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Bestia: Italian Recipes Created in the Heart of L.A. [A Cookbook] by [Ori Menashe, Genevieve Gergis, Lesley Suter]

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Lesley Suter

Genevieve Gergis

Bestia: Italian Recipes Created in the Heart of L.A. [A Cookbook] Kindle Edition

by Ori Menashe (Author), Genevieve Gergis (Author), Lesley Suter (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 299 ratings

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This debut cookbook from L.A.'s phenomenally popular Bestia restaurant features rustic Italian food that is driven by intense flavors, including house-made charcuterie, pizza and pasta from scratch, and innovative desserts inspired by home-baked classics.

IACP AWARD FINALIST

Since opening in downtown Los Angeles in 2012, Bestia has captivated diners with its bold, satisfying, and flavor-forward food served in a festive, communal atmosphere. Now, in this accessible and immersive debut cookbook, all of the incredible dishes that have made Bestia one of the most talked-about restaurants in the country are on full display. Rooted in the flavors and techniques of Italian regional cooking, these recipes include inventive hits like fennel-crusted pork chops; meatballs with ricotta, tomato, greens, and preserved lemon; and agnolotti made with cacao pasta dough. Irresistible desserts such as apple cider donuts and a chocolate budino tart, from co-owner and pastry chef Genevieve Gergis, end the concert of flavors on a high note. With chapters on making bread, pasta, and charcuterie; sections on stocks and sauces; and new ideas for getting the most from your cooking by layering flavors, Bestia delivers a distinctively innovative approach to Italian-inspired cooking.

Print length

319 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Ten Speed Press
Publication date

October 30, 2018
File size

245850 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Best Cookbooks of Fall 2018
—New York Times

"The recipes are uncompromising, calling for smoking, then dehydrating and finally grinding anchovies, and smoking pork fat to infuse bourbon to make an Old Fashioned. Those who push forward, however, are rewarded with dishes that smartly layer flavor like stinging nettle pappardelle with mushrooms and a fried egg, and a butterscotch-coconut tart."
—Food & Wine

"L.A.'s insanely beloved restaurant, Bestia, has put together a cookbook full of the same flavorful regional Italian cooking served at the beautiful restaurant. There are chapters on making bread, pasta, and charcuterie, as well as sections about building flavor with stocks and sauces. The accessible instructions just might make it possible to recreate the flavors you loved so much on your last trip to Los Angeles."
—Epicurious

"Now, after nearly a decade in business, what is arguably the city’s best Italian restaurant can enter our kitchens. ... The Bestia staples are all there, including the cavatelli alla Norcina, the agnolotti alla Vaccinara with oxtail, the ’nduja, and the branzino with herb confetti, as are a few cocktails, for good measure. Much like the agnolotti, this cookbook is a must-have."
—Time Out Los Angeles

Praise for the Bestia restaurant:

"A soaring indoor-outdoor fantasy of a modern Italian restaurant."
—Bon Appétit

"Bestia exemplifies the modern Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, but at this point, Bestia may be best known as the downtown restaurant you can't get into."
—Jonathan Gold, Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Ori Menashe is co-owner and executive chef of Bestia.

Genevieve Gergis is the co-owner and pastry chef of Bestia.

Lesley Suter is the former deputy editor for Los Angeles magazine and a two-time James Beard award-winner for food writing. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION

OUR FOOD

Ori: I can’t really explain it, but Italian food has always had a hold on me. I’m not Italian, but I’ve long identified with the festive, loud, communal style of eating that’s particular to the Italian table. And since my earliest days as a chef, I’ve somehow had an instinctual understanding of how to work with Italian flavors. They just feel familiar. Not that I haven’t wanted to try other things. During the ten years I spent working in Italian restaurants, I had many opportunities to cook with acclaimed chefs from France and Japan. But somehow, in every case, Italian food drew me back in and it has never let me go.

Bestia’s food has its roots in the flavors of Italy. Most of our dishes draw inspiration from some traditional recipe, and we share the very Italian approach of showcasing the best of what’s local, fresh, and seasonal. From there, though, the Italian influence stops. Instead, we look beyond any formal culinary style—to our own life experiences, our travels, and daily influences—to create dishes that are wholly original and wholly us.

For example, the Pineapple Mostarda alongside our Grilled Pork Porterhouse is a salute to the al pastor trucks cruising LA after midnight. Our Charred Shishito Peppers with Squid Ink Aioli derives its flavor profile from Spain, one of our favorite places to travel. If you pick up the aroma of fig leaves in our lamb ragu, look to the giant fig tree shading Bestia’s front patio to know why. And the base of creamy yogurt beneath our lamb belly confit reminds me a little of the kebabs I grew up eating in Israel. More than any geographic region or culinary canon, the foods of Bestia are a reflection of our combined life experiences and, more important, our desire to extract the most flavor we can from the highest-quality ingredients.

Everything we serve at Bestia is designed to achieve maximum “craveability.” I want you to take one bite of a dish and then feel compelled to have another one. And then another one. I think, “How can I make you to want to taste this again and again and again, no matter how full you are?” It’s the same kind of trick that MSG pulls on your brain, but I achieve it organically, through building layer upon layer of natural umami. That’s the reason behind our emphasis on dehydrated ingredients, reduced sauces, cured meats, and aged cheeses. Processes like smoking, dehydrating, aging, and fermenting all bring out an ingredient’s inherent savoriness. Put one or two—or even five—elements like that into a dish and you can create something that’s completely addictive.

