Many cookbook authors claim to provide start-to-finish instructions, but rare is the collection that prefaces each recipe with the story of the hunt that brought down its main ingredient. Here, before there is poached dove and pears in brandy sauce, there is a field of men in camouflage. Before there is sweet porchetta sausage, there is a bone-handled knife in a boar’s midsection. Pellegrini, despite what the cover photo implies, is not your everyday Western gal with a frying pan in one hand and a rifle in the other. Her Hudson Valley childhood, Wellesley education, brief career on Wall Street, and her cooking skills (honed at New York’s French Culinary Institute), all inform her writing to create prose that falls somewhere between the culinary outdoorsiness of Jim Harrison and the urban insight of Candace Bushnell. Traveling through Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, hunting turkey, duck, and hog, she explores the thrill of the chase (“I listen to the cartridge slip into the chamber, and walk sideways into the tall, cream grass”) and reflects on its denouement (“the casual way in which nature treats life and death”). And she is equally keen in observing the series of male companions who serve as hosts and guides for her outings. These range from a friendly lawyer who escorts her through a Louisiana Bayou to a scary poacher with an uncomfortable perspective on steak in Wyoming’s cattle country. (Jan.)

Wall Street Journal,12/24/11
"Ms. Pellegrini takes the conversation on sourcing our food beyond the farmers market, beyond the local-pastured, organic meat of even the most specialized butcher's shop. She's gone into the fields for herself and echoes José Ortega y Gasset's philosophical defense of hunting—that there is something worthwhile in the wild, something we need, and that our modern lives don't scratch the itch, they only disguise it."

Go Magazine, February 2012
"With a poet’s eye toward a conscious dinner, Pellegrini takes her readers on a search, not just for wild game but for what she calls a ‘primal part’ of one’s being. I couldn’t stop reading as Pellegrini dug into this foray with gusto and blood, which gives her book an occasional Lord of the Flies feel that’s usually abutted by thoughts so beautiful that you want to weep."

MacLean’s, 2/1
“Girl Hunter is an evocative account of Pelligrini’s gun-to-table experiences…It’s an unlikely pairing of Nigella Lawson’s culinary skills and Hemingway’s grit.”

One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking
“As the national conversation about food shifted from taste to theory and politics, Georgia Pellegrini got real. She packed her bags, learned to shoot, and went face-to- face with our food supply. Lyrically told with unflagging humor, this is a rare account of the gut-level reality of being an omnivore. Read it and Eat.”
 
Steven Rinella, author of The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine and American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
“Within these pages, Georgia Pellegrini turns the common stereotype of a hunter inside out. Her examination of food, hunting, and personal history reveals a lifestyle that is stylish, contemporary, exciting, and on the cutting edge of American culture. Anyone who’s undecided about hunting should listen to this woman. Anyone who loves hunting should listen even more.”
 
Shauna James Ahern, author of Gluten-Free Girl and Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef
“Georgia Pellegrini did what I thought no one could do: keep me interested in reading more and more about hunting. Her open, curious nature, and the way she makes sentences sing through storms and funny moments, kept me reading Girl Hunter until late in the night. This is quite the book.”
 

Gail Simmons, host of Top Chef: Just Desserts
"In Girl Hunter, Georgia Pellegrini goes where few women have dared – through swamps and forests, fields and streams, all in the name of a soul-satisfying meal. Her book captures perfectly not just the thrill of hunting and foraging for your own dinner, but also the very personal and profound impact of these unique experiences. She compliments her stories with mouth-watering recipes and food descriptions that will inspire you to befriend your local butcher and look at game in a whole new way. Reading each of Georgia’s wild adventures made me want to pull on my Wellies and join her, rifle and skillet in hand."

Aarti Sequiera, host of Food Network's Aarti Party
"I never thought of hunting as the next inevitable step in the farm to table movement. Nor did I think of hunting as poetry in motion. Thanks to Georgia's eloquent little book, chock a block with equal parts respect and chutzpah, I have a whole new appreciation for hunting. Heck, I might even try it myself!"

Publishers Weekly, 11/21/11
“[Pellegrini’s prose] falls somewhere between the culinary outdoorsiness of Jim Harrison and the urban insight of Candace Bushnell."

