Books — California Cooking

California Cooking

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Author: Thomas Keller

Thomas 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."

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 Jacobi

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Weeknights with Giada: Quick and Simple Recipes to Revamp Dinner

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Author: Giada De Laurentiis

Giada De Laurentiis is one of America’s most-loved culinary stars, adored for her Food Network hit shows and her New York Times bestselling cookbooks alike, both of which feature her fresh, flavorful Italian recipes. For the first time, Giada tackles weeknight cooking, sharing her favorite tips and go-to dishes—all in her vibrant signature style—to get a delicious meal on the table in a flash.

After a full day, Giada, like most parents, wants nothing more than to sit down for a home-cooked dinner with her husband, Todd, and their daughter, Jade. Weeknights with Giada rises to the challenge, delivering soups, sandwiches, pizzas, pastas, and meat and fish dishes that come together quickly as stand-alone main courses—most in half an hour or less: Rustic Vegetable and Polenta Soup, a hearty soul-warming one-pot dish, cooks in under twenty minutes; Lemony White Bean, Tuna, and Arugula Salad is a great meal that’s quickly assembled from pantry and fridge essentials; Spicy Linguini with Clams and Mussels is a fifteen-minute-or-less spectacular pasta; and you can’t beat Grilled Sirloin Steaks with Pepper and Caper Salsa, which are also ready in just fifteen minutes. From inventive breakfast-for-dinner dishes and meatless Monday vegetarian recipes—both weekly traditions in Giada’s house—to picnic sandwiches and hearty salad recipes for reinventing leftovers, Weeknights with Giada reveals every secret in her repertoire. Even the desserts are quick to mix and bake, should a craving—or a last-minute school bake sale—strike.

Here is Giada at her most inventive—and at her most laid-back. Flavor, freshness, and fun take center stage while cooking times, pots dirtied, and stress are kept to a minimum. With gorgeous color photographs and intimate home snapshots of Giada and her family, Weeknights with Giada is a welcome handbook of fantastic recipes and surefire Monday-to-Friday strategies for every home cook.

Featured Recipe: Sweet Corn and Basil Lasagna

No-boil noodles and a food processor are what make this lasagna a weeknight-dinner friend. Both help to put a super-creamy, provolone-cheesy, comforting, and downright amazing pasta dish on the table for the family. One tip to minimize clean-up and avoid hand-grating the cheese: use the shredding attachment of the food processor to grate the provolone first. Then, without having to wash the bowl, you can switch to the blade to make the sweet corn and basil filling. Smiles all around!

Serves 4-6

Vegetable oil cooking spray
3 cups frozen corn, thawed
½ cup heavy cream, at room temperature
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 cup (8 ounces) mascarpone cheese, at room temperature
1 ½ cups grated pecorino romano cheese
Grated zest of 1 large lemon
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¾ packed cup chopped fresh basil leaves
1 ½ cups (6 ounces) shredded sharp provolone cheese
6 no-boil lasagna sheets (about half a 9-ounce box)
Olive oil, for drizzling

Place an oven rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Spray an 8-inch square glass baking dish with vegetable oil cooking spray. In a food processor, blend the corn, cream, and garlic until chunky. Add the mascarpone cheese, 1 cup of the romano cheese, the lemon zest, salt, and pepper. Blend until smooth. Add the basil and pulse until just combined. Spread one-third of the corn mixture on the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with one-third of the provolone cheese. Place two lasagna sheets on top. Repeat twice with the remaining corn mixture, provolone cheese, and lasagna sheets. Sprinkle with the remaining ½ cup romano cheese and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Cool for 10 minutes. Cut into 6 pieces and serve.

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Michael Chiarello's Live Fire: 125 Recipes for Cooking Outdoors

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Author: Michael Chiarello

He's a Top Chef master, an Iron Chef, an Emmy Award-winning television host, a booked-solid restaurateur, and his cookbooks have sold half a million copies. And, at heart, Michael Chiarello is a master of cooking over fire. This passion and Michael's great gifts for sharing his cooking philosophy (described by Publisher's Weekly as "cooking is craft") and his recipes with such ease and enthusiasm infuse Live Fire, a book destined to fire up the cooking of anyone who takes pride in their grilling. Live Fire features many ways to cook with open flame and embers: the beloved backyard grill, of course, and also using a fire pit, spit, or rotisserie, and more. Here are 125 of Michael's surefire recipes for all courses and 100 sumptuous photographs. All this makes Live Fire a substantial volume o be pored over for years to come—and a grilling book unlike any other.

