--water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs--work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.

As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is--and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

Charcuterie exploded onto the scene in 2005 and encouraged an army of home cooks and professional chefs to start curing their own foods. This love song to animal fat and salt has blossomed into a bona fide culinary movement, throughout America and beyond, of curing meats and making sausage, pâtés, and confits. Charcuterie: Revised and Updated will remain the ultimate and authoritative guide to that movement, spreading the revival of this ancient culinary craft.

Early in his career, food writer Michael Ruhlman had his first taste of duck confit. The experience became a fascination that transformed into a quest to understand the larger world of food preservation, called charcuterie, once a critical factor in human survival. He wondered why its methods and preparations, which used to keep communities alive and allowed for long-distance exploration, had been almost forgotten. Along the way he met Brian Polcyn, who had been surrounded with traditional and modern charcuterie since childhood. My Polish grandma made kielbasa every Christmas and Easter, he told Ruhlman. At the time, Polcyn was teaching butchery at Schoolcraft College outside Detroit.

Ruhlman and Polcyn teamed up to share their passion for cured meats with a wider audience. The rest is culinary history. Charcuterie: Revised and Updated is organized into chapters on key practices: salt-cured meats like pancetta, dry-cured meats like salami and chorizo, forcemeats including pâtés and terrines, and smoked meats and fish. Readers will find all the classic recipes: duck confit, sausages, prosciutto, bacon, pâté de campagne, and knackwurst, among others. Ruhlman and Polcyn also expand on traditional mainstays, offering recipes for hot- and cold-smoked salmon; shrimp, lobster, and leek sausage; and grilled vegetable terrine. All these techniques make for a stunning addition to a contemporary menu.

Thoroughly instructive and fully illustrated, this updated edition includes seventy-five detailed line drawings that guide the reader through all the techniques. With new recipes and revised sections to reflect the best equipment available today, Charcuterie: Revised and Updated remains the undisputed authority on charcuterie.

When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe, it's instantly knowing a thousand.

Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want--chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.

Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin.

Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2--or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.

Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen--water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs--work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.

As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is--and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

FEATURING BRAND-NEW STORIES FROM: Paula McLain, Jill Bialosky, Thrity Umrigar, Michael Ruhlman, Daniel Stashower, D.M. Pulley, J.D. Belcher, Alex DiFrancesco, Miesha Wilson Headen, Abby L. Vandiver, Sam Conrad, Angela Crook, Susan Petrone, Dana McSwain, and Mary Grimm.

FROM THE EDITORS' INTRODUCTION:
Cleveland is a working-class town, though its great institutions were founded by twentieth-century robber barons and magnates . . . It's this mix of the wealthy and the working class that makes this city--an urban center of brick and girders surrounded by verdant suburbs--a perfect backdrop for lawlessness. Cleveland has certainly seen its share of high-profile crime. Eliot Ness, Cleveland's director of public safety in the 1930s, hunted unsuccessfully for the 'torso murderer' who killed and dismembered twelve people in Kingsbury Run, the area now known as the Flats, then populated by bars, brothels, flophouses, and gambling dens. The famous disappearance of Beverly Potts in the early 1950s on Cleveland's west side made national headlines. The sensational murder of Marilyn Sheppard in Bay Village and the imprisonment and eventual acquittal of her husband, the surgeon Sam Sheppard, became the basis for a popular television drama The Fugitive . . .

The noir stories in this volume hit all these same notes, and their geographies reflect the history of the city and its politics, its laws, poverty, alienation, racism, crime, and violence.

The classic account of what drives a chef to perfection by accaimed write Michael Ruhlman -- --winner of the IACP Cookbook Award

In this in-depth foray into the world of professional cooking, Michael Ruhlman journeys into the heart of the profession. Observing the rigorous Certified Master Chef exam at the Culinary Institute of America, the most influential cooking school in the country, Ruhlman enters the lives and kitchens of rising star Michael Symon and renowned Thomas Keller of the French Laundry (and Per Se). This fascinating book will satisfy any reader's hunger for knowledge about cooking and food, the secrets of successful chefs, at what point cooking becomes an art form, and more. Like Ruhlman's The Making of a Chef, this is an instant classic in food writing.

With alphabetically ordered entries and eight beautifully written essays, Ruhlman outlines what it takes to cook well: understanding heat, using the right tools, cooking with eggs, making stock, making sauce, salting food, what a cook should read, and exploring the most important skill to have in the kitchen, finesse. The Elements of Cooking gives everyone the tools they need to go from being a good cook to a great one.

In a culture obsessed with food--how it looks, what it tastes like, where it comes from, what is good for us--there are often more questions than answers. Ruhlman proposes that the best practices for consuming wisely could be hiding in plain sight--in the aisles of your local supermarket. Using the human story of the family-run Midwestern chain Heinen's as an anchor to this journalistic narrative, he dives into the mysterious world of supermarkets and the ways in which we produce, consume, and distribute food. Grocery examines how rapidly supermarkets--and our food and culture--have changed since the days of your friendly neighborhood grocer. But rather than waxing nostalgic for the age of mom-and-pop shops, Ruhlman seeks to understand how our food needs have shifted since the mid-twentieth century, and how these needs mirror our cultural ones.

A mix of reportage and rant, personal history and social commentary, Grocery is a landmark book from one of our most insightful food writers.