Genevieve: Our pastry program has the same goal. It’s why I love to add savory ingredients like saffron and bay leaves and herbs and cheeses to my desserts. A generous use of salt and bitter elements further help to round out the flavor profile, creating something that’s balanced, delicious, and so much more than “just sweet.”

But as much as we’re about enhancing flavors, we don’t want to amplify every ingredient or dish; that can become too much. Instead, we pick one or two key elements to highlight—just enough to intrigue the palate but not exhaust it. In the end, it’s all about extracting the very best flavor from the very best ingredients. If you want something that’s chocolatey, it should be the creamiest chocolatey flavor. Strawberry ice cream should taste like real strawberries.

Ori: People always ask us, “What kind of food is Bestia?” But it’s so much more about our philosophy and our approach to flavor than any particular style of cooking. We think our recipes included here reflect that. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B079D9H4F5
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ten Speed Press (October 30, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 30, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 245850 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 319 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #109,336 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #6 in Middle Eastern Cooking
- #20 in Western U.S. Cooking, Food & Wine
- #22 in Italian Cooking

Customer Reviews:
4.6 299 ratings

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Lesley Suter
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Lesley Bargar Suter is a two-time James Beard Award winning editor, writer, and cookbook author living in Los Angeles. She was the acting food editor at Los Angeles magazine for 10 years before moving on to launch Eater Travel, where she continues to cover the delicious intersection of food, culture, and identity.
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Genevieve Gergis
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Ori Menashe
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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

299 global ratings

5 star		78%
4 star		10%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Andrea in Los Angeles

Attractive book, but recipes are complex.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 23, 2023

Verified Purchase

Not that practical as an everyday cookbook.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Painterly

Meh

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

I’m sure these recipes are well done, but I was surprised how meat-heavy the menu would be. This book is a meat lovers (especially quality meats) dream. If you don’t shy from whole carcass break downs, or interesting cuts/types of meat, this book is your jam (Also check out, A Girl and Her Pig).

I’m not voting down the quality of the recipes, I’m sure I’ll love some of these. I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, so this won’t be one I use a lot. I’ve never been to the restaurant, I just bought this when the kindle was on sale @ $2.99, so I figured it was worth the risk. Not a bad book, just very meat heavy; preference issues only.

2 people found this helpful

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Dog Owner

One Section of the book is fantastic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

The large section titled Pantry is simply great. Basically it shows how to make a set of building blocks to add exceptional flavor to your dishes. It covers homemade stocks, sauces, vinaigrettes, pickles, preserves, compound butters, and more to raise the quality of your dishes. This is something relatively easy to do but will take you cooking to a much higher level.

One person found this helpful

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Sean J.

The most treasured cookbook of all time

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

We're huge fans of Bestia and it's a must-go every time we visit my family in S. Cal from the San Francisco Bay Area. I had lived in New York City for several years and had been to most of the top restaurants there, yet Bestia remains my most favorite restaurant of all time, not only because of the creative dishes with complex flavor, but also because it's authentic and unpretentious with a California ambiance to match. Needless to say I was delighted to see that the recipes for some of my most favorite dishes are in there. While cooking them myself won't replace the enjoying experience of eating in the restaurant, it's certainly great to have the recipes to try out in between trips. The recipes are easy to follow, and the story of how the restaurant started is inspirational. It is very generous of Ori and Genevieve to share the secret of their success. This will be the go-to cookbook for my retirement years.

2 people found this helpful

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Ryan G.

Best Restaurant in LA

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2018

Verified Purchase

Bestia is undoubtedly the best restaurant in LA and, by far my favorite restaurant anywhere (which is saying something since it's on the opposite side of the country). I make sure to make a visit to Bestia every time I'm in LA. Needless to say, I was excited to see that they had written a cookbook. I figured that it would be based on some of their recipes, but I was very happy that it includes everything I've ever eaten at Bestia! This is a really thorough book with plenty of information about technique for the recipes. I haven't had a chance to cook anything from it yet, but if my results are even half as good as the food at the restaurant, it'll be spectacular.

6 people found this helpful

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haoplee

Love the restaurant, book could be better quality

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

My favorite pasta restaurant in LA. Looking forward to trying these recipes, even though some are 4 pages long. I expected more from the publishing. Pages are stuck together and the print/photos aren't high quality. However, the content and information given is pretty cool.

2 people found this helpful

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P. Ike

Want to try everything in this book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book really tells you how to do everything. Not for the unadventurous. But is for people who really want to cook. It is also a good read. I would give this 6 stars if I could. But know ahead of time the author assumes you are curious and intelligent and gives you tools to work with.

One person found this helpful

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Jee Park

The Best Cookbook written by The Best Chef

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is by far the best cookbook I have ever owned. I can feel the hard work and love chef Ori has dedicated to this restaurant by reading each page of this cookbook. He is without a doubt the best chef I know who cooks with all his heart and pride. His food is love itself and is truly inspirational for cooks including myself.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Poonam

Amazing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

Amazing reference book

steve lewis

Great!

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 26, 2020

Verified Purchase

Awesome book

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