America's Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower [Hardcover]

Jeremiah Tower (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 19, 2003

Jeremiah Tower, James Beard Award-winning chef and pioneer of American regional cuisine, cooks with a "who's who" of some of the nation's top chefs in their home kitchens
Companion to the PBS television series, America's Best Chefs
In the early 1970s, Chef Jeremiah Tower's revolutionary ethos of fresh ingredients, simply prepared and presented, shook up the national culinary scene. The successes that followed are legendary, from his trail-blazing Santa Fe Bar and Grill in Berkeley to the acclaimed Stars restaurant in San Francisco. Now, in this companion to the landmark twenty-six-part PBS series, America's Best Chefs, Jeremiah Tower visits 13 James Beard Award-winning chefs and cooks with them in their home kitchens. More than 100 recipes, accompanied by full-color photographs, show home cooks how to make the dishes featured on the show as well as a number of Jeremiah's own creations. The book includes contributions from New York's Michael Romano (Union Square Cafe) and Alain Ducasse (Ducasse), Los Angeles' Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton (Campanile and La Brea Bakery), San Francisco's Nancy Oakes (Boulevard), Chicago's Charlie Trotter (Charlie Trotter's) and Gale Gand (Tru), Philadelphia's Jean-Louis Lacroix (Rittenhouse Hotel), Boston's Ken Oringer (Clio), Arizona's Robert McGrath (Roaring Fork in Scottsdale), Wisconsin's Odessa Piper (L'Etoile in Madison), Alabama's Frank Stitt (Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham), Oregon's Philippe Boulot (The Heathman Bar and Grill in Portland), and Virginia's Patrick O'Connell (The Inn at Little Washington).
Jeremiah Tower (New York, NY) received the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Chef Award in 1996 and is the author of the James Beard Award-winning New American Classics as well as Jeremiah Tower Cooks.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book introduces readers to award-winning chefs including Charlie Trotter in Chicago; Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel in Los Angeles; Alain Ducasse in New York; Patrick O'Connell in Washington, D.C.; and Odessa Piper in Madison, Wis. It is a companion to the PBS series America's Best Chefs.
You'll find an eclectic mix of recipes and ingredients, as well as recommended substitutes if you can't find what is called for locally.
The recipes include pistachio-crusted grilled rack of lamb; venison with huckleberry sauce; butter-braised lobster; slow-roasted salmon; pompano with roasted pumpkin, vanilla bean and grilled lemon. Mixed in with this restaurant fare are quick recipes for pizza dough, skillet cornbread, skillet pecan pie, crepes and shrimp salad. (USA Today, December 4, 2003)

From the Inside Flap

This companion book to the landmark twenty-six-part PBS series America’s Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower presents a candid portrait of fourteen James Beard Award—winning chefs as seen through the eyes of Jeremiah Tower, the legendary chef, author, and acclaimed pioneer of American regional cuisine. He takes a fascinating culinary journey around the country, visiting Alain Ducasse, Michael Romano, Gale Gand, Charlie Trotter, Nancy Silverton, and the other celebrated chefs to reveal how they work with ingredients and techniques to articulate a culinary style and sensibility that is uniquely their own.

Celebrating a culinary heritage as rich and colorful as the American landscape, America’s Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower contains over 100 exceptional recipes, with favorites from each chef’s distinctive repertoire. There are fresh twists on the familiar as well as intriguing new flavor combinations and innovations, ranging from a classic–with a difference–BLT (Alain Ducasse) and flavorful Spaghetti with Oven-Dried Tomatoes and Bottarga (Michael Romano) to a delicate Gougères and Winter Green Salad with Apples and Cheese (Odessa Piper) and deceptively homespun Apple and Rutabaga Soup with Maple Syrup (Patrick O’Connell). A generous sampling of Tower’s own recipes and his take on dishes made with his guests on the show are peppered throughout.

As in the PBS series, America’s Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower reveals how each chef’s unique philosophy of food–and life–is expressed in each dish. From coast to coast, from recipe to recipe, the book is filled with insights on food and flavor that reflect the passion and enthusiasm of chefs talking about their favorite subject–a wonderful resource for every cook who wants to share the recipes and culinary secrets of America’s Best Chefs.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047145141X
• ISBN-13: 978-0471451419
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,349,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

