Book Description
We hung the walls with old French movie posters
advertising the films of Marcel Pagnol, films that had
already provided us with both a name and an ideal: to create
a community of friends, lovers, and relatives that span
generations and is in tune with the seasons, the land, and
human appetites.
So writes Alice Waters of the opening of Berkeley's Chez
Panisse Café on April Fool's Day, 1980. Located above
the more formal Chez Panisse Restaurant, the Café is a
bustling neighborhood bistro where guests needn't reserve far
in advance and can choose from the ever-changing ŕ la carte
menu. It's the place where Alice Waters's inventive chefs
cook in a more impromptu and earthy vein, drawing on the
healthful, low-tech traditions of the cuisines of such
Mediterranean regions as Catalonia, Campania, and Provence,
while improvising and experimenting with the best products of
Chez Panisse's own regional network of small farms and
producers.
In the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook, the follow-up
to the award-winning Chez Panisse Vegetables, Alice
Waters and her team of talented cooks offer more than 140 of
the café's best-recipes--some that have been on the menu
since the day café opened and others freshly reinvented with
the honesty and ingenuity that have made Chez Panisse so
famous. In addition to irresistible recipes, the Chez
Panisse Café Cookbook is filled with chapter-opening
essays on the relationships Alice has cultivated with the
farmers, foragers and purveyors--most of them within an
hour's drive of Berkeley--who make it possible for Chez
Panisse to boast that nearly all food is locally grown,
certifiably organic, and sustainably grown and harvested.
Alice encourages her chefs and cookbook readers alike to
decide what to cook only after visiting the farmer's market
or produce stand. Then we can all fully appreciate the
advantages of eating according to season--fresh spring lamb
in late March, ripe tomato salads in late summer, Comice pear
crisps in autumn.
This book begins with a chapter of inspired vegetable
recipes, from a vivid salad of avocados and beets to elegant
Morel Mushroom Toasts to straightforward side dishes of Spicy
Broccoli Raab and Garlicky Kale. The Chapter on eggs and
cheese includes two of the café's most famous dishes, a
garden lettuce salad with baked goat cheese and the Crostata
di Perrella, the café's version of a calzone. Later chapters
focus on fish and shellfish, beef, pork, lamb, and poultry,
each offering its share of delightful dishes. You'll find
recipes for curing your own pancetta, for simple grills and
succulent braises, and for the definitive simple roast
chicken--as well as sumptuous truffed chicken breasts.
Finally the pastry cooks of Chez Panisse serve forth a
chapter of uncomplicated sweets, including Apricot Bread
Pudding, Chocolate Almond Cookies, and Wood Oven-baked Figs
with Raspberries.
Gorgeously designed and illustrated throughout with
colored block prints by David Lance Goines, who has eaten at
the café since the day it opened, Chez Panisse Café
Cookbook is destined to become an indispensable classic.
Fans of Alice Waters's restaurant and café will be thrilled
to discover the recipes that keep them coming back for more.
Loyal readers of her earlier cookbooks will delight in this
latest collection of time-tested, deceptively simple recipes.
And anyone who loves pure, vibrant, delicious fare made from
the finest ingredients will be honored to add these new
recipes to his or her repertoire.
