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Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza, & Calzone
This classic cookbook brings together 87 recipes for pasta sauces and 36 pizza and calzone recipes, as well as tasty pasta doughs, such as buckwheat, red pepper and saffron. Featuring beautiful line drawings throughout, the book is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.
Alice Waters, whom Craig Claiborne has called “that great American rarity, a deservely celebrated native-born chef,” gives us here the extraordinary pastas, pizzas, and calzones that she serves in her famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkley, California. Based on the freshest and best seasonal ingredients, every recipe is bursting with flavor and unexpected combinations. Inspired as much by Providence as by Italy, these recipes reveal Chez Panisse's strong Mediterranean affinities, not only in the choice of ingredients, but also in the combinations that make them so tantalizing. Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza & Calzone will send cooks from the garden to the kitchen, rejoicing in the bounty of nature and in miraculous transformations of fresh, beautiful ingredients into tantalizing meals.
Praise for Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza & Calzone
“After reading Alice Water's new book, I'm ready to proclaim her a culinary oracle. She dazzles me—the things she does with garden-fresh ingredients, the unexpected and wonderful results she obtains. This is a glorious book by a great chef.” —Paula Wolfert
“These recipes are fun to read, a good combination of the tried and true and the extrasensory perception that is almost a trademark of Alice's cooking. I especially like havuing the four seasonal sections in which the accent is on what is fresh then. The fruits and herbs and everything else that goes on the table are of that one special time in the year.” —M.F.K. Fisher
“Pizza? What an odd, ordinary thing for one of America's most respected establishments to put on the menu. When the pizza came and I tasted it, I saw what Alice Waters was about: the ordinary made extraordinary by the use of fine unusual ingredients—in this case girolles in a general creaminess, spiked with a little Parmesan and onion—put together by a skillful and unusual taste.” —Jane Grigson
Alice Waters, whom Craig Claiborne has called “that great American rarity, a deservely celebrated native-born chef,” gives us here the extraordinary pastas, pizzas, and calzones that she serves in her famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkley, California. Based on the freshest and best seasonal ingredients, every recipe is bursting with flavor and unexpected combinations. Inspired as much by Providence as by Italy, these recipes reveal Chez Panisse's strong Mediterranean affinities, not only in the choice of ingredients, but also in the combinations that make them so tantalizing. Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza & Calzone will send cooks from the garden to the kitchen, rejoicing in the bounty of nature and in miraculous transformations of fresh, beautiful ingredients into tantalizing meals.
Praise for Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza & Calzone
“After reading Alice Water's new book, I'm ready to proclaim her a culinary oracle. She dazzles me—the things she does with garden-fresh ingredients, the unexpected and wonderful results she obtains. This is a glorious book by a great chef.” —Paula Wolfert
“These recipes are fun to read, a good combination of the tried and true and the extrasensory perception that is almost a trademark of Alice's cooking. I especially like havuing the four seasonal sections in which the accent is on what is fresh then. The fruits and herbs and everything else that goes on the table are of that one special time in the year.” —M.F.K. Fisher
“Pizza? What an odd, ordinary thing for one of America's most respected establishments to put on the menu. When the pizza came and I tasted it, I saw what Alice Waters was about: the ordinary made extraordinary by the use of fine unusual ingredients—in this case girolles in a general creaminess, spiked with a little Parmesan and onion—put together by a skillful and unusual taste.” —Jane Grigson
224 pages, Paperback
First published June 12, 1984
128 people are currently reading
215 people want to read
About the author
Alice Waters
102 books442 followersAlice Waters is a chef, author, food activist, and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California. She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for over four decades. In 1995 she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, which advocates for a free school lunch for all children and a sustainable food curriculum in every public school.
She has been Vice President of Slow Food International since 2002. She conceived and helped create the Yale Sustainable Food Project in 2003, and the Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome in 2007.
Her honors include election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007; the Harvard Medical School’s Global Environmental Citizen Award, which she shared with Kofi Annan in 2008; and her induction into the French Legion of Honor in 2010. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, proving that eating is a political act, and that the table is a powerful means to social justice and positive change.
Alice is the author of fifteen books, including New York Times bestsellers The Art of Simple Food I & II and The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea.
She has been Vice President of Slow Food International since 2002. She conceived and helped create the Yale Sustainable Food Project in 2003, and the Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome in 2007.
Her honors include election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007; the Harvard Medical School’s Global Environmental Citizen Award, which she shared with Kofi Annan in 2008; and her induction into the French Legion of Honor in 2010. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, proving that eating is a political act, and that the table is a powerful means to social justice and positive change.
Alice is the author of fifteen books, including New York Times bestsellers The Art of Simple Food I & II and The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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April 7, 2015The basic pizza dough I make is a modification of Alice’s recipe on page 151. What I do is ::
1/4 cup warm water
2 teaspoon dry yeast, stir to dissolve
1/4 cup rye or wheat or white (whatever’s in the house)
Give that a quick stir to combine and wet’n, cover with a wet cloth and let stand for twenty minutes to an hour, depending on how lazy you are at the moment. That’s your sponge.
Add thereto (I make this in a two quart pyrex measuring cup) ::
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon salt
STIR IT UP!!!
