About the Author A Nashville-based food writer, cookbook author, and magazine editor with a not-so-secret obsession with oysters, Erin Byers-Murray loves telling stories about farmers, cooks, kitchens, and local food communities. She is the author of Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm (2011) and the co-author, along with award winning Boston chef Jeremy Sewall, of of The New England Kitchen: Fresh Takes on Seasonal Recipes (2014). Currently the co-editor of Nashville Lifestyles magazine, Byers-Murray was also one of the co-founders of Dirty Pages, a culinary storytelling project celebrating shared, passed-down food memories, launched in early 2015. Before moving to Nashville from Boston, she worked a writer and editor at Boston magazine and DailyCandy.com. In her spare time, she writes for various publications including Food & Wine, The Local Palate, Tasting Table, FoodNetwork.com, LuckyPeach.com, AOL Travel, and Wine & Spirits Magazine. She currently lives in Nashville with her husband and two children. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. I’m a kitchen gear junkie, but it’s the simple tools I grew with as a cook that I treasure most. The carbon steel knife I found at a New York flea market. The Japanese suribachi that I inherited from my mother. The olivewood spoon I bought while tasting wine and getting lost with my wife in Burgundy. Line cooks are not known for their emotional fragility, but I'll never forget that Saturday night shift where I heard a brief cry of despair followed by a low moan of anguish. The battle-scarred wooden spoonmy colleague had been using for nearly two decades, with its corners worn down to fit just so, its color faded by stains from a thousand sauces, its handle molded by time and use to fit his hand perfectly, had finally given in and snapped midstir inside a pot of risotto. Cooks are rightfully attached to their tools. They are more than a simple means to an end. They are the partners and secret puppet masters of the kitchen, subtly affecting every dish you cook, weighing in on every menu decision you make. Likewise, seeing the tools that people use to cook with and hearing their stories can give you invaluable insight into their thoughtprocess, clues as to what their food will taste like, perhaps even more so than peering into their fridge. Of course, this means that chef's food can never be exactly replicated. But that's OK: Making them with your hands and your tools makes them your food. Read more
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