A review by thewellreadrunner
The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America by Michael Ruhlman

4.0

I thought this book was fantastic. Ruhlman is a writer who was granted special permission to go through segments of the culinary degree program at the Culinary Institute of America, and write about the process. However, in the course of the degree program, he starts to become a cook himself, and you see the line between writing and cooking start to blur for him.

Full disclosure: my stepfather is a CIA graduate and I have eaten in the Escoffier Room, so I am probably more interested in this book than most. There's a lot of detail here that you may not be interested in if food and cooking don't tickle your fancy. But this is a very well-written account of CIA student life, and if you're a foodie, you'll be salivating by the end...and also either yearning for culinary school, or feeling decidedly dead-set against it. One of the better nonfiction reads I've had in a while!