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The French Laundry Cookbook

Sales rank: 2176

To eat at Thomas Keller's Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry, is to experience a peak culinary experience. In The French Laundry Cookbook, Keller articulates his passions and offers home cooks a means to duplicate the level of perfection that makes him one of the best chefs in the U.S. and, arguably, the world.

This cookbook provides 150 recipes exactly as they are used at Keller's restaurant. It is also his culinary manifesto, in which he shares the unique creative processes that led him to invent Peas and Carrots--a succulent pillow of a lobster paired with pea shoots and creamy ginger-carrot sauce--and other high-wire culinary acts. It offers unimagined experiences, from extracting chlorophyll to use in coloring sauces to a recipe for chocolate cake accompanied by red beet ice cream and a walnut sauce. You are urged to follow Keller's recipes precisely and also to view them as blueprints. To keep them alive, they must be infused with your own commitment to perfection and pleasure, as you define those terms.

Keller's story, shared through the writing of Michael Ruhlman, shows how this chef was both born and made. After winning rave reviews when he was still in his 20s, it took a more experienced chef throwing a knife at him because he did not know how to truss a chicken to open his eyes to the importance of the discipline and techniques of classical French cooking. To acquire these fundamental skills, he apprenticed at eight of the finest restaurants in France.

Grounded in classic technique, Keller's cooking is characterized by traditional marriages of ingredients, assembled in breathtakingly daring new ways, such as Pearls and Oyster, glistening caviar and oysters served on a bed of creamy pearl tapioca. Continually piquing the palate, his meals are a procession of 5 to 10 dishes, all small portions vibrantly composed. For example, Pan Roasted Breast of Squab with Swiss Chard, Seared Foie Gras, and Oven-Dried Black Figs require just three birds to serve six. The result: you are never sated, always stimulated.

The 200 photographs by Deborah Jones include more than just beauty shots: they show how to prepare various dishes; how Keller, shown stroking a whole salmon, respects his ingredients; and how the perfection of baby fava beans still nestled in the downy lining of their succulent pod, or the seduction of an abundance of fresh caviar, calls out the best from the chef. --Dana JacobiThomas Keller, chef/proprieter of the French Laundry in the Napa Valley—"the most exciting place to eat in the United States," wrote Ruth Reichl in The New York Times—is a wizard, a purist, a man obsessed with getting it right. And this, his first cookbook, is every bit as satisfying as a French Laundry meal itself: a series of small, impeccable, highly refined, intensely focused courses.

Most dazzling is how simple Keller's methods are: squeegeeing the moisture from the skin on fish so it sautées beautifully; poaching eggs in a deep pot of water for perfect shape; the initial steeping in the shell that makes cooking raw lobster out of the shell a cinch; using vinegar as a flavor enhancer; the repeated washing of bones for stock for the cleanest, clearest tastes.

From innovative soup techniques, to the proper way to cook green vegetables, to secrets of great fish cookery, to the creation of breathtaking desserts; from beurre monté to foie gras au torchon, to a wild and thoroughly unexpected take on coffee and doughnuts, The French Laundry Cookbook captures, through recipes, essays, profiles, and extraordinary photography, one of America's great restaurants, its great chef, and the food that makes both unique.

One hundred and fifty superlative recipes are exact recipes from the French Laundry kitchen—no shortcuts have been taken, no critical steps ignored, all have been thoroughly tested in home kitchens. If you can't get to the French Laundry, you can now re-create at home the very experience the Wine Spectator described as "as close to dining perfection as it gets."Thomas Keller, chef/propietor of the French Laundry—"the most exciting place to eat in the United States," writes Ruth Reichl in The New York Times—is a wizard, a purist, a man obsessed with getting it right. His flavors have clarity and intensity. His methods dazzle. Every mouthful is an explosion of taste. This cookbook, Keller's first, is as satisfying as a French Laundry meal, a series of small, highly refined, intensely focused courses. One hundred fifty recipes and more than two hundred photographs capture the impact of this extraordinary food. Keller's wit and whimsy find expression in unique recipes (and titles) such as lobster-filled crepes with a carrot emulsion sauce, topped with a pea shoot salad dressed lightly with lemon-infused oil ("Peas and Carrots"), or sauteed monkfish tail with braised oxtails, salsify, and cepes ("Surf and Turf"). This is a book to cook from, to learn from, to savor.
Cooking with All Things Trader Joe's

