The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine by Steve Rinella

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Rinella isn't the first to try his hand at the recipes in French master Auguste Escoffier's classic cookbook, Le Guide Culinaire. However, he's probably the only one to acquire his own ingredients the old-fashioned way -- by hunting and fishing for them himself. A correspondent for Outside magazine with a palate for adventure and a great sense of humor, Rinella dishes up a culinary adventure par excellence. His obsession, to prepare a Thanksgiving repast for his pals consisting of 15 dishes from Le Guide, sends him on a quest for eel, stingray, wild boar, and more, and is an armchair adventurer's dream come true.

A midwesterner who moved west to enjoy the great outdoors, Rinella is a skilled angler and marksman, but he doesn't stop at the usual hunting and fishing. From tracking down a snapping turtle (for soup, naturally) in his home state to clamming in the San Juan Islands to shrimping off the coast of Alaska, Rinella reels readers in. He chases down wild pigs in California, stalks elk in Montana, and clambers after mountain goats in the Alaska's Chugach Range. And though his tales of dressing out his prey are not for the squeamish, he provides readers with the humorous counterpoint of his vegan girlfriend, who remains at a distant remove from the proceedings without discouraging Rinella from his enterprise. If Michelin were to review The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, it would surely rate three stars. (Summer 2006 Selection)

From the Publisher

A hybrid of memoir, cookbook, and travelogue, and a love song to hunting and fishing and the American wild, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine is about one man’s quest to live off the land and recreate the recipes from Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire, the 1903 magnum opus.

Nature writer Steven Rinella embarks on a yearlong journey across America, trying to locate the bizarre, often esoteric ingredient of Le Guide Culinaire. His adventures take him fishing for stingrays on a Florida beach; skinning eels with an upstate New Yorker who keeps an emu as company; and hunting mountain goats on the snow-covered cliffs of Alaska’s Chugach Range.

Praised by reviewers for its lyrical prose and humor, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine is a narrative that opens up a deeper understanding of the things we eat and our place in the natural world.

Steven Rinella is a Michigan native and correspondent for Outside magazine. His essays and reporting have appeared in The New Yorker, Nerve, DoubleTake, The Best American Travel Writing (2004), and Field and Stream. He lives in Miles City, Montana. This is his first book.

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