The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine

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.