Cookoff (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | Amy Sutherland | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

"Cookoff: Recipe Fever" in America is an anecdotal and entertaining look at the amazingly extensive subculture of cooking contests in America. Such contests range in importance from Spam contests at county fairs to the granddaddy of them all, the Pillsbury Bake-Off in San Francisco, where the grand prize is a cool million. In between are contests local and national, sponsored by agricultural groups, corporations, and neighborhoods. Competing in these contests are not only casual entrants, but "contesters," people--mostly women--for whom the recipe contest is a way of life, and prizes like the Pillsbury Bake-Off the Holy Grail.
Journalist Amy Sutherland follows a small group of such contesters through a year on the contest circuit, beginning with the National Chicken Cook-off and culminating in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Along the way, we'll be introduced to well-known cook-off luminaries as well as to some of the most bizarre cooks, and the recipes concocted for their national contests. We are a nation obsessed with food. Cookbook sales are at an all-time high. Viewership of cooking shows has skyrocketed. The Food Network revenues are jumping 60 percent a year. Enrollments at cooking schools have exploded. Eating out has become the national pastime, with Americans doing so twice as much as they did 20 years ago. In the past 10 years, universities began offering Ph.D.s in food history. Salsa sales overtook ketchup, the top-selling condiment for most of the century, in 1996. And record numbers of people are entering recipe contests. "Cookoff" will strike a chord with readers of such books as "Kitchen Confidential" and "Fast Food Nation," as well as those addicted to TV's Iron Chef.