BIOGRAPHY OF JEREMIAH TOWER
February 2010
Jeremiah Tower was born in the United States, educated in Australia, England, France and the United States, and is now an acclaimed authority on food and restaurant hospitality.
He began his culinary career in 1972-1978 as co-owner and executive chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. After the Balboa Café in Francisco, the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in Berkeley, and Ventana in Big Sur from 1978-1984, Jeremiah opened and owned several other successful and highly acclaimed restaurants in San Francisco (Stars, Stars Café, Speedo 690), Hong Kong (The Peak Café), Singapore (Stars) and Seattle (Stars).
Jeremiah sold the Stars restaurants to an Asian group in 1998.
Tower then moved to New York to pursue new projects. After four books and 26 shows for a PBS series, he moved to Italy and Mexico to SCUBA dive and research material for further books.
Jeremiah has written several cookbooks, starting in 1980 as assistant and sometimes co-author with Richard Olney of the Time Life Books' thirty volumes of The Good Cook. In 1986 he published the very successful and James Beard Foundation winner Jeremiah Tower's New American Classics (Harper & Row). In 1995 he contributed to The Artist's Table for the National Gallery of Art. His cookbook, Jeremiah Tower Cooks, was published by Stewart Tabori & Chang in the fall of 2002, and reprinted in June, 2003 and received national press as well as "best cookbook of the year" from Australian Vogue Entertaining. California Dish, a book on the history of the American dining revolution that started in California, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2003 and in 2004 as a paperback. America's Best Chefs with Jeremiah Tower, the companion book for Tower's 26 shows on PBS, was released by John Wiley & sons also in 2003. He then revised and edited Henri-Paul Pellaprat's (for years head of the Cordon Bleu school in Paris) 800-recipe and masterpiece cookbook of classic French cuisine, which was released by Vendome Press in late 2003 as The Great Book of French Cuisine. Also published in late 2003 was his chapter for David and Jean Halberstam's Defining a Nation for Tehabi Press and the National Geographic, and Cooking the Costco Way, for which Jeremiah was the consultant for the California chapter. He has also written several articles for magazines, as well as restaurant guides for London, Paris, New York and San Francisco, and was featured in the 2001 Christmas cover story for Food & Wine. From 2000 to 2004 he was a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, and contributed to The Financial Times Weekend. In that period he also wrote Forwards for The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery, by James Beard, The Farallon Cookbook, by Mark Franz, Stars Desserts (with Stars' pastry chef Emily Luchetti) and the cookbook from Arrows restaurant in Maine.
He has been featured in the Wine Spectator and in The New York Times by Julia Reed.
Tower appeared in the PBS series Julia Child's "Cooking with Master Chefs" and its companion book. He has been featured in other books such as those produced by Tiffany and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as appearing in many other cookbooks, books on the history of food as well as on culinary commentary, most notably Patric Kuh's The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: America's Culinary Revolution, and the very successful books by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. He has been a guest on national and local television programs, and has appeared on "Good Morning America" (ABC) and "CBS This Morning," as well as the Regis show and "The Late Show with David Letterman," and has appeared also on the "Ken Hom Cooking Show" for the B.B.C. He was the star and host of a television series launched in April 2002 on PBS called "America's Best Chefs" that featured twenty-six half hour shows spotlighting the James Beard Foundation Awards' "Best Regional Chefs in America."
Since the 1980's Tower has promoted New American Cuisine with teaching engagements at culinary academies (C.C.A. and C.I.A), cooking expositions and classes in the United States (Epcot International Food & Wine Festival), France, Germany (airline catering conference keynote speaker), Australia (VIN International, and Gourmet Traveler's "Restaurant of the Year" judge), Japan, Hong Kong and other S.E Asian countries, and most recently as a panelist at the New Orleans Writers Conference where his cookbook was one of the best sellers, and as a speaker on 'Diversity' at the prestigious Santa Fe Institute.
He is or has been a member of various food & wine societies, including La Chaine de Rotisseurs, Chevalier de Tastevin, 'LOrdre de Coteaux de Champagne, a Friend of the Widow, The American Institute of Wine and Food (co-founder), The James Beard Foundation, and The International Wine & Food Society.
Other than the James Beard Foundation's award for "Outstanding Chef in America" in 1996, other awards include the 1991 induction into the Nation's Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame, the 1993 Regional Best Chef California by the James Beard Foundation, the prestigious James Beard Foundations' "Who's Who in America," as well as the 1994 USA "Chef of the Year" by Chefs in America.
Jeremiah has lived and traveled over most of the world, and has been involved in consulting and with wine and food promotions in Canada (Hotel Vancouver), Australia, France, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany, Japan and England, and has had national publicity in all of them.
Tower currently lives in Mexico and Italy, working on a two new books and articles for U.S. culinary magazines like Food Arts, as well as buying, restoring, and selling old colonial houses in Merida and working on a major land development at Chichen Itza, both in the Yucatan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Chef's Sampler Menu of Some of our Best Chefs, January 21, 2004

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower (Hardcover)

This book reprises the Julia Child PBS series with chef Jeremiah Tower taking the place of Ms. Julia in working with a selection of chefs selected by their having won a James Beard award for best chef, best regional chef, or best restaurant, or more than one of the above. Since the selection can in no way be considered all of the very best chefs in the country, I suspect their availability and willingness to participate had a lot to do with the selection.

