If you were to take the heartfelt food memories of Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone, mix them with the complex family relationships of Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors, throw in a little of the behind-the-scenes revelations of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, then strip the mixture down to its grittiest core, you'd get a sense of Blood, Bones, and Butter.

This book follows Gabrielle Hamilton's culinary education - from growing up in a food-centric rural home in New Jersey with a French mother and bohemian father, to killing her first chicken, to the great adventure of backpacking around the world alone at nineteen, to the vagaries of finally opening her own restaurant in New York City. In between are the often beautiful and sometimes coarse stories of all the places and people who shaped her journey.