''The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones'', is a largely
nonfiction ''New York Times'' bestselling book by
Anthony Bourdain, published in 2006. The book is a collection of 37 exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays, many of them centered around food, followed by a 30-page
fiction piece ("A Chef's Christmas"). The book concludes with an appendix of commentaries on the various pieces, including when and why they were written.
The essays range from descriptions of restaurant-kitchen life; to various rants about places, people, and things Bourdain objects to; to lively accounts of far-flung world travels and remote ethnic life and food; to accolades of the unsung
Latino
Latino or Latinos most often refers to:
* Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America
* Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States
* The people or cultures of Latin America;
** Latin A ...
s who cook most fine-dining restaurant food in America; to glowing reports of cutting-edge chefs like
Ferran Adrià
Ferran Adrià i Acosta (; born 14 May 1962) is a Spanish chef. He was the head chef of the ''El Bulli'' restaurant in Roses, Girona, Roses on the Costa Brava and is considered one of the best chefs in the world. He has often collaborated with h ...
; to details of Bourdain's obsessions and pursuits when he is not working; to opinions and anecdotes on various other subjects.
Bourdain organized the various essays and anecdotes into sections named for each of the five traditional flavors:
*
Salty
*
Sweet
Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ketone ...
*
Sour
The gustatory system or sense of taste is the sensory system that is partially responsible for the perception of taste (flavor). Taste is the perception produced or stimulated when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste receptor ...
*
Bitter
Bitter may refer to:
Common uses
* Resentment, negative emotion or attitude, similar to being jaded, cynical or otherwise negatively affected by experience
* Bitter (taste), one of the five basic tastes
Books
* '' Bitter (novel)'', a 2022 nove ...
*
Umami
Umami ( from ja, 旨味 ), or savoriness, is one of the five basic tastes. It has been described as savory and is characteristic of broths and cooked meats.
People taste umami through taste receptors that typically respond to glutamates and ...
The book is, according to Bourdain, basically a collection of the best of his magazine and newspaper writings during the previous few years. As he says in the preface:
:I've done a lot of writing for magazines and newspapers in the last few years, and it's the better morsels (I hope) from that work that follow. ... I've been writing this stuff for much the same reason behind my frenetic traveling: Because I can. Because there's so little time. Because there's been so much to see and remember. ....
:It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description.
Angkor Wat and
Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and what's happened. In the end, you're just happy you were there—with your eyes open—and lived to see it.
[Bourdain, Anthony. ''The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones''. Bloomsbury USA, 2006. p. xii.]
References
External links
Bourdain, Anthony (2006). ''The Nasty Bits''. New York: Bloomsbury.
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2006 books