The Hot Chicken Project: Words + Recipes | Obsession + Salvation

Description

For acclaimed Australian chef Aaron Turner, hot chicken isn't just food - it's salvation in crispy, fried and devilishly spicy form. In The Hot Chicken Project, he travels back to Nashville, the place of its birth, to pay his respects to the makers, to chart the love and obsession that has shaped his world, and to make sure that what he does back home is doing it justice. Part cookbook, part pilgrimage, The Hot Chicken Project is both an epic love letter to the fiery bird and a celebration of a way of life that is in danger of vanishing forever. The Hot Chicken Project is part recipe book (40 recipes covering the best mains, sandwiches, sides, salads and sauces), part narrative, part pictorial celebration of the history and power hot chicken holds over the city of Nashville - and now beyond (including Melbourne!). It frames the stories of the people and families and communities who have cooked and eaten and appropriated it in Nashville over several generations. It offers a loud, opinionated take-no-prisoners perspective on food culture in the US (and beyond) today, as well as being an incomparable how-to manual for the VERY best hot chicken and accompaniments - wherever you are.

Aaron Turner is the innovative and acclaimed chef and owner of wood-fired Igni, in Geelong. He rose to food-world prominence with his first restaurant, Loam, in regional Victoria, before a personal crisis led him to spending a couple of years in Nashville. This was where he discovered hot chicken. He returned to Australia to open Igni in 2016, as well as The Hot Chicken Project, also in Geelong. Turner was named chef of the year in 2016 (as well as winning restaurant of the year for IGNI at the same time), and he has since continued to combine work at the highest levels of the country's restaurant scene with his second project introducing Victorians to the not to be underestimated charms of real-deal Nashville-style hot chicken.