Rating: 
Summary: A must read for foodies
Review: This excellent book by Judy Rodgers is an addition to the growing body of works by prominent American chefs who learned their craft in France and whose doctrine on food and cooking has been reinforced by the writings of Richard Olney and transformed by the California doctrine of using fresh local foods. The foremost of these writer chefs are Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, Jeremiah Tower, Paul Bertolli, and Judy Rodgers herself. The Italian wing of this group is represented by Tom Colicchio and Mario Batali (In spite of Mario's antagonism to the 'F country', he is a true student of this group, having been a chef at Stars under Jeremiah Tower).This book won two James Beard awards and Rodgers garnered a third Beard Award for best chef last year, making it a true hat trick for Rodgers and the Zuni Café. From what I have seen in this book, it earned every bit of recognition it has garnered. The only recent American book I know which is comparable to this book in the quality of its lessons is 'Jeremiah Tower Cooks'. This book succeeds at an even higher level than Tower since the older writer has some strong opinions on some not entirely universally held opinions. Tower redeems himself by making his book just that much more engaging by so energetically endorsing these controversial opinions. Rodgers engages in no controversy. Her lessons in cooking follow the straight and narrow of French technique mellowed by her beautifully plain doctrines about using simple equipment. Before I get too far, I must warn the reader that what people like Rodgers and Colicchio mean by simple is much different from what the fast cooking maestros such as Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, and Ann Byrn mean. Rodgers and Colicchio are talking about simplicity within the world of haute cuisine as defined by Richard Olney in 'Simple French Food'. Basically, simple to this school means using well-understood techniques without excessive or overly architectural ornament. This style still requires many years of training to become familiar with one's materials and techniques. There is at least one pleasantly surprising joining of opinions between the haute cuisine Rodgers and the English popular food writer Nigella Lawson. Both make the point, that to really know your materials and procedures, it is essential that you repeat the same few dishes rather than doing something different every time you turn on the range. While Lawson uses this principle to recommend a list of recipes she considers important to master by repetition; Rodgers gives a more methodological approach by advising us how to make little variations in one's practice to teach oneself the variations in your prima materia. The instructions and explanations on stock making alone are worth the price of the book. Here, Rodgers is following Olney's lead by explaining why you do things this way rather than that way. The explanations are leavened by anecdotes on Rodgers experiences in training and in her kitchen at Zuni. Especially delightful is the tale of a pig's head being used to make a pork stock. Among the stories are some experiences in the kitchen of the Troigros brothers in France. These legendary chefs are often mentioned together with other modern greats of the French kitchen. This is the first look I have seen into the basis of their renown. Among the very many lessons about basic cooking techniques, the most dramatic and most useful is in the application of salt to food. While Food Network junkies may not find this lesson too dramatic, it does give one a new respect for this most simple of culinary techniques. Every chapter in the book dishes out not only Zuni Café recipes, but also a California gold mine of techniques and explanations on why these techniques work. Even the single page on vinaigrettes offers ucommon wisdom on a very common subject, such as the relevance of the dish to be dressed on the ratio of oil to acid in the vinegrette. The star of the latter portion of the book is 'A Lesson in Sausage Making', comparable to some of the more lovingly detailed chapters in Bertolli's 'Cooking by Hand'. This book should be on every foodie's short list of must reads. Unlike excellent books on various methods and materials, this is a book you will want to read from cover to cover. The attitudes and knowledge will infuse and improve all your thinking and working with food. If you are the book buying public, you can tune out now so I can talk to the book designers at W. W. Norton. After the most beautifully composed photograph on the dust jacket, you seemed to drop the ball in laying out parts of the inside of the book. The photographs are too close up and are taken from an angle which does not present the food in the best light. The Table of contents is very poorly done. It is just about the worst I have ever seen in the way it is layed out. And, the tiny black and white photos used on the chapter title pages are simply a waste of money and space. One has absolutely no idea of what they are. The pictures on the 'Stocks' title page could be from a restaurant, a hospital, or a laboratory. To your copy editors, I warn that Harold McGee is probably cringing at the many uses of 'dissolve' where you really should say 'bring into suspension' or simply 'incorporate'. To all foodies, this is a must have book.
Rating:
Summary: Quality, not Quantity
Review: This has become my favorite cookbook. I enjoy cooking but have a world to learn. However, another book with "300 new recipes" is the last thing I need, I have plenty of those. This book is quality, not quantity. A typical recipe may run several pages because it includes background plus plenty of details to make sure you do it right. Typically, there are pages devoted to selecting bread, making croutons, etc. The courses are interesting and often, for me, rather novel but they are not "precious" nor are they particularly difficult, only detailed. E.g., I made a dramatic chard panade last night which will be a part of my future repertoire. The roast chicken and bread salad is worth the price of admission. Personally, I enjoy the photos.