Well reported and heartfelt, Ruhlman communicates the passion that draws the acolyte to this precise and frantic profession.--The New York Times Book Review

Just over a decade ago, journalist Michael Ruhlman donned a chef's jacket and houndstooth-check pants to join the students at the Culinary Institute of America, the country's oldest and most influential cooking school. But The Making of a Chef is not just about holding a knife or slicing an onion; it's also about the nature and spirit of being a professional cook and the people who enter the profession. As Ruhlman--now an expert on the fundamentals of cooking--recounts his growing mastery of the skills of his adopted profession, he propels himself and his readers through a score of kitchens and classrooms in search of the elusive, unnameable elements of great food.

Incisively reported, with an insider's passion and attention to detail, The Making of a Chef remains the most vivid and compelling memoir of a professional culinary education on record.

When high school football star Theo Claverback breaks his leg just weeks after a devastating break-up, he's forced to call an audible on his summer plans and put his college ones on hold. He soon finds himself in the most unlikely of places for a jock on crutches: the kitchen of an upscale French restaurant, where he'll work as a prep cook while his heart and leg heal.

But it's in the kitchen where Theo finds new purpose and a new romance. As he becomes a trusted employee to Chef and is welcomed into his inner circle, Theo begins to discover the true costs of running a restaurant--and what happens when you get into hot water with the wrong people.

Set in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980, If You Can't Take the Heat is a gritty look inside the belly of an upscale kitchen where love and danger boil behind closed doors.

For his previous explorations into the restaurant kitchen and the men and women who call it home, Michael Ruhlman has been described by Anthony Bourdain as the greatest living writer on the subject of chefs, and on the business of preparing food. In The Reach of a Chef, Ruhlman examines the profound shift in American culture that has raised restaurant cooking to the level of performance art and the status of the chef to celebrity CEO. Bibliophiles and foodies alike will savor this intimate meeting with some of the most famous chefs in the kitchens of the hottest restaurants in the world.

The sauté station is the place all aspiring restaurant chefs want to be: the hot seat, where the action happens. The same is true at home, where a good sauté unlocks the pleasures of dishes such as Veal Scaloppini, Sautéed Mushrooms, Chicken Schnitzel with Sage Spaetzle, Sautéed Duck Breast with Rhubarab Gastrique, and Flatiron Steak with Sautéed Shallots and Tarragon Butter.

In How to Sauté, Ruhlman gives you essential information and straightforward advice about the tools you need (and which ones you don't); tips on stocking your pantry for the greatest efficiency, flexibility, and flavor; and dozens of color photographs showcasing finished dishes and step-by-step cooking techniques.

From Scratch looks at 10 favorite meals, including roast chicken, the perfect omelet, and paella--and then, through 175 recipes, explores myriad alternate pathways that the kitchen invites. A delicious lasagna can be ready in about an hour, or you could turn it into a project: Try making and adding some homemade sausage. Explore the limits of from-scratch cooking: Make your own pasta, grow your own tomatoes, and make your own homemade mozzarella and ricotta. Ruhlman tells you how.

There are easy and more complex versions for most dishes, vegetarian options, side dishes, sub-dishes, and strategies for leftovers. Ruhlman reflects on the ways that cooking from scratch brings people together, how it can calm the nerves and focus the mind, and how it nourishes us, body and soul.

Featured recipes include:

• New England Clam Chowder
• Classic Mushroom Ristotto
• Cassoulet from Scratch
• Steak au Poivre
• Slow-roasted Pork Shoulder
• Tarte Tatin
• Homemade Churros

Includes color photographs

Modeled on Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, The Elements of Cooking is an opinionated volume by Michael Ruhlman--the award-winning and bestselling author of The Making of a Chef and coauthor of The French Laundry Cookbook--that pares the essentials of good cooking into a slim, easy-to-take-anywhere book. It will also stand alongside a handful of classics of the kitchen, just as Strunk and White's book sits on the desk of every writer and every English student.

Not only does this book deconstruct the essential knowledge of the kitchen, it also takes what every professional chef knows instinctively after years of training and experience and offers it up cleanly and brilliantly to the home cook.

With hundreds of entries from acid to zester, here is all the information--no more and no less--you need to cook, as well as countless tips (including only one recipe in the entire book, for the magic elixir of the kitchen) and no-nonsense advice on how to be a great cook. You'll learn to cook everything, as the entries cover all the key moves you need to make in the kitchen and teach you, for example, not only what goes into a great sauce but how to think about it to make it great.

Eight short, beautifully written essays outline what it takes not merely to cook but to cook well: understanding heat, using the right tools (there are only five of them), cooking with eggs, making stock, making sauce, salting food, what a cook should read, and exploring the elusive, most important skill to have in the kitchen, finesse.

With the always-tedious home-buying process and expensive repairs soaring into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the American Dream can seem like the American Nightmare. Detailing the purchase and renovation of a single family home, House explores the importance of the place we live in, our yearning to establish it, and the importance of the actual structure, its impact on our intellectual and spiritual lives, and on the struggles of a family. Packed with useful information and stories written with a storyteller's flair, House is a dramatic narrative by a gifted writer who eloquently concludes that be it ever so humble, a castle or a row house downtown, there's truly no place like home.

According to James Beard-award winning cookbook author Michael Ruhlman, Braising is what cooking is truly about -- transformation. You start with a tough, often inexpensive, cut of meat, and through your care and knowledge as a cook, you turn it into something tender and succulent and exquisite. That is true cooking, cooking that engages both mind and soul.

Among the recipes featured in this second book in Ruhlmans's new how-to series are Moroccan Lamb Tagine, Classic Yankee Pot Roast, Mexican Pork and Posole Stew with Dried Chilis, Braised Fennel, and a Corned Beef and Cabbage Braise.

As with the other books in this line, practical information about essential tools and staple pantry items will be outlined, along with straightforward and clearly presented advice and dozens of colorphotographs showcasing both finished dishes and step-by-step cooking techniques.