
Give a Girl a Knife
A Memoir
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Amy Thielen
-
By:
-
Amy Thielen
A beautifully written food memoir chronicling one woman's journey from her rural Midwestern hometown to the intoxicating world of New York City fine dining - and back again - in search of her culinary roots.
Before Amy Thielen frantically plated rings of truffled potatoes in some of New York City's finest kitchens - for chefs David Bouley, Daniel Boulud, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten - she grew up in a Northern Minnesota town home to the nation's largest French fry factory, the headwaters of the fast food nation, with a mother whose generous cooking dripped with tenderness, drama, and an overabundance of butter.
Inspired by her grandmother's tales of cooking in the family farmhouse, Thielen moves north with her artist husband to a rustic, off-the-grid cabin deep in the woods. There, standing at the stove three times a day, she finds the seed of a growing food obsession that leads her to the sensory madhouse of New York's top haute cuisine brigades. But, like a magnet, the foods of her youth draw her back home, where she comes face to face with her past and a curious truth: that beneath every foie gras sauce lies a rural foundation of potatoes and onions.
Amy Thielen's coming-of-age story pulses with energy, a cook's eye for intimate detail, and a dose of dry Midwestern humor. Give a Girl a Knife offers a fresh, vivid view into New York's high-end restaurants before returning Thielen to her roots, where she realizes that the marrow running through her bones is not demi-glace but gravy - thick with nostalgia and hard to resist.
©2017 Amy Thielen (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
good book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Easy to listen to.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Give A GirlA Knife: A Memoir
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brings me back to my Midwest roots
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Ambivalent
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It is all meaningful to her, and the gorgeous way she writes about it makes that very clear.
If you enjoy her memoir about her NYC/Upper Minnesota life, please be sure to sample her two seasons from the Food Network on Prime and her gorgeous James Beard award winning cookbook. Amy is a great writer, a hard worker and the real thing.
Remarkable
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A Beautifully Written, Heartfelt Memoir
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Very enjoyable
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I love this so much I listen to it and then read it
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I wanted to read a book about a professional chef and thought it would be fun that she goes back to MN after being a chef in NYC. Well, the 2nd half of the book has almost no professional chef stories in it. I thought she would go back to MN to start a restaurant, but she instead decides to stop working in restaurants altogether and tells you the story of mundane daily life and being broke again. It's just her standing in grocery stores, gardening, talking to small town folks about any old thing, and choosing not to do the thing that made her interesting.
I don't understand how this book has such good reviews. It's like reading a boring person's diaries--any trivial detail is included. Also the arc of the story is pretty disappointing. She starts off adrift in life and broke but enjoying living off the land. She then makes it somewhat in NYC as a chef, and then returns to where she started. I'm glad she is happy and enjoys her life but that doesn't mean it makes an interesting story.
Fun 1st Half. Boring second half.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.