Sales rank: 4948
Chez Panisse Vegetables

Release Date: 1996-03-27

Sales rank: 16449

By now just about everybody whose interest in eating runs deeper than fast food knows about Alice Waters. The creator of Chez Panisse, the legendary restaurant in Berkeley, California, that helped create a modern American cuisine based on fresh ingredients, she is also equally well-known as a teacher and cookbook author. Chez Panisse Vegetables is one of the best new cookbooks of the season; it's as useful for its information about vegetables and how to use and handle them as it is for its irresistible recipes, which lead to complex and interesting dishes built from simple ingredients and simple techniques.For twenty-five years, Alice Waters and her friends at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California have dedicated themselves to the ideal of serving the finest, freshest foods with simplicity and style. From tender baby asparagus in early spring, to the colorful spectrum of peppers at the height of summer; crisp, leafy chicories in autumn, to sweet butternut squash in the dark of winter, much of the inspiration about what to put on the menu comes from the high quality produce Waters and her chefs seek out year-round.

Using the treasures from the earth, Chez Panisse Vegetables offers endless possibilities for any occasion. Try Grilled Radicchio Risotto with Balsamic Vinegar at your next dinner party, or Pizza with Red and Yellow Peppers for a summer evening at home. Why not forgo green-leaf lettuce, and opt for Artichoke and Grapefruit Salad drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil? Or serve Corn Cakes with fresh berries for breakfast instead of cereal?

Throughout Vegetables, Waters shares her energy and enthusiasm for what she describes as "living foods." When she first began in the restaurant business, the selection of good-quality vegetables was so limited that she found herself searching out farmers with whom she might do business. Luckily, today's explosion of markets and organic farms across the country ensures that any home cook can find freshly harvested produce to put on the table. And with the increased popularity of home gardening, more and more people are taking their vegetables straight from the earth and into the kitchen.

Cooks, gardeners, vegetarians and everyone who appreciates good food will find Chez Panisse Vegetables to be not only a cookbook, but a valuable resource for selecting and serving fine produce. From popular vegetables like corn, tomatoes and carrots, to more unusual selections like chard, amaranth greens and sorrel, Vegetables offers detailed information about the seasonal availability, proper look, flavor and preparation of each selection. Arranged alphabetically by vegetable, and filled with colorful linocut images, Chez Panisse Vegetables makes it easy for a cook to find a tempting recipe for whatever he or she has brought home from the market.
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant

Sales rank: 8171

Judy Rodgers, chef-owner of San Francisco's Zuni Cafe, has produced a true classic with The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. This book gives the cook and the reader two accessible temptations: to read from cover to cover, and to cook from cover to cover. One of the great voices in food writing today, Judy Rodgers truly stands shoulder-to-shoulder with any of the master food writers who have preceded and influenced her. Her writing is as delicious as the famous Zuni Roast Chicken with Bread Salad, as simple and elegant as the Zuni Cafe Caesar Salad.

While firmly anchored in the food sentiments of California, Rodgers explores the honest cuisine généreuse of France, Tuscany, Umbria, Sicily, Catalonia, and Greece. Her chapter "Small Dishes to Start a Meal" runs to 65 pages! Look for her Lentil-Sweet Red Pepper Soup with Cumin and Black Pepper, her Citrus Risotto, and her Tomato Summer Pudding. Be sure to try Short Ribs Braised in Chimay Ale, and Rabbit with Marsala and Prune-Plums. Chapters are devoted to eggs, starchy dishes, sausage and charcuterie, and the cheese course; you'll also find all the basic chapters one might expect. Throughout, Gerald Asher provides insight into matching wines with foods.