1 3/4 cup white flour (I use Bob’s Redmill, but don’t cheap on your flour quality -- makes all the difference). Use more/less flour until you like the relative moistness/dryness of your dough.
Knead the stuff for like five minutes or whatever. Splash some olive oil in that bowl and then swish that dough ball in that oil to coat it a bit. Cover with that same wet towel and let it rise.
I typically set my oven to its lowest temp (170F) and then turn it off ; set the dough in there to rise. Typically about two hours-ish ; punch it down and return it to the oven, whether the oven’s still warm or not doesn’t really concern me. At this point I let it sit in there and rise and work for as long as it wants or I want. Another several hours is no problem. In fact, I like to wear out those yeasties, so I’ve been experimenting or intending to experiment with longer rise times, like overnight. Or overnighting it in the refrigerator (wrapped in plastic wrap or something). However I may. But the longer it rises or rests or sits around the more I like it, a good tough chewy crust. Just go nuts!
Thing is, if you work day shift or whatever, it’s a really quick kind of fast food, in reality, and since you’ve made it yourself you can eat it as much and as often as you want. Put the dough together while you wait for your coffee to brew ; set it back there in the corner of your countertop ; go to work ; come home ; throw some red sauce together on the stovetop ; slice up some cheese; place a pizza stone in the oven ; pre-heat the ole oven to REALLY HOT (like 500F or whatever) ; spread out the dough as thick or thin as you like upon some parchment paper ; sauce it and cheese it! ; have a loved=one help you transfer that pizza-on-parchment into that oven (when heated!) ; set that timer to like 13-15 minutes or whatever ; grab that stone out of the oven ; slide that pizza onto your butcher block (careful, it’s hot!) ; SERVES TWO DESERVING HUNGRY FOLKS!
With a bit of learning, burritos with homemade tortillas become fastfood=homemade too!
1/4 cup warm water
2 teaspoon dry yeast, stir to dissolve
1/4 cup rye or wheat or white (whatever’s in the house)
Give that a quick stir to combine and wet’n, cover with a wet cloth and let stand for twenty minutes to an hour, depending on how lazy you are at the moment. That’s your sponge.
Add thereto (I make this in a two quart pyrex measuring cup) ::
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 teaspoon salt
STIR IT UP!!!
1 3/4 cup white flour (I use Bob’s Redmill, but don’t cheap on your flour quality -- makes all the difference). Use more/less flour until you like the relative moistness/dryness of your dough.
Knead the stuff for like five minutes or whatever. Splash some olive oil in that bowl and then swish that dough ball in that oil to coat it a bit. Cover with that same wet towel and let it rise.
I typically set my oven to its lowest temp (170F) and then turn it off ; set the dough in there to rise. Typically about two hours-ish ; punch it down and return it to the oven, whether the oven’s still warm or not doesn’t really concern me. At this point I let it sit in there and rise and work for as long as it wants or I want. Another several hours is no problem. In fact, I like to wear out those yeasties, so I’ve been experimenting or intending to experiment with longer rise times, like overnight. Or overnighting it in the refrigerator (wrapped in plastic wrap or something). However I may. But the longer it rises or rests or sits around the more I like it, a good tough chewy crust. Just go nuts!
Thing is, if you work day shift or whatever, it’s a really quick kind of fast food, in reality, and since you’ve made it yourself you can eat it as much and as often as you want. Put the dough together while you wait for your coffee to brew ; set it back there in the corner of your countertop ; go to work ; come home ; throw some red sauce together on the stovetop ; slice up some cheese; place a pizza stone in the oven ; pre-heat the ole oven to REALLY HOT (like 500F or whatever) ; spread out the dough as thick or thin as you like upon some parchment paper ; sauce it and cheese it! ; have a loved=one help you transfer that pizza-on-parchment into that oven (when heated!) ; set that timer to like 13-15 minutes or whatever ; grab that stone out of the oven ; slide that pizza onto your butcher block (careful, it’s hot!) ; SERVES TWO DESERVING HUNGRY FOLKS!
With a bit of learning, burritos with homemade tortillas become fastfood=homemade too!
July 13, 2009
I have already used two recipes and they were brilliant! Plus, loose enough for your own methods/signatures/ingredients (I've been cooking with Cook's Illustrated recently, which are very regimented but very good.) Alice Waters deserves her reputation.
I'm going to have to put this book on the To Buy/Home Reference list.
I'm going to have to put this book on the To Buy/Home Reference list.
July 29, 2011
still my favorite book on the subject, and harkens back to the upstairs at Chez Panisse and what I liked about it when I was a vegetarian and couldn't afford to eat downstairs (nor eat alot of it)
July 3, 2020
Bought this cookbook on the recommendation of Jonathan Waxman, the consulting chef of a restaurant I helped open. Best pizza crust ever: we had a wood-burning stove & it was so perfect. I literally bought this book for that one recipe! (Pre-Internet days)
September 28, 2021
Want to try the Green Garlic Ravioli, Grilled Summer Vegetable Pasta, and the White Truffle Pasta recipes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 23, 2007
A good book, but I think it lacks the soul of the other CP books.
September 4, 2013
Delizioso!
Read
August 8, 2017(I've decided to stop rating cookbooks before I've cooked from them.)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews