Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Gabrielle Hamilton

Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life.

Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years:

• the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand;
• the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality;
• Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and
• the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends.

By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.