40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering

New Book Review

40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, by Alice Waters. Chez Panisse opened its doors in 1971. Founded by Alice Waters, the restaurant is rooted in her conviction that the best-tasting food is organic, locally grown, and harvested in ecologically sound ways by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has always determined the restaurant’s cuisine, and, over the course of forty years, Chez Panisse has helped create a community of local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures the restaurant a steady supply of fresh and pure ingredients.

In Forty Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, Alice takes readers on her journey from the humble and visionary beginnings of the restaurant, through its rise and the acclaim, to the Café and the influential Chez Panisse Foundation. Organized by decade, the book includes a wealth of archival material and photographs—menus; invitations; pictures of Alice at the restaurant and around the world, with those who have passed through her life—and interviews from public figures and cooks who have been inspired by or mentored at the restaurant.

This tribute to the delicious food revolution that began with Alice Waters and Chez Panisse is an important work for anyone who cares about food, sustainability, and the powerful legacy that Alice has built.

ALICE WATERS’s influence on American cooking is unrivaled. She opened Chez Panisse (named Best Restaurant in America by Gourmet) in 1971, Chez Panisse Café in 1980, and Café Fanny in 1984. She founded her career on creating dishes using fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients long before sustainability was a household term. Among her many awards, Alice has received the James Beard Best Chef in America, Humanitarian, and Lifetime Achievement awards, and most recently the French Légion d’Honneur. In 1996, she created the Chez Panisse Foundation to fund the Edible Schoolyard, a model of edible education in the public school system. She is the author of eight cookbooks, most recently In the Green Kitchen and The Art of Simple Food. For more information about Alice and Chez Panisse, please visit ChezPanisse.com and ChezPanisseFoundation.org.

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Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

New Book Review

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton. Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty fierce, hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. Above all she sought family, particularly the thrill and the magnificence of the one from her childhood that, in her adult years, eluded her. Hamilton’s ease and comfort in a kitchen were instilled in her at an early age when her parents hosted grand parties, often for more than one hundred friends and neighbors. The smells of spit-roasted lamb, apple wood smoke, and rosemary garlic marinade became as necessary to her as her own skin.

Blood, Bones & Butter follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; the soulless catering factories that helped pay the rent; Hamilton’s own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton’s idyllic past and her own future family—the result of a difficult and prickly marriage that nonetheless yields rich and lasting dividends.

Blood, Bones & Butter is an unflinching and lyrical work. Gabrielle Hamilton’s story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion. By turns epic and intimate, it marks the debut of a tremendous literary talent.

From the book: “I wanted the lettuce and eggs at room temperature . . . the butter-and-sugar sandwiches we ate after school for snack . . . the marrow bones my mother made us eat as kids that I grew to crave as an adult. . . . There would be no ‘conceptual’ or ‘intellectual’ food, just the salty, sweet, starchy, brothy, crispy things that one craves when one is actually hungry. In ecstatic farewell to my years of corporate catering, we would never serve anything but a martini in a martini glass. Preferably gin.”

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Gabrielle Hamilton is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York’s East Village. She received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit, Saveur, and Food & Wine. Hamilton has also authored the 8-week Chef Column in The New York Times, and her work has been anthologized in six volumes of Best Food Writing. She has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show and the Food Network, among other television. She lives in Manhattan with her two sons.

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Life, on the Line: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat

New Book Review

Life, on the Line: A Chef's Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat, by Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas. "One of America's great chefs" (Vogue) shares how his drive to cook immaculate food won him international renown-and fueled his miraculous triumph over tongue cancer.

In 2007, chef Grant Achatz seemingly had it made. He had been named one of the best new chefs in America by Food & Wine in 2002, received the James Beard Foundation Rising Star Chef of the Year Award in 2003, and in 2005 he and Nick Kokonas opened the conceptually radical restaurant Alinea, which was named Best Restaurant in America by Gourmet magazine. Then, positioned firmly in the world's culinary spotlight, Achatz was diagnosed with stage IV squamous cell carcinoma-tongue cancer.

The prognosis was grim, and doctors agreed the only course of action was to remove the cancerous tissue, which included his entire tongue. Desperate to preserve his quality of life, Grant undertook an alternative treatment of aggressive chemotherapy and radiation. But the choice came at a cost. Skin peeled from the inside of Grant's mouth and throat, he rapidly lost weight, and most alarmingly, he lost his sense of taste. Tapping into the discipline, passion, and focus of being a chef, Grant rarely missed a day of work. He trained his chefs to mimic his palate and learned how to cook with his other senses. As Kokonas was able to attest: The food was never better. Five months later, Grant was declared cancer-free, and just a few months following, he received the James Beard Foundation Outstanding Chef in America Award.

