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Twelve Recipes Hardcover – October 21, 2014

by Cal Peternell (Author)

118 customer reviews

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Winner of the 2015 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Award

Forewords by Alice Waters and Michael Pollan

In this dazzling, full color cookbook and kitchen manual filled with lush photographs and beautiful drawings, the chef of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse offers basic techniques and essential recipes that will transform anyone into a confident home cook.

When his oldest son was leaving for college, Cal Peternell, the chef of San Francisco’s legendary Chez Panisse, realized that, although he regularly made dinners for his family, he’d never taught them the basics of cooking. Based on the life-altering course of instruction he prepared and honed through many phone calls with his son, Twelve Recipes is the ultimate introduction to the kitchen. Peternell focuses on the core foods and dishes that comprise a successful home cook’s arsenal, each building skill upon skill—from toast, eggs, and beans, to vinaigrettes, pasta with tomato, and rice, to vegetables, soup, meats, and cake.

Twelve Recipes will help home cooks develop a core repertoire of skills and increase their culinary confidence. Peternell tells you what basic ingredients and tools you need for a particular recipe, and then adds variations to expand your understanding. Each tip, instruction, and recipe connects with others to weave into a larger story that illuminates the connection between food and life. A deeply personal book, it was written by the chef alone and it glows with warmth and humor as he mulls over such mundane items as toast and rice to offer surprising new insights about foods that only seem exceedingly ordinary. It’s a book you’re as likely to keep by your bedside as your stovetop. With Peternell as your guide, the journey is pure pleasure and the destination is delicious.

Twelve Recipes features gorgeous color photos and inset illustrations by Peternell’s wife and sons (all artists), and forewords by celebrated chef Alice Waters and New York Times columnist and bestselling author Michael Pollan.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

New York Times Bestseller (New York Times)

IACP Cookbook Award Winner (IACP)

“The best beginner’s cookbook of the year, if not the decade. In addition to being warm, funny and smart, Twelve Recipes will actually teach you to cook… [Peternell] can nudge anyone, from novice to expert, to want to be a better cook… His wit and intelligence are apparent throughout.” (New York Times Book Review)

San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Delightful and instructive. . . . Marked by Peternell’s zeal for good, simple food, this title takes a very different approach from cooking handbooks that emphasize science or technical precision.” (Library Journal (starred review))

“[A] smart new cookbook…written for new cooks, for uncertain cooks, for good cooks looking for simple inspiration, for anyone wrestling with a New Year’s resolution to cook more and better…The recipes are narratives, written conversationally, like excellent emails from a friend explaining how to make béchamel.” (Sam Sifton, New York Times)

A Best Food Book of 2014… “Encouraging and discursive… Peternell [teaches] the oldest of his three sons how to cook… a skill he realized he’d neglected to pass along while he was growing up, even if Alice Waters in her foreword calls Peternell ‘one of the greatest teachers I know.” (The Atlantic)

“Warm, funny, and full of cool recipes. [Cal Peternell’s] decades of working at Chez Panisse are molded into solid, grounded advice for cooks who are just starting out.” (Refinery29.com)

“Chef Peternell offers an informal crash course in the “big 12” recipes “at the heart of home cooking”… Essays have an inviting personal tone, and Peternell encourages cooks to use good sense, relax, and enjoy the unexpected pleasures that come with cooking for yourself and for others.” (Publishers Weekly)

“This book is very much a representation of the chef’s home cooking-nothing fancy, but all prepared properly…The tips and tricks he shares throughout might be game-changers…This is a fun read.” (Yahoo! Food)

From the Back Cover

In this charmingly written, beautifully photographed and illustrated cookbook, the chef of Alice Waters's Chez Panisse offers basic techniques and essential recipes that will transform anyone into a confident home cook

When Cal Peternell, the chef at Berkeley's legendary Chez Panisse, was helping his oldest son pack his things for college and beyond, he naturally set him up with the gear for a new kitchen: a nice skillet, a decent knife, a cutting board, and a colander. He also started writing. Just twelve recipes at first—reminders of foods they'd cooked together and enough to put together some good meals—but what started as a cookbooklet from a father for his sons has become, luckily for the rest of us, Twelve Recipes: a baker's dozen chapters on how to cook and eat well.

Standards—toast, eggs, beans—are renewed with simple elegance and wit. More advanced and adventurous dishes are made accessible. Variations are allowed for and encouraged, rules are well explained and unenforced. Twelve Recipes is a cookbook that will get you into the kitchen and get your friends around the table; an essential and versatile book of recipes, and a book to read with pleasure in and out of the kitchen.

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Product details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks (October 21, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062270303
ISBN-13: 978-0062270306
Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.1 x 9.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 118 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #55 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Education & Reference > Essays
- #192 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > U.S. Regional
- #472 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Methods

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Joseph V. Kelly

My new favorite cookbook

January 18, 2016

Verified Purchase

This is a cooking primer written by Chez Panisse chef Cal Peternell, ostensibly meant as a reference for his kids as they head off to college, but suitable for basically anyone wishing to build a solid cooking repertoire.

The twelve recipes are really skeletal outlines for very simple meals from which Peternell extends dozens of variations by small alterations to ingredients and cooking techniques. Rather than presenting a technical list of recipes, cooking steps, and techniques, it's more an exploration of developing a cooking repertoire, of absorbing and ingraining the DNA of good, simple cooking.