Rodgers's natural instinct is to share and to teach, and the instructional material in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook is like a deep-tissue massage, improving any cook's posture and performance. Rodgers's fine book invites both the novice and the experienced cook to delve deep into the heart of real food and real cooking. --Schuyler IngleFor twenty-four years, in an odd and intimate warren of rooms, San Franciscans of every variety have come to the Zuni Café with high expectations and have rarely left disappointed. In The Zuni Café Cookbook, a book customers have been anticipating for years, chef and owner Judy Rodgers provides recipes for Zuni's most well-known dishes, ranging from the Zuni Roast Chicken to the Espresso Granita. But Zuni's appeal goes beyond recipes. Harold McGee concludes, "What makes The Zuni Café Cookbook a real treasure is the voice of Zuni's Judy Rodgers," whose book "repeatedly sheds a fresh and revealing light on ingredients and dishes, and even on the nature of cooking itself." Deborah Madison (Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) says the introduction alone "should be required reading for every person who might cook something someday." 24 pages of color, 50 black-and-white photographs.
Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook

Sales rank: 26000

"I have always thought of Mustards as a cross between a roadside rib joint and a French country restaurant," writes chef-owner Cindy Pawlcyn, neatly characterizing the culinary pedigree of her famed Napa Valley, California, dining spot. Pawlcyn's Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook, written with Brigid Callinan, offers 150 popular recipes from the restaurant, treats like Slow-Smoked BBQ Pork Sandwiches with Ooo-Eee! Sauce, Wild Mushroom "Burgers" with Apple-Jicama Slaw, and Artichokes with James Beard's Beer Batter and Tarragon Aioli. The recipes can entail a kitchen workout, but they are easy enough to do once the commitment is made. Readers wanting to treat family or guests to sophisticated down-home eating will welcome Pawlcyn's unique repertoire.

In chapters that cover appetizers, soups, and salads, Pawlcyn presents standout recipes like Crab Cakes with Red Beet and Horseradish Rémoulade; Tomato, Basil, and Tortilla Soup; and Chinese Chicken Salad with Sesame Noodles and Rice Vinegar Cucumbers. Smoker- and grill-derived specialties, including Half-Slab BBQ Baby Back Ribs with Crispy Yams and Coleslaw and Tea-Smoked Duck with 100-Almond Sauce and Ginger Pickled Mango, receive their own seductive space, as do pan and sandwich delights like Louise's Bouillabaisse with Rouille and Ahi Tuna and Shiitake Mini Burgers. Desserts such as Lemon-Lime Meringue Pie and Red Raspberry, White Peach, and Blueberry Cobbler follow in the deluxe-diner spirit of the place and should prove an irresistible finale to any meal. They're further tribute to Pawlcyn's one-of-a kind restaurant and its instantly seductive cooking. --Arthur BoehmAs anyone knows who has spent time in Napa Valley, Mustard's Grill is an institution in the wine country-the friendly restaurant where locals first started going for a full plate of fabulous food and a glass of Napa's finest. Chef-owner Cindy Pawlcyn, founding chef of San Francisco's original Fog City Diner, put down her roots in Napa over 15 years ago when she brought her midwestern sensibility and flair for reinventing American food to the valley. Ever since then, Mustard's has been affectionately known as the fancy rib joint with way, way too many wines. With its ranch house feel, its roadhouse welcome, mustard fields and vineyards as a backdrop, and a dash of whimsy that defies pretentiousness, Mustard's Grill offers a one-of-a-kind dining experience in the valley. And with over 125 of the restaurant's signature dishes, Pawlcyn's MUSTARD'S GRILL COOKBOOK delivers all the flavor-with none of the fuss-that Napa is famous for.
The California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook

