After graduating from Duke University and stints in journalism and odd jobs, Michael proposed to the Culinary Institute of America, the oldest and most influential professional cooking school in the country, that he be allowed into its kitchen classrooms in order to write a narrative of how the school trains professional chefs. The school agreed, and he wrote The Making of a Chef. Michael became so fascinated by the work of the professional cook and the culture of the restaurant kitchen that he continued to pursue the work, punching a clock briefly as a line cook, then writing a book about chefs and cooking, The Soul of a Chef. Michael co-wrote The French Laundry Cookbook with Thomas Keller at the same time, and they subsequently wrote a food column for the Los Angeles Times for two years.

This was followed by Bouchoni, a book about perfecting French bistro cuisine. He also wrote A Return to Cooking with Eric Ripert, chef-owner of Le Bernardin, the Manhattan four-star restaurant. Michael's book with Brian Polcyn on charcuterie for the home cook was published in2005 and The Reach of a Chef was published in 2006. Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing is a thinly veiled love song to the pig, to animal fat and salt, sausages, confits, pates, terrines.

Other books include House: A Memoir, about the purchase and renovation of a 1901 house in Cleveland and an exploration of the nature of home in our vagabond culture, and The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooks in the Age of Celebrity. Other cookbooks include Under Pressure, the first American cookbook to explore the possibilities of sous vide cooking.

Michael has been on several television shows, Cooking Under Fire on PBS, and, on the Food Network, he was a judge on the Next Iron Chef, and has been a featured guest on the Travel Channels Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, Las Vegas and Cleveland episodes.

In 2007 he published The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Craft for Every Kitchen, an indispensable compendium of cooking information for both professional and amateur cooks constitutes a precise, unpretentious, unencumbered culinary handbook.

His most recent book is Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, a book devoted to understanding the relationships between our most basic ingredients and how those relationships form the backbone of the craft of cooking.

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