Chez Panisse Cooking: A Cookbook

by Paul Bertolli, Alice Waters

"Extraordinary," "poetic," and "inspired" are only a few words that have been used to describe the food at Chez Panisse. Since the first meal served there in 1971, Alice Waters's Berkeley, California, restaurant has revolutionized American cooking, earning its place among the truly great restaurants of the world. Renowned for the brilliant innovations of its ever-changing menu, Chez Panisse has also come to represent a culinary philosophy inspired by nature -- dedicated to the common interest of environment and consumer in the use of gloriously fresh organic ingredients.

In Chez Panisse Cooking, chef Paul Bertolli -- one of the most talented chefs ever to work with Alice Waters -- presents the Chez Panisse kitchen's explorations and reexaminations of earlier triumphs. Expanding upon -- and sometimes simplifying -- the concepts that have made Chez Panisse legendary, Bertolli provides reflections, recipes, and menus that lead the cook to a critical and intuitive understanding of food itself, of its purest organic sources and most sublime uses. Perhaps best described by Richard Olney, "Paul Bertolli's cuisine is what 'health food' should be and never is: a celebration of purity. The food is imaginative but never complicated; it is art."

Enhanced by Gail Skoff's breathtaking hand-colored photographs, Paul Bertolli's recipes remind us of the simple and passionate joys in cooking and of the inspiration to be drawn from each season's freshest foods: glistening local salmon creates a wildly colorful springtime carpaccio or is grilled later in the season with tomatoes and basil vinaigrette; autumn's fresh white truffles are sliced into an extraordinarily textured salad of pastel hues with fennel, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese; figs left on the tree until they grow heavy and sweet appear in a fall fruit salad with warm goat cheese and herb toast. Season by season, Chez Panisse Cooking will captivate the senses and imagination of the cook with such entrancing recipes as Sugar Snap Peas with Brown Butter and Sage; Buckwheat Cakes with Smoked Salmon, Creme Fraiche, and Capers; Grilled Fish Wrapped in Fig Leaves with Red Wine Sauce; Lamb Salad with Garden Lettuces, Straw Potatoes, and Garlic Sauce; Marinated Veal Chops Grilled over an Oak Fire; or Seckel Pears Poached in Red Wine with Burnt Caramel. Here, some of the restaurant's most remarkable recent menus for special occasions are recreated, from a White Truffle Dinner to the Chez Panisse Tenth Annual Garlic Festival, to a supper for poet Vikram Seth that began. with "The Season's song, a summer ballad/Tomatoes, basil, flowers, beans/In unison dance, Lobster Salad..."

Many of these recipes reflect Paul Bertolli's love of northern Italian food; for other dishes, the inspiration is French; in all, there is a keen awareness of the abundance of uncompromisingly pure, seasonal ingredients to be found in America.

Above all, the Chez Panisse recipes are meant to inspire the cook to create his or her own version; to awaken the senses to the nuances of taste, texture, and color in cooking; to "discover the ecstatic moments when the intuition, skill, and accumulated experience of the cook merge with the taste and composition of the food." Since its original publication in 1988, this classic cookbook has proved to be indispensable to the shelf of every serious cook and every serious cookbook reader.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Food Writing

456 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1988

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read cookbooks to learn about a chef's connection to food, the reason why (s)he cooks at all. Chez Panisse Cooking is just this kind of cookbook. Don't read it if you're simply looking for quick family dinner recipes; that's not really the point. Bertolli writes in depth about the technique and cultural history behind his favorite foods, and that's really where this book shines.

I would recommend Chez Panisse Cooking to any person who wants to learn how to cook better. As I mentioned, it's not necessarily targeted at those seeking random new recipes -- the internet is great for that -- but practicing the skills taught in Bertolli's book will make you a better all-around cook. You know, the kind that doesn't need to follow recipes found on the internet.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have found this cookbook much more valuable, as an aid to cooking and understanding cooking, than any of the Chez Panisse books published under Alice Waters' name. There are some editing failures - elisions, missing info - but these are amazing recipies, and the instructions on a wide range of subjects and ingredients are detailed, smart, and luminously clear. This book aims to teach you how to make your own vinegar, can your own preserves, brine your meat, etc etc, without the weight and tedium of more encyclopedic volumes. And then there are just tons of wonderful recipes for things like fish soups and fennel dishes and persimmon cake and... all kinds of yummy things.

[Rhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The recipes in this book are perhaps a bit above and beyond what I would normally cook, but it is inspiring and full of tips and hints about how to be a cook, especially how to be a seasonal, non-wasteful, even local cook. I have made perhaps half a dozen of the recipes, and most were wonderful so I think I just need to brave it and try cooking pigeon or oxtail...

[Spoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, when I'm cooking, I hear bells. When Chef Paul writes about cooking, I hear bells and see elephants. Those elephants are making sweet onion confit and rocket salads whilst drinking a heady Bordeaux.

[Stephen Flanagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good CP cookbook... but I've decided I'm not a French cook. Too much meat, too many complicated recipies that can't get me too excited. The bread recipies were interesting, I'd like to try a natural yeasted loaf.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Bertolli is the most verbally sophisticated of all chefs I've yet to read. After interning for a little over a month at Chez Panisse, I can see how his touch remains.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for some recipes, often a little too complex for practical use. Section on stock invaluable.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

exceleltn complicated flavorful food

[Aja Marsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

meh. maybe you don't get this cookbook for the vegetable dishes.

[John Millard · Rating 5 out of 5]

An early classic.

[Dray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recipes with quite a history linked to groundbreaking restaurant.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reissue of the 1994 version of the book. Roast peacock is a little too rich for my blood.