The Food Culture of Alice Waters

When you eat fast food, you not only eat the food that is unhealthy for you, but you digest the values that comes with that food. And they're really about fast, cheap and easy. It's so important that we understand that things can be affordable, but they can never be cheap, because, if they're cheap, somebody's missing out. The fast food culture tells us that, you know, cooking is not something important, and it can be in the basement, it can be in the back, when, in fact, it's the most important work that we do. I think it is the unrealistic values of a fast food culture that are really making us very unhappy, that we're all going a little crazy. We spend as much searching for our cell phone than we do preparing a meal.
~Alice Waters, "Brief But Spectacular"

With her new memoir coming out, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook, we thought we'd give a little blog space to Alice Waters, often called "the mother of American cooking." Alice Waters opened a little restaurant called Chez Panisse in 1971 in Berkeley, California, and in the 40-plus years since has been a tireless advocate for organic food, slow food, school lunch reform, and local sustainable agriculture. She's been the recipient of several awards and honors - her 2015 National Humanities Medal "proving that eating is a political act, and that the table is a powerful means to social justice and positive change. "

Eating at Chez Panisse looks like a tremendous experience. The Restaurant is downstairs, offering a three to four course dinner with the menu changing nightly, "each [course] designed to be appropriate to the season and composed to feature the finest sustainably sourced, organic, peak-of-their-season ingredients, including meat, fish, and poultry." The Café, upstairs, features "moderately priced à la carte menu for both lunch and dinner." The website describes the experience more poetically than we could ever hope to:

Alice and Chez Panisse are convinced that the best tasting food is organically and locally grown, and harvested in ways that are ecologically sound by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has always determined our cuisine. For over 45 years, Chez Panisse has invited diners to partake of the immediacy and excitement of vegetables just out of the garden, fruit right off the branch, and fish straight from the sea. In doing so, Chez Panisse has established a close network of suppliers who, like the restaurant, strive for both environmental harmony and delicious flavor.

But, don't think Alice Waters herself will be whipping up your dishes. Since the birth of her daughter in the early 1980s, Alice Waters has served as executive chef - she "contribute[s] to the collaboration of the kitchen...oversees Chez Panisse, writes cookbooks, helps design menus and tries to preserve local food traditions," but she hasn't cooked anything in their kitchen in 30 years. There are a variety of chefs at Chez Panisse - different ones for the restaurant, the café, for pastry - and alumni of the kitchens include Jeremiah Tower, Samin Nosrat, and Cal Peternell.

Are you interested in food activism? Alice Waters supports Slow Food International, which is concerned with topics such as bee population decline, food waste, protecting family farming, and GMOs, and she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, with its mission being "to build and share a national edible education curriculum for pre-kindergarten through high school...envision[ing] gardens and kitchens as interactive classrooms for all academic subjects, and a sustainable, delicious, and free lunch for every student." Do you agree with her about the importance of "help[ing] people understand the relation of food to agriculture and relationship of food to culture?" Even if you're not as hardcore as Alice Waters, you might still enjoy her cookbooks - New York Times bestsellers and recommended for "everyone who wants to learn to cook, or wants to become a better cook." Learn more about the food culture of Alice Waters with some of the titles listed below.

For Children

Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Fanny in France: With French Adventures and French Recipes by Alice Waters


Cookery by Alice Waters

My Pantry

The Art of Simple Food and The Art of Simple Food II

In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn By Heart

Chez Panisse Fruit

Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook

DVD

American Masters: Alice Waters and Her Delicious Revolution


In addition to her own books, Waters has provided the foreword to cookbooks by various other chefs, including Joanne Weir, David Tanis, Cecilia Chiang, the Cheese Board staff, and, one of our favorites, Niloufer Ichaporia King, if you're interested in other cookbooks with a similar ethos.


Links

The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Alice Waters [First We Feast]

Alice Waters, Chez Panisse, and Her Farm-To-Table Journey [CNN]

Life's Work: An Interview with Alice Waters [HBR]

California Cooking

We recently read Ten Restaurants That Changed America, a fascinating study of how American foods, dining habits, and even the role of chefs has changed over time. As you might expect, it had a lengthy section on Alice Waters and San Francisco's Chez Panisse, which touched on topics such as California cuisine versus New American cuisine and what has been called California's "food revolution."

