Wine and food pairings are all well and good, but there’s no better pairing than two complementary books. Reading + Eating posts feature two titles that will inspire you to cook, read, eat, and enjoy. The gorgeous cookbook images, and handpicked recipes and quotes make for some delicious reading.  Gabrielle Hamilton, famed chef and owner of the beloved Prune restaurant on the Lower East Side, tells her life of food and cooking in Blood, Bones & Butter. When it swept into bookstores in 2011, Anthony Bourdain called it, “Magnificent. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.” Listen to Hamilton read from her acclaimed memoir: Paired with the memoir is Prune, Hamilton’s cookbook. It shares a name with her universally beloved restaurant and is refreshingly personal, scrappy and accessible.

 “I came to see hunger as being as important a part of a stage as knife skills. Because so much starving on that trip led to such an enormous amount of time fantasizing about food, each craving became fanatically particular. Hunger was not general, ever, for just something, anything, to eat. My hunger grew so specific I could name every corner and fold of it.”

― Gabrielle Hamilton, Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Try out Hamilton’s Beef Shortribs recipe from Prune! (Click image to see full size) Dive in, get inspired, and get cooking! If you’re planning a trip to New York City, we have you covered: Fodor’s New York City 2015. Happy eating!