First, Catch

The thing to do is just begin. The question, of course, is where?

So opens Thom Eagles' glorious First, Catch, a cookbook without recipes, a journey into the digressive mind of a chef at work, and a hymn exalting a festive nine-dish spring lunch. A return to a lost tradition of food writing First, Catch, a mouthwatering celebration of cooking. In twenty-four wonderfully digressive chapters, Eagle extols the virtues of salting food liberally, waxes lyrical about lost spices and forgotten ingredients, explains the seventeen different stages of boiling water, and ponders philosophical questions about the ethics and aesthetics of cooking. Beautifully illustrated and brilliantly researched, First, Catch is the ultimate in armchair cooking, sure to please readers of M.F.K. Fisher, Alice Waters, Nigel Slater, and Samin Nosrat. It offers us inspiration to savor both in and out of the kitchen.