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Read a sneak peek and see the cover, here.
In advance of its release, EW is thrilled to exclusively reveal the bookssharp(get it?)
Credit: William Hereford
cover, as well as a sneak peek inside.
Check out the cover and excerpt below, and head toThielens websitefor more information.
Excerpt fromGive a Girl a Knifeby Amy Thielen
Prologue
Everything takes five minutes.
This was the first decree of my line cooking career, and it made no sense.
This operation he performed without looking down, as if he were shelling peas.
So apparently time was not time, and that subject was closed.
And then it was on.
My eyes followed his finger.
Five ravioli in a row, but the triangle points werent lining up.
One was upside down.
I flipped it over.
he mocked in the kitchen Spanish he was picking up in New York.
Corn sauce, Ahmy!On y va, he urged.
The skate is dying here for yourkaiseravioli.
As the intensity tightened, the more my inner reverb began to hum.
Visually, it was a swarm.
The portions were small, the tasting menus were long, and the plates were Technicolor.
There was glowing red-beet-and-wine-soaked pasta.
Spinach sauce the color of artificial turf.
The cooks blindly moved copper pots around on the flat-top as smoothly as professional card sharks.
Their movements looked at first to be haphazard but turned out to be as precise as animal instinct.
It was a mad world, but I got it.
It kind of reminded me of home.
Very quickly I came to understand what T1 meant about the five minutes.
The synchronized cooking of each dish for each table was coordinated by shouting out the minutes to plating.
Once a table was fired (Fire Table 22!
), the meat roast cook called out his requirement (Five away on the venison!)
Nightly, fights sprang up over the accuracy of a cooks minutes.
(Serge, dude, your two is more like six!)
The point is, if you cook on the line for long, your personal time signature will change.
Like saving precious moments of life, thats how essential it feels.
To me, time in the kitchen was like a loophole, a bubble, a cure.
Once I found it, I crawled inside and told myself I never wanted to leave.