Joyce Goldstein, formerly of Chez Panisse and author of  Inside the California Food Revolution, has this to say about the culinary climate of California in the 1970s:

In California, we decided we would serve things that were in season and local. Restaurants like the French Laundry and Chez Panisse were the first in the country to change the menu every day. We also had self-taught chefs. Everywhere else, people were going to cooking school or working their way up through the ranks. We had a lot of people opening restaurants who had never worked in a restaurant or gone to cooking school. And it was not only chefs who were self-taught. Warren Weber taught himself how to farm organically. Bill Niman learned how to raise animals himself. Laura Chenel taught herself how to make cheese. Steve Sullivan taught himself how to bake bread. We had no rules, and we had an audience to support us. It was an amazing climate. We also had the largest number of women chefs anywhere in the world.

Now, California cuisine is such an accepted idea that you can go on California "culinary adventures" and "culinary retreats." The tastes may have changed a little, statewide, though in 2013 Rick Bayless critiqued San Francisco restaurants for being "all a little bit too alike," and now there are food trucks in the mix; but you can still go to Chez Panisse, and other chefs have embraced "hippie-chic...vegetable-centric...simple ingredients, simply prepared" for their up-and-coming restaurants, and local is still a watchword.

California cuisine has had such an impact that it even has its own subject in the library catalog - "Cooking, American -- California style." We've compiled a list of books, mostly from that subject search, to represent California cuisine for you.


This is Camino by Russell Moore + Allison Hopelain with Chris Colin and Maria Zizka

Gjelina: Cooking From Venice, California by Travis Lett 

Brown Sugar Kitchen: New-Style, Down-Home Recipes From Sweet West Oakland by Tanya Holland with Jan Newberry 

Bar Tartine: Techniques & Recipes by Nicolaus Balla and Cortney Burns  

A New Napa Cuisine by Christopher Kostow  

Manresa: An Edible Reflection by David Kinch with Christine Muhlke  

Everything I Want To Eat: Sqirl and the New California Cooking by Jessica Koslow  [eBook]  

My Nepenthe: Bohemian Tales of Food, Family, and Big Sur by Romney Steele  [eBook]

The Cheese Board: Collective Works Bread, Pastry, Cheese, Pizza by Cheese Board Collective Staff [eBook] 

My Pantry by Alice Waters with Fanny Singer 

Mourad: New Moroccan by Mourad Lahlou ; with Susie Heller, Steve Siegelman, and Amy Vogler 

Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel ; with Susie Heller ... [et al.]   

Susan Feniger's Street Food: Irresistibly Crispy, Creamy, Crunchy, Spicy, Sticky, Sweet Recipes by Susan Feniger, with Kajsa Alger, and Liz Lachman 

 

Cookbook Design Trends

We salivate over the sizzling sardines and feel the Mediterranean heat on sun-kissed olive groves. The photography in cookery books is so visually enthralling that the smell of sea air is almost palpable in glistening shots of the fisherman’s haul.

When we come to cook, however, the cookbook stays on the coffee table. Instead, we turn to Google, according to the cookery doyenne Prue Leith. Or even order in a takeaway.

“Now the look of the book dictates the sale,” Leith writes in the Radio Times. “In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy.

“Today, if we cook, we Google it. New cookbooks lie on the coffee table and we drool over Tuscan landscapes and rustic bread ovens. Before ordering in a pizza.”

 ~Caroline Davies & Nicola Slawson, "Cookbooks' key ingredient now design not recipes, says food writer"

Common wisdom is never to judge a book by its cover, but that's a lot of what we are going to do in this blog post! Do you ever judge a cookbook by its cover? The art director for the New York Times Book Review, Matt Dorfman, says:

When considering the book as a whole, I prefer that the interiors contain answers and the covers ask questions. To the extent that my favorite reading experiences empower me to confront uncomfortable truths and honest answers about people, societies and the greater universe, the covers that lure me into the pages often do so by posing questions that I don’t want to ignore.

