“32 Yokes: From My Mother’s Table To Working The Line” by Eric Ripert and Veronica Chambers

In the winter of 2007, around the time I filed for divorce after 18 years of marriage, something strange happened: I started loving eggs. It was not just a passing phase like, “I’d like two scrabbled eggs,” it was more like filing divorce unleashed an obsession inside of me that screamed, “Give me eggs! I need eggs! Lori needs protein!” And I had never ever been an egg person before. As my divorce began, I dabbled in poached eggs, three-egg omelets, over easy, sunny side up, over hard and even deviled eggs. Subsequently, every year I get my cholesterol checked and it stays the same. My passion for eggs is unparalleled. So you can imagine that when I saw a book called “32 Yokes” at the library, it jumped off the shelf into my arms.  I love a good foodie memoir and this is a great one written by Eric Ripert, whose restaurant Le Bernardin is know as the “Temple of Seafood.” He grew up in the south of France where he learned to cook from his grandmother. His parents divorced when he was 6 years old, and he moved to Paris at 17 to work at Le Tour d’Argent and later Jamin. He served in the French military and then at 24 moved to America. What I love about this book is that he makes a lot of mistakes. He spills things. He drops things. He cooks things badly before learning to cook them perfectly. He once put some ducks in the freezer without separating them and later was stuck with a giant ice block of frozen ducks, impossible to pull apart. Cooking is a metaphor for the struggles of life, and Ripert writes beautifully about both. Bon Appetit. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.