Life, on the Line tells the story of a culinary trailblazer's love affair with cooking, but it is also a book about survival, about nurturing creativity, and about profound friendship. Already much- anticipated by followers of progressive cuisine, Grant and Nick's gripping narrative is filled with stories from the world's most renowned kitchens-The French Laundry, Charlie Trotter's, el Bulli- and sure to expand the audience that made Alinea the number-one selling restaurant cookbook in America last year. Click here for more information or to order.

Grant Achatz is the multiple award-winning chef and owner of Alinea in Chicago. He has written for Gourmet, The New York Times Diner's Journal, and is a columnist for The Atlantic's Food Channel. Nick Kokonas partnered with Grant Achatz in 2005 to develop Alinea, where he remains actively engaged in its strategy, marketing, and business planning.

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The Orphan Who Became a Culinary King

By Maya Martinez

History is filled with "rags to riches" stories. Tales of people who rose to the top of their chosen field by sheer determination, perserverance, and, of course, luck. Stories so unblieveable, you'd imagine they were a senario for a hollywood movie.

Such a story is the life and times of Antonin Careme. Who, from humble beginnings, with no resources other than his own talent, became the greatest chef of his time. And revolutionized French Cuisine.

He was abandoned on a doorstep at the height of the French Revolution. Though seemingly without prospects or hope, Antonin Careme would grow up to be called "The King of Chefs and "The Chef to Kings."

Careme's incredible good fortune, some might say "destiny", began with the doorstep on which he landed. It belonged to a Monsieur Sylvain Bailly, a famous patissier, with a shop near the Palais Royal, who gave the nine year old Careme bed and board in exchange for general kitchen work. More than just a kind soul, Sylvain Bailly, was in, fact, Careme's first mentor. Encouraging his young helper to advance and learn.

This combination of encouragement and Careme's talent, culminated in the opening of Careme's own pastry shop - at the ripe old age of eighteen. On his own, Antonin Careme was "on a roll". Owing to the fact that pastry, particularly innovative creations, were Paris' flavour of the moment.

And Careme's creations were innovation on steroids. In fact, Careme was essentially a sculptor, using icing sugar, nougat and marizan as his materials. Inspired by architecture and famous monuments, Careme created and re-created pyramids, helmets, and waterfalls. Never intending that that they should be actually be eaten.

Happily Parisian Society was "eating up" Careme. He was truly the "Big Man on Campus." And, his campus to boot! Clearly the teen-age Careme was the toast of Paris. Whether or not that was the height of his ambition, is open to speculation. No matter. Young Antonin was about to have, as the saying goes - "greatness thrust upon him."

Careme's talent and accomplishments had come to the attention of the man who would become his second, last, and most influential mentor. Prince Tallyrand. The consummate diplomat who survived all that era's political upheavals. Tallyrand was, or at least considered himself to be, a gourmet. He invited Careme to be his Chef. On the condition that he prepare a year's worth of menu's without repeating himself. Dare I say - "a piece of cake" for Monsieur C?

His association with Tallyrand elevated Careme to the highest strata of European Society and Royalty. After Napolean met his Waterloo, Careme decamped for England, where he cooked for the Prince Regent. Later to become King George the Fourth. His culinary carousel continued with an invitation to St. Petersburg.(The one in Russia folks.) Although, for whatever reason, he never actually got to cook for the Tsar.(Preparing for the next revolution?) So - back to Paris. Firing up his stove for banker J.M. Rothschild.

Without a doubt - Antonin Careme was the first "Celebrity chef." But it is his contributions to the art of French Cuisine that has (justly) earned him the title : "King of Chefs."

Here they are:

1.His book on pastry - Le Patissier Royal Parisien. Only the third book of that time to be devoted exclusively to the patissier's art. And the first one to have extensive engraved plates. Careme's designs for these engravings resemble more elaborate architectural constructions, than pictures of food.

2.His book on Cuisine - L'art de la Cuisine Francaise au XIXe siecle. Here he extends his wild, wacky, weird, and way out imagination to the preparation and presentation of meat, poulty and seafood.

But, he also did some more serious stuff - like giving future chefs the ability to create an almost unlimited variety of dishes by utilizing a series of basic prepartions Careme developed. He also classified all sauces into groups, based on four main sauces.

Additionally...

Careme is credited with ending the practice of serving all the dishes at once("Service a la Francaise"), and replacing it with the one we know today. ("Service a la Russe") Where the grub arrives in the order on the menu. Careme also gets a "tip o' the hat" for inventing it. The chef's hat(toque) that is.

Sorry to say - no happy ending for Antonin Careme. After blazing across the culinary heavens, rubbing shoulders with the high and the mighty of nineteenth century Europe, and leaving an enduring legacy - he joined his pal La Varenne at that big stove in the sky - at the tender age of forty eight.

Maya Martinez has a passion for all things French. She shares her interests and discoveries in a variety of media. More "Treasures of France" can be found at frenchgourmet.

Antonin Careme