{"product_id":"high-bonnet-isbn-9780375757563","title":"High Bonnet","description":"The chef's towering white toque, the high bonnet, is the mark of achievement to which every young sauce-stirrer aspires. Idwal Jones's urbane novel follows the young provincial Jean as he attempts to master culinary art at the hands of Paris's most distinguished chefs.  Jean will win his high bonnet and the royal bearing that accompanies it - but not until he's had many outrageous adventures, in the kitchen and out. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHigh Bonnet\u003c\/b\u003e is a sly send-up of the seething politics, subtle artistry, and enslavement to the palate that constitute life behind the kitchen's swinging doors. First published in 1945 and out of print for more than four decades, \u003cb\u003eHigh Bonnet\u003c\/b\u003e will delight readers of Anthony Bourdain's bestselling \u003cb\u003eKitchen Confidential\u003c\/b\u003e or of Ludwig Bemelmans's \u003cb\u003eHotel Splendide\u003c\/b\u003e.\"Exciting and entertaining.... It titillates most if not all of our overworked senses.\"\u003cbr\u003e-- M.F.K. Fisher\u003cb\u003eIdwal Jones\u003c\/b\u003e was named Cordon Bleu Chef of the Wine and Food Society of Los Angeles. He was the author of the novels \u003cb\u003eThe Vineyard, Whistler's Van\u003c\/b\u003e, and\u003cb\u003e China Boy and Other Tales\u003c\/b\u003e. He died in 1964. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRuth Reichl\u003c\/b\u003e, editor of the Modern Library Food series, is the author of the bestselling\u003cb\u003e Tender at the Bone\u003c\/b\u003e and the forthcoming \u003cb\u003eComfort Me with Apples\u003c\/b\u003e. Formerly the food critic of \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, she is now editor-in-chief of \u003ci\u003eGourmet\u003c\/i\u003e magazine.I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt Was the Medlars\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe vender was again passing Xavier's café on the Toulon wharf with a basket of medlars on his head, a tuneful cry in his throat. The season being advanced, the fruit was dark-gold, pulpy, deliciously overripe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"On this voyage to Genoa, Jean-Marie,\" the master of the Piccolo was saying, as he filled my glass, \"you will be first officer. Bene?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was high rank for a youth just turned eighteen. The master was a Sicilian, gravely kind, with the petrel's luck in a hurricane, and he had taught me to navigate by thumb, eye, and quadrant. No longer was I a cabin boy. I could now tread the deck of the Piccolo with a franc's worth of gilt on my cap. There she was at her berth, rocking and jouncing in the tail end of a mistral, trim in the bright sunlight, and reeking of oil, wine barrels, and the woodsy smell of cork.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe vender sang out his wares. The wind came laden with the odor of them, and I thought of the medlar tree in my uncle's garden, and fell a-longing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"For a day or two I should like to be home.\" I pointed. \"That fruit-\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe master turned his head. \"Medlars! And it is April already!\" With elbows on the table he cupped his stubbled blue jowl in his hands and sighed dreamily, staring at the basket. \"And at Palermo the old Suora Micaela goes crying her medlars. 'Nespole! Che belle nespole!' Ah, the indigo sea of the Concha d'Oro, and the sherbet we bought at the carts to eat with the Suora's fruit!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next minute we were eating medlars, which is an art when done properly. You pinch off the bud, gouge down to the seeds, then tear away the peel, and pop the medlar into your mouth. The three lucent seeds drop out easily like bullets. And you wash the pulp down with a gulp of Muscatel that bears the Tuscan mark on a black label.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the time we had finished, the wharf and the Piccolo were wrapped in blackness, and fat Xavier in his cave back of the shop was fusing oil and wine in a great burst of flames. The incense of saffron was as magisterial as a fugue played on brass sirens. Xavier waddled over to us with the dish. Since it included young lobsters from the Porquerolles, and a good-sized rascasse, we prolonged our dinner until midnight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The next voyage, then,\" said the master when he saw me off on the autobus for the mountains above Nice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"To the next!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Addio!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe vast Ajax-like arm that had conquered storms on the Mediterranean sketched a wobbly farewell in the obscurity of the arch. And Xavier, like a wine tun swathed in a sheet, waved a farewell like a benediction, as well he might, for I had spent a month's wages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI never returned to the sea, nor ever saw the Piccolo again. It was the medlars.Introduction by Anthony Bourdain; [quote] --M.F.K. Fisher; Modern Library Food; Ruth Reichl, Series Editor","brand":"Modern Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305287962853,"sku":"NP9780375757563","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375757563.jpg?v=1767729027","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/high-bonnet-isbn-9780375757563","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}