The first cookery book for those who could not afford a cook - the so called working classes. First edited in 1852, this book is both: A rich source for traditional recipes and a picture of a changing society in the early 19th century.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick * A Country Living Best Book of Fall * A Washington Post Best Feel-Good Book of the Year * One of the New York Times's Best Historical Fiction Novels of Fall In a novel perfect for fans of Hazel Gaynor’s A Memory of Violets and upstairs-downstairs stories, Annabel Abbs, the award-winning author of The Joyce Girl, returns with the brilliant real-life story of Eliza Acton and her assistant as they revolutionized British cooking and cookbooks around the world. Before Mrs. Beeton and well before Julia Child, there was Eliza Acton, who changed the course of cookery writing forever. England, 1835. London is awash with thrilling new ingredients, from rare spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them. When Eliza Acton is told by her publisher to write a cookery book instead of the poetry she loves, she refuses—until her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country. As a woman, Eliza has few options. Although she’s never set foot in a kitchen, she begins collecting recipes and teaching herself to cook. Much to her surprise she discovers a talent – and a passion – for the culinary arts. Eliza hires young, destitute Ann Kirby to assist her. As they cook together, Ann learns about poetry, love and ambition. The two develop a radical friendship, breaking the boundaries of class while creating new ways of writing recipes. But when Ann discovers a secret in Eliza’s past, and finds a voice of her own, their friendship starts to fray. Based on the true story of the first modern cookery writer, Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen is a spellbinding novel about female friendship, the struggle for independence, and the transcendent pleasures and solace of food.

Winner of the 2011 James Beard Foundation Award for International Cooking, this is the authoritative guide to stir-frying: the cooking technique that makes less seem like more, extends small amounts of food to feed many, and makes ingredients their most tender and delicious. The stir-fry is all things: refined, improvisational, adaptable, and inventive. The technique and tradition of stir-frying, which is at once simple yet subtly complex, is as vital today as it has been for hundreds of years—and is the key to quick and tasty meals. In Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, award-winning author Grace Young shares more than 100 classic stir-fry recipes that sizzle with heat and pop with flavor, from the great Cantonese stir-fry masters to the culinary customs of Sichuan, Hunan, Shanghai, Beijing, Fujian, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as other countries around the world. With more than eighty stunning full-color photographs, Young’s definitive work illustrates the innumerable, easy-to-learn possibilities the technique offers—dry stir-fries, moist stir-fries, clear stir-fries, velvet stir-fries—and weaves the insights of Chinese cooking philosophy into the preparation of beloved dishes as Kung Pao Chicken, Stir-Fried Beef and Broccoli, Chicken Lo Mein with Ginger Mushrooms, and Dry-Fried Sichuan Beans.

Still Notorious, Radical, and Revolutionary 50 Years Later. A survival guide from one of the greatest creative organizers of the 20th century—now with a new foreword by co-conspirator, Lisa Fithian. Throughout the 1960's and 70's, Abbie Hoffman criss-crossed the country, ferreting out alternative ways of getting by in America—some illegal and all radical. Causing scandals with its advice on how to Survive!, Fight!, and Liberate! in the “prison that is Amerika,” Steal This Book is a revolutionary's manual to running a guerilla movement, as well as getting free food, housing, transportation, medical care, and more. This anniversary edition gives a new generation an insider's view into the movements of the sixties and seventies. While many of the holes in the system that Abbie exposed have since been plugged, the spirit of revolution, the dedication to opposing injustice, and the passion of creative activism continue to inspire today.

There is one powerful smell closely associated with the making of coffee in bedsitters. It is the smell of burning plastic, and will go away if you move the handle of the pot away from the flame. Legendary journalist Katharine Whitehorn's classic handbook of quick, simple meals - including Swedish Sausage Casserole, Lamb Tomato Quickie and Shrimp Wiggle - became the essential survival manual for the busy single person living in their first rented room. Whitehorn's trademark intelligent, practical and fabulously funny writing shines as brightly as ever, addressing the problems of 'cooking at ground level, in a hurry, with nowhere to put the salad but the washing-up bowl, which is in any case full of socks'. Delightful, entertaining and utterly indispensable. Praise for Katharine Whitehorn: 'A meteor: clever, funny, compassionate, insightful, beautiful' RACHEL COOKE 'Everyone grabbed the Observer to read her column on a Sunday morning' JILLY COOPER 'Wise, witty, mischievous' JAY RAYNER