However, he is not referencing cookbook covers particularly when he makes this statement. The Globe and Mail's Nathalie Atkinson is more on point for our purposes: "I appreciate good book design but don’t judge reads by their covers, generally – except with recipe books, because how they look is how they cook. And nothing captures the attitude and tone more than the cover."

Besides the covers themselves, there are other design trends at play inside cookbooks. Here's a few we've noted from some of the cookbooks we've found on the library shelves:


1) They eschew dust jackets for hardcovers, but many are bound with fabric, or something that resembles cloth (we could not find a source that confirmed that it was a fabric binding). The metallic lettering on the cover is also very popular.

2) Attractive lettering (sometimes in combination with sketches) is key.

From Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, The Picnic: Recipes and Inspiration from Basket to Blanket, and What Katie Ate: Recipes and Other Bits and Pieces

3) They're casual. The chef might be at work, and the pictures are rustic. How do you feel about The Paleo Chef's bare feet on the cover of his book (below)?

From The Paleo Chef: Quick, Flavorful Paleo Meals for Eating Well, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, and Smoke: New Firewood Cooking

4) The pictures are also vivid and vibrant, with some publishers opting to publish using "4-color [photography], with the photography-to-recipe ratio increased as well," sometimes a 1:1 recipe to photo ratio.

From Olives, Lemons & Za'atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking, Smoke, and Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes  & Knives From a Travelling Chef

5) The recipes contain unusual ingredients, or reclaim techniques your grandmother might have used regularly but are less widespread these days. Pickling is very popular.

From Smoke and What Katie Ate

6) They often spell out the directions with pictures.

From What Katie Ate and The Real Food Cookbook: Traditional Dishes for Modern Cooks

7) They share stories and inspiration.

From The Real Food Cookbook and The Homemade Kitchen: Recipes for Cooking With Pleasure

The blog Lottie + Doof finds some cookbook trends gimmicky:

The one place where the book falls short, is in its design. Though it is technically well-executed, it all feels pretty generic. The book looks too much like the type of food blogs that have become ubiquitous in recent years—weathered wood, rusty old spoons, and an over-abundance of crumbs. I think this style started off as a nod toward the authentic—cooking is messy and imperfect! Which was an understandable response to the high-gloss fakery of the food styling that preceded it. But through its over-use it has come to signify the inauthentic, it simply looks like trends—and tired trends, at that.  

Do you enjoy some of these new trends in cookbook design? Have you noticed any trends you particularly like or dislike? Are you more likely to admire a gorgeous cookbook than actually use it? Let us know in the comments!


Links

What Makes for a Brilliant Book Cover? A Master Explains [Wired]

The Original Poofy Cookbook Cover (And Why It's M.I.A.) [Food52]

Cookbook Covers on Pinterest

35 Beautiful Recipe Book Designs [Jayce-O-Yesta]

Recommended Cookbooks

Various cooking and baking utensils on shelf and hanging from rail. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 10 Feb 2016.

If you've read this blog before, you know we are unabashed foodies who love to read about food! But there are so many new cookbooks out there, it can be difficult to winnow out which ones are going to get used until they are stained and falling apart and which ones are pretty to look at or might give us ideas but which, let's face it, are not really up our alley, for whatever reason. The library is a great resource for trying out cookbooks to see if they suit your cooking style and interests, but it's still nice to get recommendations, right? So, we went to the experts - foodie sites like Epicurious, Saveur, the Food Network, and Eater, among other sources - and worked our way through their best-of lists to compile a listing of recommended cookbooks you can find in our library catalog.

We found their lists to be heavy on classics, with some emphasis on global cuisine, but not much for more specialized diets - such as for vegetarians, or for cooking in a slow cooker, for instance. (There were also multiple cookbooks by Nigella Lawson and Yotam Ottolenghi mentioned, but we chose to only list one for each chef.) If you have suggestions for this list or would like to see future recommendations for culinary areas not covered, let us know in the comments!