Sales rank: 30373

The California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook BBQ Chicken Pizza, Mixed Grill Vegetarian Pizza, Tandoori Chicken Pizza, Thai Chicken Pizza. These are just a few of the delicious pizzas, baked fresh in wood-burning ovens, that have helped to make California Pizza Kitchen into one of America's hottest and most successful restaurant chains. Founders Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield "put the world on a pizza" and the results are fantastic. Now, for the first time, here are the recipes that have made CPK restaurants so popular, with step-by-step directions to make pizza cooking easy and fun, even for beginners. In addition to the pizzas and calzones, Rick and Larry include recipes for creative pastas, salads, soups and appetizers, not to mention the tempting dessert pizzas. Whether CPK is already your favorite place to dine with family and friends or you're a creative cook with a taste for bold, fun, international flavors, The California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook is the cookbook for you.
Chez Panisse Café Cookbook

Release Date: 1999-08-25

Sales rank: 17890

In the 1970s, Alice Waters helped launch the revolution in American cuisine. She inspired a generation of food lovers with her passion for freshness and the best ingredients. Her influence helped infuse menus all over the U.S. with dishes rooted in Mediterranean cooking, often with a sunny, California twist. Dishes at the casual café, located upstairs in the same enchanting house as Chez Panisse, her more formal restaurant in Berkeley, California, include Wood Oven Baked Porcini Mushrooms, Tuna Confit, and Meyer Lemon Éclairs. Waters suggests making the mushrooms in your fireplace if you can, although recipe directions are for a conventional oven. Typical of the ingredient-driven cooking Waters encourages, the stunning tang of the éclairs requires Meyer lemons: a cross between a lemon and an orange, which are now exported beyond their native California. But the fresh tuna steak gently simmered in olive oil with garlic, fresh thyme, and fennel seeds and served with barely cooked green beans and aïoli, a pungent garlic mayonnaise, is sublime even made in an apartment kitchen. Her point is that you should use her recipes as guides, letting them inspire you to make the most of locally produced, seasonal foods in your area.

Alice Waters is an enchanting raconteur and an activist as well as a chef. In The Chez Panisse CaféCookbook, she weaves her beliefs about food as pleasure, sustenance, art, and politics in with over 200 recipes. Bringing you into the community she has been instrumental in creating to preserve the earth's resources as well as to provide great ingredients, Waters tells about the producers who share her passions. They respect the environment, using only sustainable production methods while delivering the freshest possible product, be it free-range poultry and eggs, acorn-fed pigs, impeccable oysters, or organically grown fruits and vegetables.

Jewel-colored Art Nouveau-style illustrations by David Goines give this book the same distinctive look as earlier Chez Panisse cookbooks, including those devoted solely to pasta, vegetables and desserts. --Dana Jacobi

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 À 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.
The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market Cookbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Impeccable Produce Plus Seasonal Recipes

Sales rank: 276697

Internationally known as one of the most magnificent farmers' markets in the world, the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market has inspired this gorgeous illustrated market companion. The perfect guide and cookbook -- no matter where you live -- ;each page celebrates the abundant seasonal produce grown by local organic and specialty-crop farmers along with more than 100 fresh, remarkably easy-to-assemble recipes. Organized by season, the book details the availability of products at the market and offers advice on choosing, storing, preparing, and freezing items. A foreword by Alice Waters, the history of the market, and vivid color photos throughout bring this farm fresh market guide to life.
California Pizza Kitchen Pasta, Salads, Soups, And Sides

Release Date: 1999-05-19

Sales rank: 56215

At California Pizza Kitchen restaurants across the country, many of the favorite dishes (and most-requested recipes) are not the pizzas! Customers keep coming back for the boldly flavored pastas, soups, salads, and side dishes. The follow-up to the bestselling California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook, this new cookbook serves CPK customers just what they ordered -- secret restaurant recipes, never available before. With gorgeous color photographs of the finished dishes throughout the book, CPK fans will be tempted by recipes for Oriental Chicken Salad, Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Kung Pao Spaghetti, to name just a few.

The new cookbook will include stories and anecdotes from CPK employees from around the country about favorite recipes, customers, and more. In the generous spirit they're best known for, CPK owners Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield will donate all royalties and proceeds from sales of the book in the restaurants to children's charities.

