Just finished

Michael Ruhlman's The Making of a Chef

Read, salivate, cook, eat. Ruhlman was transformed during his time at the Culinary Institute of America from a food writer-pretending-to-be-a-culinary-student into the real deal: a cook. The same blizzard made me wanna hightail it back to Texas in winter 95-96 served for him too as a pivotal point: he had to drive from Brooklyn Tivoli to Hyde Park on icy roads or remain "just a writer." Book's funny too--the author sneezes his way through an unfortunate flour allergy during his bakery stint. He interviews each of the lunatic chef instructors: One lived in a teepee for two years in the mountains of Colorado and sagely advises him on the importance of having a good sleeping bag. Another talks about fond de veau lie for hours. The garde manger "goddess" is a self-taught cook who talks gender roles in the ideal professional kitchen while using "y'all the way the way a writer uses a tab key to begin a new paragraph." Another admits that despite his eventual certified master chef status, right out of culinary school he was almost fired two days into his first job. During one particularly hellish service, the author finds himself diving away from a near collision with a manic chef toting fifty pounds of flaming logs in a metal tray from wood oven to grill. All of the instructors and most of the students exhibit the kind of passion for their vocation that would be absolute assholery in a banker, stock broker or marketing guru (for simple instance). Good stuff.