A champion of organic, locally produced and seasonal food and founder of acclaimed Californian restaurant Chez Panisse, Alice Waters explores the simplest of dishes in the most delicious of ways, with fresh, sustainable ingredients a must, even encouraging cooks to plant their own garden. From orange and olive salad to lemon curd and ginger snaps, Waters constantly emphasizes the joys and ease of cooking with local, fresh food, whether in soups, salads or sensual, classic desserts.

Recipes and Lessons from a Delicious Cooking Revolution

Alice Waters

Penguin??Books

Chez Panisse Cooking

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Paul Bertolli

Cooking by Ingredient

Random House]

An indispensable resource for home cooks from the woman who changed the way Americans think about food. Perhaps more responsible than anyone for the revolution in the way we eat, cook, and think about food, Alice Waters has “single-handedly chang[ed] the American palate” according to the New York Times. Her simple but inventive dishes focus on a passion for flavor and a reverence for locally produced, seasonal foods. With an essential repertoire of timeless, approachable recipes chosen to enhance and showcase great ingredients, The Art of Simple Food isan indispensable resource for home cooks. Here you will find Alice’s philosophy on everything from stocking your kitchen, to mastering fundamentals and preparing delicious, seasonal inspired meals all year long. Always true to her philosophy that a perfect meal is one that’s balanced in texture, color, and flavor, Waters helps us embrace the seasons’ bounty and make the best choices when selecting ingredients. Fill your market basket with pristine produce, healthful grains, and responsibly raised meat, poultry, and seafood, then embark on a voyage of culinary rediscovery that reminds us that the most gratifying dish is often the least complex.

The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution: A Cookbook

Patricia Curtan

Fritz Streiff

Kelsie Kerr

Clarkson/Potter

"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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Cooking Education & Reference

We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto

Penguin Press

“Chez Panisse is an extraordinary dining experience. . . . It is Alice Waters's brilliant gastronomic mind, her flair for cooking, and her almost revolutionary concept of menu planning that make Chez Panisse so exciting.”—James BeardJustly famed for the originality of its ever-changing menu and the range and virtuosity of its chef and owner, Alice Waters, Chez Panisse is known throughout the world as one of America's greatest restaurants. Dinner there is always an adventure—a different five-course meal is offered every night, and the restaurant has seldom repeated a meal since its opening in 1971. Alice Waters is a brilliant pioneer of a wholly original cuisine, at once elegant and earthy, classical and experimental, joyous in its celebration of the very finest and freshest ingredients.In this spectacular book, Alice Waters collects 120 of Chez Panisse's best menus, its most inspired transformations of classic French dishes. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook is filled with dishes redolent of the savory bouquet of teh garden, the appealing aromas and roasty flavors of food cooked over the charcoal grill, and the delicate sweetness of fish fresh from the sea. There are menus here for different seasons of the year, for picnics and outdoor barbecues and other great occasions. Handsomely designed and illustrated by David Lance Goines, this is an indispensable addition to the shelf of every great cook and cookbook readers. “A lovely book, wonderfully inventive, and the food is very pure.”—Richard Olney

The Chez Panisse Menu Cook Book

Cooking Methods

Chatto and Windus

My Pantry: Homemade Ingredients That Make Simple Meals Your Own: A Cookbook

Fanny Singer

Arranged by season, this cookbook highlights the abundance of fresh foods cultivated in Northern California. In addition to our members' favorite recipes, which have been triple-tested in our own kitchens, California Fresh Harvest provides fascinating food lore, inspirational menus, wine pairings, cooking tips, and information on local events and special destinations. In the tradition of the treasured, original California Fresh cookbook, again the Junior League of Oakland-East Bay has created a classic for Northern California residents and visitors alike.

California Fresh Harvest: A Seasonal Journey Through Northern California

Junior League of Oakland-East Bay

Steven Brandt

Gwen Prichard

Gina Gallo

Desserts

Junior League of Oakland East Bay

San Francisco Plays Itself utilizes the notion of autobiography as a way to explore the work of contemporary artists who have engaged with the cultural and physical landscape of the Bay Area. Featuring more than 35 photographs by 31 artists, accompanying texts provide a contextualizing articulation by each artist of his or her work that serves to emphasize the autobiographical focus in egalitarian terms. The cumulative effect of these projects exemplifies the evolution of a specific time and place, while representing the unlimited experiences and possibilities of life in a major American metropolitan region. INCLUDING WORK &amp; CONTRIBUTIONS BY: John Chiara, Mark Citret, Judy Dater, Kota Ezawa, Alex Fradkin, Jona Frank, Richard Gilles, Jim Goldberg, Katy Grannan, John Harding, Chauncey Hare, Christina Koci Hernandez, Zig Jackson, Michael Jang, Keba Konte, Annie Leibovitz, Alice Waters, Ken Light, Ari Marcopoulos, Mary Ellen Mark, Laura Albert, Ken Miller, William Vollmann, Richard Misrach, Abelardo Morell, Dan Nicoletta, Gus Van Sant, Catherine Opie, Adam Klein, Michael Rauner, Alice Shaw, Shi Guorui, Larry Sultan, Sergio De La Torre, Tseng Kwong Chi, Catherine Wagner, and Mary Gaitskill. 
PLUS THE NEW CD BY THE SIZE QUEENS featuring guest appearances by Laura Albert, Carlos Forster, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Tim Mooney, John Murry, Danny Pearson, and Terese Taylor.

An Autobiography of the San Francisco Bay Area, Parts 1 & 2, Part 1: San Francisco Plays Itself

Arts & Photography

Catherine Opie

Larry Sultan

MARY GAITSKILL

Abelardo Morell

Mary Ellen Mark

Richard Misrach

Chauncey Hare

Gus Van Sant

John Chiara

Laura Albert

Shi Guorui

The Size Queens

Photography & Video

SF Camerawork Publications

In Coming to My Senses Alice Waters retraces the circuitous route and tumultuous times that led her to found America's most influential restaurant, Chez Panisse at 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA. With supreme honesty, she recounts the experiences that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook in the face of a prevailing food culture that was embracing convenience and uniformity. Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing in New Jersey to Berekely, California, in 1964, at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, Alice was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film and food would ultimately inform the principles on which Chez Panisse was founded. Skilfully combining stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is at once a deeply personal and a modestly understated book. It is a quietly revealing look at one woman s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who has achieved social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.

Coming To My Senses: The makings of a counterculture coo

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Hardie Grant Books

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Books by Alice Waters