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Manresa: An Edible Reflection

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Author: David Kinch

The long-awaited cookbook by one of the San Francisco Bay Area's star chefs, David Kinch, who has revolutionized restaurant culture with his take on the farm-to-table ethic and focus on the terroir of the Northern California coast.
Since opening Manresa in Los Gatos in 2002, award-winning Chef David Kinch has done more to create a sense of place through his food--specifically that of Northern California, where the Santa Cruz Mountains meet the sea--than any other chef at his level. Rather than buy his ingredients from a network of local producers, he closed the loop between farm and table by partnering with nearby Love Apple Farms, which grows almost 100 percent of his produce year round. Kinch's interpretation of these ingredients, drawing on his 30 years in restaurants as well as his far-flung and well-fed travels, are at the heart of the Manresa experience. In Manresa, Chef Kinch details his thoughts on building a dish: the creativity, experimentation and emotion that go into developing each plate and daily menu--and how a tasting menu ultimately tells a deeper story. A literary snapshot of the restaurant, from Chef Kinch's inspirations to his techniques, this book celebrates the creativity behind the food of Manresa and its profound connection to the land and sea of Northern California.

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Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones: 90 Recipes for Making Your Own Ice Cream and Frozen Treats from Bi-Rite Creamery

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Author: Kris Hoogerhyde

An irresistible guide to making 90 intensely flavorful handmade ice creams from the country's top artisanal ice cream shop, including the smash hits Salted Caramel and Balsamic Strawberry, plus other favorites.

San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Creamery is as well known for its small-batch, handcrafted, show-stoppingly inventive ice cream as it is for the long line that snakes around the block. Guests young and old flock to the destination ice cream shop, craving a toasty banana split, a jewel-toned ice pop, a scoop of cooling sorbet, a mouthwatering ice cream sandwich, or one of the best ice cream cakes around.

Lucky for ice cream lovers, Bi-Rite Creamery’s secret is in plain sight: their irresistible goods are all made using top quality, farm-fresh, seasonal ingredients—locally sourced, whenever possible—and now you can bring their legendary creations into your home. This essential guide to making your own delicious ice cream and treats covers all the classic flavors and delectable variations, plus creative combinations like Orange-Cardamom, Chai-Spiced Milk Chocolate, Balsamic Strawberry, Malted Vanilla with Peanut Brittle and Milk Chocolate, and Honey Lavender.

Driven by the Creamery’s most popular flavors, each chapter in Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones serves as a meditation on a particular ingredient. Featuring recipes for Bi-Rite’s famed cakes, frostings, pie crusts, and cookies, you can easily mix and match to create an infinite array of delicious custom frozen treats. Filled with step-by-step techniques and insider’s secrets, this lavishly illustrated cookbook will turn your kitchen into a personal Bi-Rite Creamery (without the long line).

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Chez Panisse Vegetables

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Author: Alice L. Waters

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.

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.

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The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant

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Author: Judy Rodgers

For 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

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 Ingle

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The A.O.C. Cookbook

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Author: Suzanne Goin

From the James Beard award-winning chef and author of Sunday Suppers at Lucques--a long-awaited book of her delectable recipes for the kind of small shared plates that have made her restaurant A.O.C. one of the most popular eateries in Los Angeles.

Suzanne Goin developed the idea for A.O.C. at the bar of her restaurant Lucques, where diners would casually enjoy wines by the glass and share several seasonal appetizers rather than sitting down for a main course. So she and her business partner and wine director, Caroline Styne, opened a restaurant where ordering and eating became a communal affair, and simple, seasonal flavors became the stars of every dish, easily enhanced by a perfectly paired glass of wine. Now, Goin shares the recipes for these wonderfully distinct dishes: Bacon-Wrapped Dates with Parmesan; Duck Sausage with Candied Kumquats; Dandelion and Roasted Carrot Salad with Black Olives and Ricotta Salata; California Sea Bass with Tomato Rice, Fried Egg, and Sopressata; Crème Fraiche Cake with Santa Rosa Plums and Pistachios in Olive Oil; S'mores with Caramel Popcorn and Chocolate Sorbet; and many many more. Organized by season, the recipes are adapted to be served as main courses as well as small plates. And each dish comes with Styne's suggestion for the most complementary glass of wine, so you will learn exactly what kind of flavors flatter your favorite varietal. There is something for everyone, every food mood, every time of year--all in this delicious new book.

