The Blue Strawbery Cookbook

by James Haller

Cooking brilliantly imaginative American high cuisine without recipes.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Internationally acclaimed master chef, author, and presenter James Haller has written numerous articles, books, and personal stories about his journey to becoming an award-winning master chef. He was the executive chef, founder, and owner of the Blue Strawbery restaurant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the Lee Fontain Carriage House in Memphis, Tennessee. He also owned and operated James Haller’s Kitchen, where he taught classes and acted as a food consultant.

Haller opened his renowned Blue Strawbery in 1970 and in 16 years never repeated a menu. Today, creative cuisine abounds, but in Chef Haller’s time, he was truly an innovator, one of a generation of American Chefs including Larry Forgione in Manhattan, Lydia Shire in Boston, Jeremiah Tower in San Francisco, Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, who all pioneered the New American Cooking.

Haller is the author of several cookbooks, a food/fitness book, What to Eat When You Don’t Feel Like Eating, a book for feeding terminally ill people, which has sold almost 1 million copies, as well as Vie de France (2002), a book about the month he spent with friends in the Loire Valley for his sixtieth birthday, where he renewed his love of cooking.

His most recent book,

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This dude is so great. He is a super stinky writer and he encourages you to eat a stick of butter with everything but so what? He makes you want to cook, and be the kind of cook that just throws stuff around the place and never measure ingredients, just go ballistic instead! And everyone around is like damn how he do that? So super fun!

Edit: My mother got this book in the 70s, and I had to get a copy, reminds me of growing up with a mom who cooked very much the same way- by instinct. She's an amazing cook. This guy James Haller tragically died of AIDs in the 80s, so I hope this book gets recognized for the classic it truly is!!!

[Jim]

I have read a number of Chef Haller's books recently . I am reminded how different things were in the late 1960's and 1970's. Perhaps it is similar to today's people in their teens and twenties and I have just moved on...... 8)


He discusses not making anything the same way twice . This is old school and recipes built on taste whim, the luck of having ingrediants in season and creativity. Things that one can do at home with out the fancy equipment or unlimited labor found at places like the French Laundry.

Hope to make some of these recipes or at least use some of the ideas found here. I think of the recipes as Frameworks, I'm sure Chef Haller won't mind you changing it to fit your taste and situation.