The book delivers a little more than what I expected in that recipes are arranged by course or main ingredient rather than by chef. This means the book is less a chronicle of the PBS series than it is an aid to the reader in finding useful recipes therein. The chapter titles are:

Snacks, First Courses, and Sandwiches
Salads and Soups
Pasta, Breads, and Grains
Fish and Shellfish
Poultry, Rabbit, and Foie Gras
Meats
Vegetables
Desserts
Basic Recipes

The book begins with a one to two page biography of each chef plus a listing of all awards won by their, cooking, their restaurants, or their books. Charlie Trotter is the hands down winner in this category, as he is probably also the best known name among all the chefs in the book. Tower also provides a one to two page sidebar of thoughts on each chef, primarily what it is like to cook in their kitchens. The TV show and Tower traveled to each chef's restaurant in order to tape each episode.

Tower also provides all the recipes for the pantry preparations such as stocks, sauces, and doughs. To my lights, the techniques for doing the stocks is fussy enough to get good results but not so fussy as to discourage you from doing it. The chicken and veal stock procedures correctly instruct you to blanch the bones and to discard the blanching water before cooking the bones in earnest. The fish stock recipe very wisely keeps the cooking to less than 30 minutes. Other authorities have stated that a longer cooking time will turn the stock bitter. Let no one think that Tower does not know his stuff and he is not dumbing it down for the amateur chef.

Tower is less the writer than he is the chef. I found a few awkward sentences that were not caught by the publisher's copy editors.

My favorite thing about books like this is the insight they give to the way great chefs think about ingredients and techniques. Like great athletes whose eye to hand coordination seems almost superhuman or like great chess players who see possibilities in positions which totally escape mere mortals, great chefs seem to be able to compose recipes from an accidental coming together of ingredients as easily as they breathe. This is the premise behind Tom Colicchio's book `How to Think Like a Chef' and it is the mantra that all chefs repeat when they talk about developing their courses for the evening based on what is available in the market that day. Tower gives a few demonstrations of this skill as he provides about 10 percent of the recipes in the book in addition to his contribution of pantry recipes.

The guest chefs largely supply recipes, which are staples at their respective restaurants. I was surprised at some of the omissions. For example, there was neither a bread recipe or sandwich recipe from Nancy Silverton, who has done a whole book on sandwiches. Of the recipes, which do appear, none are ordinary or especially easy. And, since almost all dishes were from the classic American, French, or Italian canon, there were few hard to find ingredients, although some did show up. People living a day's drive from the Pacific coast may have a hard time getting Dungeness crabs. Some dishes such as Alain Ducasse's BLT, Michael Romano's chicken Saltimbocca, and Gail Gand's Hungarian Crepes were tricked up versions of simple classics. Some dishes were `restaurant only' recipes such as Ken Oringer's Roast Suckling Pig.

There are several reasons for acquiring this book:
1. All recipes promise to be delicious, although many are pricy and involve a fair amount of skill.
2. There are a large number of lamb recipes. A major plus if that is your favorite meat.
3. It gives excellent techniques for pantry preparations.

One drawback is that if you already own a fair collection of cookbooks, you will get substantial overlap of basic recipes such as the aforementioned saltimbocca and crepes. A small annoyance is Tower's less than perfect wordsmithing and lapses in the Index. The chicken saltimbocca was missing from the Index.

This book delivers on the quality of recipes what it promises.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jeremiah Tower is today's James Beard, December 8, 2003

By 

Bob Vaningan (Oneonta, Al United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: America's Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower (Hardcover)

Master Tower has inspired my cooking passion since I was an apprentice in 1986 and for Christmas I recieved New American Classics. I still use Tower techniques in my own restaurant.
This book is the best! Not only do we get the master himself, but some of the best chefs in America in cooking harmony. I personally know Frank Stitt, the South's Finest Chef, and love the diversity of flavors and insite this book offers. A master piece from beginning to end. I now have more Tower techniques.
Chef Bob Vaningan
Chef/Owner The Chocolate Cottage Restaurant
Author Cooking in the Deep-South with Chef Bob