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Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant

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Author: Anthony Myint

Mission Street Food is a restaurant. But it’s also a charitable organization, a taco truck, a burger stand, and a clubhouse for inventive cooks tucked inside an unassuming Chinese take-out place. In all its various incarnations, it upends traditional restaurant conventions, in search of moral and culinary satisfaction.

Like Mission Street Food itself, this book is more than one thing: it’s a cookbook featuring step-by-step photography and sly commentary, but it’s also the memoir of a madcap project that redefined the authors’ marriage and a city’s food scene. Along with stories and recipes, you’ll find an idealistic business plan, a cheeky manifesto, and thoughtful essays on issues ranging from food pantries to fried chicken. Plus, a comic.

Ultimately, Mission Street Food: Recipes and Ideas from an Improbable Restaurant presents an iconoclastic vision of cooking and eating in twenty-first century America.

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Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California

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Author: Giada De Laurentiis

Since her debut on Food Network in 2002 with the hit program Everyday Italian, Giada De Laurentiis has been enticing Americans with her updated twists on Italian favorites. Her dedication to ease, healthfulness, and—above all else—flavor have won her a permanent place in the hearts of home cooks. In Giada at Home, she shares a personal look into how she cooks for those dearest to her, with simple recipes inspired by her television show of the same name.

Born in Italy, Giada was raised in Los Angeles by a gregarious Italian family. While her grandmother, aunt, and mother brought her up on generations-old recipes, Giada also became enamored with the bright and clean flavors of California’s abundant seasonal fruits and vegetables. Giada at Home presents recipes from both traditions, all with Giada’s signature style. She shares classic Italian recipes passed down through the years, like cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in salty prosciutto, creamy risotto with the earthy and deep flavors of mushrooms and gorgonzola, and lamb chops basted with honey and balsamic vinegar. New family favorites include grilled asparagus and melon, game hens roasted with citrus and herbs, and a sorbet made with pomegranate and mint, all bursting with fresh, vibrant flavors.

No meal would be complete without the company of family and Giada particularly enjoys bringing her loved ones together over meals. For the first time, she incorporates her go-to brunch recipes—what she cooks when setting up a feast on her back patio for everyone on weekend mornings—from Jade-approved Panini, with gooey mozzarella, luscious raspberries, and a sprinkling of brown sugar, to Todd’s favorite pancetta-studded waffles scented with cinnamon.

No matter which recipe you choose—classic or contemporary—Giada at Home makes gathering the favorite people in your life for fabulous weeknight meals and family celebrations delicious and easy.

GIADA DE LAURENTIIS is the Emmy-winning star of Food Network’s Everyday Italian, Giada's Weekend Getaways, and Giada at Home; a contributing correspondent for NBC’s Today; and the author of four New York Times bestselling cookbooks. She attended the Cordon Bleu in Paris and worked at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago restaurant in Los Angeles before starting her own catering company, GDL Foods. Born in Rome, she grew up in Los Angeles, where she now lives with her husband, Todd, and their daughter, Jade.

Recipe from Giada at Home: Stuffed Baby Peppers

Makes 4 to 6 servings

My mother always loved to serve stuffed vegetables; she stuffed zucchini, potatoes, onions, and, of course, all kinds of peppers. It may have been her way of getting us to eat our vegetables, but we loved them so much we ate them right out of the fridge the next day. I’ve used pancetta in the filling, but this is an easy recipe to vary and you could certainly substitute ground beef, sausage--almost anything savory that you like. These taste better the longer they sit, so they make great leftovers.

Ingredients
Vegetable oil cooking spray
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 ounces thinly sliced pancetta, finely chopped
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
3/4 cup whole-milk ricotta cheese
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup frozen petite peas, thawed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
24 (2- to 3-inch long) baby peppers

Place an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray a rimmed baking sheet with vegetable oil cooking spray. Set aside.

In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the pancetta and cook, stirring frequently, until brown and crispy, 5 to 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the pancetta and drain on paper towels. Add the onion to the pan and cook until translucent and soft, about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

In a medium bowl, combine the onion, pancetta, cheeses, and peas. Season with salt and pepper.

Using a paring knife, cut 1/2 inch from the stem end of each pepper. Remove the seeds and veins. Using a small dessert spoon, fill each pepper with the cheese mixture. Place the filled peppers on the prepared baking sheet and bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until the peppers begin to soften and the cheese is warmed through. Cool for 10 minutes.

Arrange the peppers on a platter and serve.

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