Epicurious' Cookbooks Everyone Should Own 

Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker

Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 1 by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis

Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes From London's Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi 

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan 

Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan 

The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers

Rick Bayless Mexico: One Plate at a Time by Rick Bayless, with Jeanmarie Brownson and Deann Groen Bayless

Food Network: Chefs' Favorite Cookbooks

The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg

The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes From Around the World by Sandor Ellix Katz

Molto Batali: Simple Family Meals From My Home to Yours by Mario Batali

Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn  

Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice Waters and the cooks of Chez Panisse 

Pok Pok: Food and Stories from the Streets, Homes, and Roadside Restaurants of Thailand by Andy Ricker with J.J. Goode

The Silver Spoon

Larousse Gastronomique with the assistance of the Gastronomic Committee

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime - Comfort Classics, Freezer Food, 16-Minute Meals, and Other Delicious Ways to Solve Supper by Ree Drummond

 

Chosen by experts

Nigella Kitchen: Recipes From the Heart of the Home by Nigella Lawson

Jane Grigson's Fruit Book illustrated by Yvonne Skargon

The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson

Roast Chicken and Other Stories: A Recipe Book by Simon Hopkinson

The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

Best of 2015

The Mission Chinese Food Cookbook by Danny Bowien and Chris Ying

The Broad Fork: Recipes For the Wide World of Vegetables and Fruits by Hugh Acheson

Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook

Tacopedia by Déborah Holtz, Juan Carlos Mena  

Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture by Matt Goulding 

Rose Water & Orange Blossoms: Fresh and Classic Recipes From My Lebanese Kitchen by Maureen Abood 

Senegal: Modern Senegalese Recipes From the Source to the Bowl by Pierre Thiam  

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt 

Tacos: Recipes and Provocations by Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman 

Root to Leaf: A Southern Chef Cooks Through the Seasons by Steven Satterfield

The New Sugar & Spice: A Recipe for Bolder Baking by Samantha Seneviratne

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl

V is For Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques For Home Cooks From Artichokes to Zucchini by Michael Anthony with Dorothy Kalins

Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay

Gjelina: Cooking From Venice, California by Travis Lett  

Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes by Peter Meehan and the editors of Lucky Peach

 

Honorable mentions

We didn't have the recommended cookbooks by these authors in our catalog, but we have others!  Try cookbooks by these famous names: James Beard, Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa), Nigel Slater, Anissa Helou, Elizabeth David, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers of the River Cafe, Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall of the River Cottage, Ferran Adrià, Heston Blumenthal,Thomas Keller, Christopher Kimball, Jacques Pépin, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Francis Mallmann, Diana Kennedy, and Madhur Jaffrey. 

Links

The Cookbooks We Fell For in 2015 [Saveur]

Introducing the 2015 Epicurious Cookbook Canon [Epicurious]

The 21 Best Cookbooks of 2015 [Epicurious]

50 Chefs' Favorite Cookbooks [Food Network]

What's the Best Cookbook of All Time? The Answer May Surprise You [L.A. Times]

25 Greatest Cookbooks of All Time [Telegraph]

The best cookbooks of all time, as chosen by the experts [Guardian]

The Best Cookbooks of 2015 [Eater]

This is Not a Cookbook

The reasons for this hadn't registered until recently, but I've noticed that I really only use cookbooks that have pictures of the dishes in them.  What I love about the pictures is how all you have to do is glance at the page and doing so allows you to take in enough information quickly enough that you get an idea of whether you'd like to make the dish.  It's very little work because you can a) see the ingredients, mostly, without bothering to read the list, b) tell whether it would appeal to your tastes or not, and c) even get an idea of how much work the dish involves.  It's much better than reading a block of text and trying to hold all of the information in your head as you evaluate whether you'd like it, have the ingredients and time for it, etc.  

I have also found that if I'm using a cookbook with only a few pictures, I tend to end up cooking the dishes that are featured visually.  I thought at first it may be a generational thing to be visually oriented this way, but I spoke to my Grandma (who has loved cooking since she was in high school) and she feels the same - as does almost anyone I have spoken to about it.  The exception to this rule for me would be the The Joy of Cooking, (which I really, really love) because I can refer to it for specific how-to information or information about a certain type of cooking, etc.  For example, how to roast pumpkin seeds, or what exactly a bain-marie is. 