Flavorwire.com, 12/1/11
“if she can get her hands this dirty, and with such humor and charm, we kind of want to too.”

Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine “Bizarre Foods” host Andrew Zimmern’s 12/19/11
“I obviously have a huge food crush on Girl Hunter Georgia Pellegrini…and her book cover is my favorite of the year.”
 
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 1/15/12
“The author’s true love of food and cooking enhances this memoir, which examines hunting as a means to become a more conscientious chef and eater.”
 
Santa Fe New Mexican, 12/30/11
“The recipes scattered about the book are as provocative and inspiring as her tales of back woods adventure and sustainable eating.”

Max Watman, The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2011
“Ms. Pellegrini takes the conversation on sourcing our food beyond the farmers market, beyond the local-pastured, organic meat of even the most specialized butcher’s shop. She’s gone into the fields for herself and echoes José Ortega y Gasset's philosophical defense of hunting—that there is something worthwhile in the wild, something we need, and that our modern lives don’t scratch the itch, they only disguise it."

Publishers Weekly, 6/27/11
“The Omnivore’s Dilemma meets The Pioneer Woman Cooks: a provocative book that pushes the boundaries of the foodie revolution and considers why, how, and what we eat.”

Ree Drummond, bestselling author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks, thepioneerwoman.com
“Georgia Pellegrini is a force: strong, articulate, beautiful . . . and she can hunt pheasant like no one’s business. Having gotten to know Georgia in real life, I was already excited to read Girl Hunter . . . but what I didn’t expect was that it would grab me by the arm and draw me in for days and days. I found myself nestling into my sofa to read each chapter, craving things like elk jerky and curried pigeon as I turned the pages. Georgia’s irresistibly descriptive chronicling of her year of hunting, along with the unbelievably delicious, almost otherworldly, recipes she shares, sealed this book’s permanent spot on my shelf. It is a timeless culinary classic.”
 
Molly O’Neill, author of

lyrical memoir

Foodie blogger Pellegrini has crafted a memoir rich both in her hunting experiences and ruminations on what it means to kill what you eat. Hunting remains a bit of a literary minefield—all too often relegated to camouflage-covered self-congratulatory missives and talk-show jokes about tone-deaf politicians. As a chef, Pellegrini sees the separation between carnivore and plate as something hypocritical. So she goes into the wild with people intimately connected to the land and learns to shoot and field dress as well as prepare food. Her experiences—some comical; others rife with tradition and lush with descriptions of late-night conversations accompanied by tobacco and whiskey—bring readers around campfires with sensitive men full of laughter. Individuals who value guns and food and find pleasure in patiently waiting with a dog for a bird to appear quicksilver in their sites. Although she does resist the tendency to romanticize, Pellegrini can't shake the fact she is part of something old, and that, aside from a Masterpiece Theatre-esque foray into the English countryside, she is dipping deep into a level of Americana few have captured on the page. Like her, readers will not be able to look away. And she includes recipes.

A bubbly combination hunting memoir and how-to guide, with some stellar recipes. Pellegrini (Food Heroes: 16 Culinary Artisans Preserving Tradition, 2010), whose popular blog chronicles her adventures hunting, cooking and globetrotting, focuses her book on the hunts. After college, the author forewent a career on Wall Street in favor of more schooling, at the French Culinary Institute. As a chef, she worked at Manhattan's gourmet Gramercy Tavern as well as Blue Hill at Stone Barns; her mouthwatering, meat-centric recipes are the stars of her stories. Pellegrini began hunting several years ago, when she was curious to determine if it was possible to eat only meat that she had killed. Her interest shares the same spirit as Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, although her recounting of her hunts is more personal and less deadly serious than most. A large part of Pellegrini's identity as a hunter has been defined by her relative youth and striking, blond-haired beauty, and her toughness constantly surprises veteran male hunters. The author divides her book by prey, with separate chapters devoted to quail, squirrel, deer and turkey, among others. Pellegrini describes chasing wild hogs along the banks of the Mississippi while riding on the back of an ATV, as well as quieter moments spent drinking whiskey fireside and listening to the tales of grizzled hunters. The author isn't a particularly strong or compelling writer, but her enthusiastic stories are original and will appeal to chefs and foodies, especially women, who are interested in tracking their food all the way to the table. Entertaining for a specific audience.