I've tried dozens of the recipes so far, and have found each to produce surprisingly fantastic results. In particular the Not-Summer Marinara, Ragù Finto, and Twice Cooked Pork are superb. The Chocolate Mistake Cake recipe yielded probably one of the better cakes I've made.

Although a lot of the important cooking techniques and information are embedded in family stories or pages of exposition -- which I admit makes some of the recipes harder to delineate and quickly look up -- the writing is breezy, pertinent, and interesting.

19 people found this helpful20 people found this helpful

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Bruce L. Bikle

Back to basics and more

January 26, 2015

Verified Purchase

I am a pretty good cook, and enjoy the process. I learned watching my Mother who was in her day, a great cook. Cal Peternell's book takes me back to the mystery of the kitchen, all the tips and the ways to approach food preparation. An endearing feature of the book is the pictures of happy cooks and eaters, simple and not overblown utensils and a real sense that this should be fun from beginning to end. Cooking for family and friends should not be a chore, but rather a joy, and I do take the joy of cooking for friends and loved ones from the book. I am of of the age when I don't go to too many weddings any more, but this is a great wedding gift; not only for the recipes and the "how to" but for the wonderful written descriptions of this wonderful art of good cookingTwelve Recipes

20 people found this helpful21 people found this helpful

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Hurly

This book taught me how to cook

February 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

At age 35, I am a half decent home cook, but I have zero creativity in the kitchen. My mother is a spectacular cook, but I was never interested in cooking while I was at home, so I didn't learn much. This book has taught me so much - and it is so fun to read!

I'm one of those cooks who likes to follow a recipe to a tee. This can be tricky, because if you're missing an ingredient, you can't make something. This book is designed with a lack of ingredients in mind..."don't have beer? You can use wine. Don't have that? Try stock. Or even water." It is SUCH a relief to have an expert cook tell you all the different ways you can make a single dish, often with stuff you have lying around the house.

I don't love many cookbooks, but this one is a must-buy - and I've bought it for my mom and sister, too. Thanks, Cal, for teaching me how to cook!

18 people found this helpful19 people found this helpful

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MOMOFJAKE

10 stars & epic!

June 10, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book gives me all the feels. My son just completed his Sophomore year of college away from home. I bought this book for him as a gift for his new apartment he'll be moving into with college buddies after the summer. I wrote a heartfelt, meaningful letter to him on the inside hard cover & reminded him that this book will ensure he has the beginning tools to make quality meals in his new apartment. Cal, if you ever read this, thank you from Hawaii for providing an excellent tool that bridges the gap between momma's home cookin' & the ease of cooking it yourself away in college. I adore this book in so many ways. Well written, easy to follow, best college gift I could think to give my only child away at college!!!

5 people found this helpful6 people found this helpful

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Kathy O

A cookbook for real life

February 28, 2015

Verified Purchase

I am seriously loving this cookbook. It is so real life. About 30 minutes ago I was hungry and all I had was some butter, pasta and old cheese in my refrigerator. Oh yeah, I live in California, so I have sage and parsley growing in my yard year round. Anyway I just made the sage and pasta dish in about 15 minutes Yum, yum.

I love all the crummy kitchen cookware and mismatched dishes and happy people in the pictures in this book. It is so not Sur la Table or Williams Sonoma, but I think it doesn't take granite countertops or fancy cookware to make good food.

I highly recommend this book for people intimidated by cooking and for people who have been cooking for a long time who want to learn to improvise. It is a delight to read and a delight to use.

10 people found this helpful11 people found this helpful

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Ann E. Nonimos

Great Use of the KISS Philosophy

May 25, 2018

Verified Purchase

This book was so basic and simple to follow and to recreate his dishes. I particularly liked the idea that it's okay to change recipes in mid preparation if an ingredient is missing.
The reminder throughout the book that home made is always better and in many cases just as easy as prepackaged items without all the unnecessary chemical additives.
One thing I learned about garlic was to add it to salt and make a paste.

2 people found this helpful3 people found this helpful

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Guy de la Rupelle

A must-have cookbook for the novice, and even for someone professional

March 11, 2015

Verified Purchase

Excellent book, the kind I think to myself, "I wish I had written it". It's simple and easy to read and the recipes easy to follow. I've already refered it to two other male friends who where all thumbs when it comes to cooking and found they were able to whip up tasty diners for their families thanks to this book. That's about a good a reference as it gets. Even I, a professional chef, picked up a couple of ideas here and there. That, also, is a good reference.

7 people found this helpful8 people found this helpful

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Carren J

I love this book!!!

May 30, 2018

Verified Purchase

I love this book! Yes there are many stories along with the recipes, but this was never meant to be a "cookbook" only . This makes me imagine being in a discussion with the author, listening to his stories and advice. I loved hearing about his family in the context of cooking and eating (isn't that what it's all about?!). I am very happy that I purchased this book and I look forward to making many of his dishes. Not only is Cal a highly talented cook and teacher, but he seems to be a genuinely lovely -- and loving ! -- human being. Reading this book offers an opportunity to share the experiences and advice of this cook, when the chances of actually standing nearby and being a recipient of all these stories -- as a stranger -- would be close to nil. That's the beauty of any good book.

One person found this helpful2 people found this helpful

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