Just like the first CPK cookbook, expect Pasta, Salads, Soups, and Sides to be one of the hottest cookbooks of the year. The CPK chain of restaurants is bigger than ever, and thi5 new hook will be published in the cool California style that has made the first book and the restaurants themselves so popular.
Boulevard: The Cookbook

Sales rank: 234351

Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola opened the doors of Boulevard in San Francisco in 1993, and fans have been waiting ever since for just this cookbook. A bigger and better payoff for all that patience is hard to imagine. Boulevard glows on a table top like burnished gold, and suggestions of epic meals seep out from beneath its covers. "We cook because we love to feed people and also because we love the process of cooking," the authors explain in their opening statement. "We don't think for a minute we've invented a new cuisine or discovered a new approach to cooking--only a never-ending quest for what's delicious."

The structure of the book is as classic as many of the underlying cooking techniques--Salads, Soups, and Starters give way to chapters on Fish, Poultry and Game, Meat, and Desserts. A central dish surrounded by its sides or segments renders several recipes per page, making this a book of careful perusal. Mediterranean Mussels with Panzanella and Arugula, for example, gives us recipes for panzanella, the Italian bread salad, for the mussels' poaching medium, a fennel confit, saffron sauce, and arugula salad. Among the soups you'll find White Corn, Roasted Ratatouille, Braised Chestnut, Provencal Fish, and Artichoke Soup as well as the dozen side recipes that help elevate each dish. Ingredients are carefully delineated, followed by chefs' notes, kitchen and shopping notes (how to buy the best scallops, for example), then the cooking method for each piece of the flavor puzzle. Some cooking experience is necessary. There are some challenging dishes between these pages. But new cooks should not shy away. Boulevards establishes a level of culinary rigor to which the best cooks can aspire.

If you can find the main ingredient, Glazed Veal Sweetbreads in Potato Crust with chanterelles and a red wine sauce is a standout appetizer. Pan Roasted Halibut Fillets and Cheeks takes full advantage of morel mushrooms and crisp spring vegetables. Don't miss the Buttermilk-brined Fried Little Chickens with cream biscuits, a trip South for Cornish game hens. Beef shortribs are elevated to new heights with "Steamship" Short Ribs Bourguignon. You might want to finish with Bittersweet Chocolate Cake with caramel corn ice cream and caramel sauce. In each and every case the main theme is flavor, the attack is simple, the effect totally satisfying and elegant.

Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola have distilled between the covers of Boulevard their years of combined efforts in the commercial kitchen, translating for the home kitchen. Their friendship, good humor, and fierce determination to achieve the best flavors imaginable tumble out of these pages. --Schuyler IngleEvery once in a while a restaurant changes a city's dining scene forever. In San Francisco, that restaurant is Boulevard. In 1993 Nancy Oakes first breathed life into a glorious but forgotten beaux arts building —a survivor of the 1906 earthquake —with her gutsy and ebullient cooking. Just a decade later, the Audiffred Building overlooks a bustling Ferry Plaza, and it 's impossible to imagine a San Francisco without its Boulevard. Bathed in the glow of the restaurant's hand-blown lights, with stunning views of the waterfront, dining at Boulevard always feels special. Oakes and long-time collaborator and chef de cuisine, Pamela Mazzola, have seduced locals and visitors alike with their artful yet accessible French-influenced regional American cooking. In BOULEVARD, Oakes and Mazzola present 75 recipes, each anchored by a favorite main and accessorized with an exuberant collection of irresistible sides, all eminently cookable at home. Consider, for example, Pan-Roasted Wild King Salmon in Cider Sauce with Potato-Bacon-Watercress Cake and Shaved Apple and Fennel Salad; Buttermilk-Brined Fried Little Chickens with Cream Biscuits; and Veal Chops with Porcini and Asiago Cheese Stuffing with Roasted Fingerling Potatoes, Tomatoes, Pancetta, and Arugula. With every recipe prefaced by the chefs' wise and unapologetically opinionated cooking notes, BOULEVARD answers the long-running demand for a dialogue with the creative team behind the restaurant 's enduring popularity.

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