Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook

Award-winning cookbook author (Chez Panisse Vegetables; Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook) and chef-owner Waters takes readers back to her highly lauded restaurant in Berkeley, Calif. This alluring 200-plus recipe collection is an innovative amalgam of Mediterranean, California, New American and Proven al dishes. Waters shares her Chez Panisse vision: that all of the restaurant's ingredients be certifiable as ""organically grown"" by the year 2000. A culinary purist, Waters devotes herself to cooking with fresh, seasonal, organic ingredients, relying upon a choice network of purveyors, producers, farmers, fishmongers and ranchers. The clear and incisive recipes range from simple (Fresh Mozzarella Salad) to elaborate (Headcheese, a jellied meat dish with one small pig's head and two pig's feet) and time-consuming (15-day Home-Cured Pancetta), with an emphasis on incorporating seasonal bounty--for example, Minestra Verdissima (spring); Venetian-style Pickled Sand Dabs (summer); Wild Nettle Frittata (autumn-winter); Spicy Baked Crab (winter). Despite Waters's militant stance on using organic ingredients and her exquisite attention to ingredient details, she suggests only two pantry essentials: kosher salt and quality olive oil. Aspiring to achieve a higher food karma, Waters successfully delivers a charmingly erudite yet accessible reference. (Sept.)