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The 10 Best food memoirs
From life in a top-end New York kitchen to dinner parties at the height of the Raj, here are culinary tales to chew over...
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Your support makes all the difference.1. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Bloomsbury, £10.99
Bourdain's no-holds-barred account of life in American kitchens is both a memoir and an insider's guide to the tricks of the trade.
2. Love in a Dish and Other Pieces by MFK Fisher
£6.99, penguin.co.uk
Combines recipes with anecdotes about lunches had and wines drunk. A book as well-crafted as the patisserie she loved.
3. Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey
£7.99, eburypublishing.co.uk
Jaffrey is Britain's most highly regarded Indian cookery writer. Her life in food began in the days of the raj in Delhi.
4. Between Meals by AJ Liebling
£10.99, amazon.co.uk
The New Yorker writer's memoir charts an amusing culinary coming-of-age in the Paris of the 1920s, where he spent a good deal of his family money on food and wine.
5. J'aime New York by Alain Ducasse
£35, hardiegrant.co.uk
Not a memoir in the traditional sense, rather it recounts the 156 restaurants he has frequented since his first time in NYC in 1976.
6. Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann
£30, octopusbooks.co.uk
Koffman takes us on trip through his childhood in Gascony by giving us the recipes he ate then and still cooks now.
£8.99, harpercollins.co.uk
Each chapter is a bacchanalia of suburban treats as Slater gives us a grand tour of the family's larder – rice pudding, tinned ham, cream soda and all.
£8.99, vintage-books.co.uk
Having previously gone undercover with football hooligans in Among The Thugs, Buford goes under the pan lid as he blags a position in Mario Batali's staff.
9. A Recipe for Life by Antonio Carluccio
£20, hardiegrant.co.uk
Carluccio remembers the first time his taste buds felt the zing of a well-cooked meal. This is his life... in the kitchen and on TV.
10. My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme
£8.99, ducknet.co.uk
Once a brash California girl who didn't speak one word of French. This traces the beginnings of her love for French food.
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