Zuni Cafe Cookbook [Hardcover]

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

Rodgers, chef-owner of the Zuni Cafe, cooks like a dream and writes like one, too. Both an extended tutorial and an autobiography in recipes, the book opens with a fascinating account of her formative experiences as a 16-year-old in Roanne, France, where she spent a year at a three-star restaurant taking reams of notes and occasionally peeling vegetables. The introduction is followed by a series of brief, thoughtful essays on the practice of cooking. While readers in the market for a few quick supper ideas might greet so much preamble with impatience not until the eighth chapter does she get around to some recipes most will appreciate her insistence on principles like "What to Think About Before You Start" and "Finding Flavor and Balance." In stunning detail, she explains how to salt a cod and cure a rabbit and brine a fowl and stuff a sausage. One would not be surprised to turn a page and find a description of how to slaughter a sheep. The book includes the recipes that have made her reputation, such as the Zuni Roast Chicken with Bread Salad, plus other fare from appetizers through dessert like Oxtails Braised in Red Wine and Shrimp Cooked in Romesco with Wilted Spinach. Unlike many chefs who style themselves as creative forces, Rodgers has a deep sense of how, as she puts it, "the simplest dish can recall a community of ideas and people." Rodgers's cookbook embodies that ideal beautifully.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Rogers has been running San Francisco's Zuni Cafe for decades, and this book provides much insight into the restaurant and recipes for its best-known dishes. Much more than a souvenir collection of restaurant recipes, the volume is at times a philosophical treatise on how to eat and cook. Rogers begins with an introduction that describes how she became a chef and went to work at the cafe. Other sections, including "What To Think About BeforeYou Start," continue her leisurely pace and gentle instruction. Like Alice Waters, Rogers pays special attention to the quality of her ingredients and frequently calls for specialty goods to which not all cooks have easy access, but she's never didactic. She wants her readers to pay attention to and respect their food. Extensive headnotes lead most recipes; new cooks may be overwhelmed by the amount of information and the sophisticated techniques, but experienced cooks will find every page worth reading. While not an essential purchase for public libraries with tight budgets and limited patron demand for cookbooks, this lovely book is highly recommended for extensive cookery collections. (Index and photos not seen.)-Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A unique and rich resource, for fans of the restaurant and for food lovers everywhere. -- Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking

[S]hould be required reading for every person who might cook something someday. -- Deborah Madison, author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Judy Rodgers is chef and owner of the Zuni Café in San Francisco. She lives in Berkeley, California.