Bookshelf

MasterChef, SoBe Spin Off Into Cookbooks, But Where’s Gordon Ramsay?

Photo: Courtesy of Clarkson Potter, Rodale

A couple of spinoff cookbooks are due out soon. First, Rodale will publish the MasterChef Cookbook at the end of this month. Interesting fact: Gordon Ramsay gets almost no play in it whatsoever. Though Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot pen splashy forwards and contribute recipes, and (along with the contestant contributors) get lots of photo love throughout the 260-page book, Gordo is only mentioned in passing a couple of times, and there are only a few photos of him (none of them solo shots). What kind of snub is this? Meanwhile, the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook (out in November) features plenty of celebrity-chef porn, starting with a full-page shot of Anthony Bourdain, who pens a forward.

What’s in a Wine & Food Festival swag bag? Bourdain describes it as “a sky-high tower of merch: professional-quality pots and pans, vanadium steel knives, every variety of appliance, beach towel, liquors of many lands, and bottles of enticing mystery liquids ranging from energy water to exfoliant.” (We’re no strangers to the weird stuff chefs get as gifts: We were recently handed down a Monopoly board that Michael Symon scored at a local-TV appearance.) The remainder of the book consists of 100 recipes by everyone from Ducasse to Dispirito — seriously, contributors run the gamut from Paula Deen to Ferran Adria. Who didn’t make the cut? Sometime SoBe guest Gordon Ramsay. But, hey, you can still catch him throwing cake on late-night TV.

MasterChef, SoBe Spin Off Into Cookbooks, But Where’s Gordon