Rating:
Summary: Quality, not Quantity
Review: This has become my favorite cookbook. I enjoy cooking but have a world to learn. However, another book with "300 new recipes" is the last thing I need, I have plenty of those. This book is quality, not quantity. A typical recipe may run several pages because it includes background plus plenty of details to make sure you do it right. Typically, there are pages devoted to selecting bread, making croutons, etc. The courses are interesting and often, for me, rather novel but they are not "precious" nor are they particularly difficult, only detailed. E.g., I made a dramatic chard panade last night which will be a part of my future repertoire. The roast chicken and bread salad is worth the price of admission. Personally, I enjoy the photos.
Rating:
Summary: Really far more than recipes
Review: This is one of the best cookbooks in my prodigious collection. It is so so true that she goes much further than the recipes and describes the how's and why's of what she is doing. Her writing has confirmed many of my own experiences I never found described elsewhere and has also taught me completely new twists on such fundamentals as making stock and dicing onions. This is the woman who accidentally ended up living with the Troisgros brothers in France as a teenager and then ended up being the lunch chef at Chez Panisse instead of going to grad school. She was also a Stanford student. So you have genius and an unmatchable pedigree for California cuisine. That recipe cooks up a stellar cookbook...the surprise would be if it didn't. Every preparation is paired with a specific wine and there is a fairly extensive section on cheese pairings. I mean, she's actually sharing the details here...including the crown jewel recipes of her franchise. Although I live only two miles away I have never found occasion to go to her restaurant though I've always wanted to. I will go a few times now to see what the master's renditions of these remarkable plates come out like. You see, you share the recipes and everyone flocks to your restaurant. Why keep your skill a secret? And I just ran and salted half of what I've got in the fridge! OK, after a few months, an update: I've been trying the pre-salting meat approach regularly, and pushing it. The results have been quite good, but there have been times when things have come out too salty. However, pushing it, and being forced to throw out some stuff, I have come up with the following safety guidelines so far. I believe Ms. Rodgers is working with extremely fresh product in ideal circumstances, which most of us aren't able to duplicate in our supermarkets. Therefore her practices which she might find safe will not always be safe for us. While salt does act as a preservative for meat, in the small quantities used here (e.g. 3/4 tsp per pound) it's not enough to extend the life of the meat particularly long. My rules of thumb for the most time you can salt, refrigerated (and after rinsing poultry and seafood thoroughly), the best consumer meat in San Francisco follow. If I was shopping at an average place, I wouldn't risk any delay in cooking at all. Beef, Pork: 48 hours
Poultry, lamb: 24 hours
Seafood: 6 hours tops, less better Note these probably aren't much different than you would have done prior. Furthermore, she argues that you must let meat come to room temperature before cooking. For her parameters, this might work well, but I feel it is an unnecessary risk even with the "protection" of the salt. You can lengthen cooking with lower temperature to get the inside of a roast done as well if it's thick. So 15 mins tops at room temp. Don't abandon common sense, or any other sense, when cooking. Trust your nose and eyes. The salt isn't a miracle worker. The times above are enough to let it do what it needs to to achieve the effect she wants I believe. The recipes have been utterly fantastic however. I still strongly recommend the cookbook. It is unquestionably one of the best. I also strongly recommend, as I believe would she, that you take everything in it, ahem, with a little grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: one of the best cookbooks I've ever had
Review: This is simply one of the best gourmet cookbooks I have bought in years. It isn't for everyone - if you don't LIKE cooking, if you don't enjoy spending an hour or two in the kitchen and then having guests ooo and ah over what you serve them - then this isn't for you. But I LOVE it. I have cooked the Zuni Chicken with Bread Salad for several audiences and there hasn't been a one that hasn't loved it. The instuctions are complete and chatty, with reasons given for doing things one way or another. One of the best cookbooks around, if you like to cook. Worth buying for the Zuni Chicken recipe alone.
Rating:
Summary: Worth it for the chicken recipe alone
Review: This is simply one of the best gourmet cookbooks I have bought in years. It isn't for everyone - if you don't LIKE cooking, if you don't enjoy spending an hour or two in the kitchen and then having guests ooo and ah over what you serve them - then this isn't for you. But I LOVE it. I have cooked the Zuni Chicken with Bread Salad for several audiences and there hasn't been a one that hasn't loved it. The instuctions are complete and chatty, with reasons given for doing things one way or another. One of the best cookbooks around, if you like to cook. Worth buying for the Zuni Chicken recipe alone.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful reading and cooking
Review: Zuni is one of the classic California cuisine restaurants in San Francisco, to my mind the main one. This book is a great encapsulation of it. I'm reviewing it because some of the other reviewers struck me as unclear on the concept. Firstly, it is A RESTAURANT'S COOKBOOK. One reviewer wrote a bad review because (s)he didn't like that kind of cookbook. The style of the restaurant's food suffuses the book. To me, that's wonderful; I have enough general cooking books already. Secondly, the amount of effort required for recipes is, as a result of the first point, a bit higher than for some books, but it's less work and the recipes are less precious than in, say, Chez Panisse Cooking (which I never use for that reason). The drool-inducing pictures are worth half the book's price; just seeing gougeres with bacon and arugula made me want to get in the kitchen.
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