The book that has me thinking about cookbooks and pictures is Salad Love, which has not only beautiful, uniform photographs of each of the 260 salads for all four seasons, but also has photographs of the tools, spices, dressings, and toppings that are used throughout the book.  The author states up front that, "This is not a cookbook," and that is reflected in that the recipes are just a simple list of ingredients for the salad and next to it, the dressing, with no instructions for preparation.  With the photo, that's all you need, because you can see the way the zucchini is sliced and what size and type of shrimp is used.

Before I go, I thought I would toss in a few of the "recipes" that I really like the look of:  Purple Potatoes, Peas and Carrot with a creamy dressing; Shrimp, Zucchini, Carrot & Pine Nuts (and I see arugula in the picture!); and Brown Rice, Mozzarella and Mushrooms.  Are you getting hungry yet?  I am!  Please share any thoughts you have with us about cookbooks of all sorts - we'd love to hear your favorites or how you feel about the photograph issue.

Foodie Fest: Baked Goodies

Various cooking and baking utensils on shelf and hanging from rail. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 5 Sep 2015.

Who knew there was so much variety in baking? Vegan baking, baking with less sugar, gluten-free, raw (?!), America's favorite desserts, cakes and cupcakes with a surprise inside, cakes with evil designs, vintage bakes, baking traditions from around the world, baking to make yourself happy, the Great British Bake Off  (anybody else watching it on PBS?). This was an easy list to compile - the difficulty was not placing a hold on every book so we could drool over the glossy pictures! 


Honey & Jam: Seasonal Baking From My Kitchen in the Mountains by Hannah Queen

Custom Confections: Delicious Desserts You Can Create and Enjoy by Jen Besel (J)

Cake My Day!: Eye-Popping Designs For Simple, Stunning, Fanciful, and Funny Cakes by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson 

Back in the Day Bakery, Made With Love: More Than 100 Recipes and Make-It-Yourself Projects to Create and Share by Cheryl Day and Griffith Day 

Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, With Recipes For Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats by Anna Brones & Johanna Kindvall

Baking With Less Sugar: Recipes For Desserts Using Natural Sweeteners and Little-To-No White Sugar by Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery + Café

Rawsome Vegan Baking : An Un-Cookbook for Raw, Gluten-Free, Vegan, Beautiful and Sinfully Sweet Cookies, Cakes, Bars and Cupcakes by Emily von Euw, founder of ThisRawsomeVeganLife.com

 
Baked Occasions: Desserts For Leisure Activities, Holidays, and Informal Celebrations by Matt Lewis

Baking Chez Moi: Recipes From My Paris Home To Your Home Anywhere by Dorie Greenspan  

The Secret Lives of Baked Goods: Sweet Stories & Recipes For America's Favorite Desserts by Jessie Oleson Moore 

Bake It Like You Mean It by Gesine Bullock-Prado

Bake It In a Cupcake: 50 Treats With a Surprise Inside by Megan Seling [eBook] 

Great British Bake Off 2013  by Linda Collister 

Surprise-Inside Cakes: Amazing Cakes For Every Occasion-- With a Little Something Extra Inside by Amanda Rettke 

Let Us All Eat Cake: Gluten-Free Recipes For Everyone's Favorite Cakes by Catherine Ruehle with Sarah Scheffel 

Saved By Cake: Over 80 Ways to Bake Yourself Happy by Marian Keyes 

Twisted Cakes: Deliciously Evil Designs for Every Occasion by Debbie Goard [eBook] 

A World of Cake: 150 Recipes For Sweet Traditions From Cultures Near and Far by Krystina Castella 

Vintage Cakes: Timeless Cupcakes, Flips, Rolls, Layer, Angel, Snack, Chiffon, and Icebox Cakes For Today's Sweet Tooth by Julie Richardson   

Modern Art Desserts: Recipes For Cakes, Cookies, Confections, and Frozen Treats Based on Iconic Works of Art by Caitlin Freeman

If you enjoy baking,  have you considered checking out a cake pan from the library? The library catalog also has lots of books about baking bread...we just didn't choose that as our focus. Because dessert.