Judy Rodgers, chef-owner of San Francisco's Zuni Cafe, has produced a true classic with The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. This book gives the cook and the reader two accessible temptations: to read from cover to cover, and to cook from cover to cover. One of the great voices in food writing today, Judy Rodgers truly stands shoulder-to-shoulder with any of the master food writers who have preceded and influenced her. Her writing is as delicious as the famous Zuni Roast Chicken with Bread Salad, as simple and elegant as the Zuni Cafe Caesar Salad.While firmly anchored in the food sentiments of California, Rodgers explores the honest cuisine généreuse of France, Tuscany, Umbria, Sicily, Catalonia, and Greece. Her chapter "Small Dishes to Start a Meal" runs to 65 pages! Look for her Lentil-Sweet Red Pepper Soup with Cumin and Black Pepper, her Citrus Risotto, and her Tomato Summer Pudding. Be sure to try Short Ribs Braised in Chimay Ale, and Rabbit with Marsala and Prune-Plums. Chapters are devoted to eggs, starchy dishes, sausage and charcuterie, and the cheese course; you'll also find all the basic chapters one might expect. Throughout, Gerald Asher provides insight into matching wines with foods.
Rodgers's natural instinct is to share and to teach, and the instructional material in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook is like a deep-tissue massage, improving any cook's posture and performance. Rodgers's fine book invites both the novice and the experienced cook to delve deep into the heart of real food and real cooking. --Schuyler Ingle
From Library Journal
Rogers has been running San Francisco's Zuni Cafe for decades, and this book provides much insight into the restaurant and recipes for its best-known dishes. Much more than a souvenir collection of restaurant recipes, the volume is at times a philosophical treatise on how to eat and cook. Rogers begins with an introduction that describes how she became a chef and went to work at the cafe. Other sections, including "What To Think About BeforeYou Start," continue her leisurely pace and gentle instruction. Like Alice Waters, Rogers pays special attention to the quality of her ingredients and frequently calls for specialty goods to which not all cooks have easy access, but she's never didactic. She wants her readers to pay attention to and respect their food. Extensive headnotes lead most recipes; new cooks may be overwhelmed by the amount of information and the sophisticated techniques, but experienced cooks will find every page worth reading. While not an essential purchase for public libraries with tight budgets and limited patron demand for cookbooks, this lovely book is highly recommended for extensive cookery collections. (Index and photos not seen.)-Devon Thomas, Hass MS&L, Ann Arbor, MI
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Bursting with wisdom from every page…Even if it only contained her influential manifesto on salting meats, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook would still be name-checked by countless working cooks as the one book they’d save from a burning kitchen."
― Kevin Pang, AV Club
"This year's best cookbook―the one people are still likely to be talking about, and cooking from, 20 years down the line.... Just opening this book up is like plunking down the needle on one of those old LP's that tells you, on first listen, that you've made a friend you're going to keep for the rest of your life."
― New York Times
"Authenticity, roots, craft; recipes deft as short stories. If you're buying only one, this is it."
― Newsweek, "Year's Ten Best in Food"
"This marriage of seasoned European sensibility and California café culture is the best of both worlds, and it's the reason why you should rush out and buy this book."
― Christopher Kimball, Cook's Illustrated
"Perhaps more valuable than anything else in Judy Rodgers' impressive The Zuni Café Cookbook is the wisdom of her detailed writings, present in recipes from a simple crostini to an elaborate multi-step braise. Rodgers' understated sensibilities, borne of many years of cooking, illuminate the book's creative composition and leave the reader with not just a great set of recipes, but with an education, too."
― Fine Cooking
"Better than the cuisine, though, is the writing―and how many restaurant cookbooks can you say that about? Even the recipes are a joy to read."
― Russ Parsons, Los Angeles Times
"The Zuni Café Cookbook was the best reviewed cookbook in 2002. The critics love Rodgers's writing, some claiming that the introductory section alone should be required reading for anyone who ever wants to cook....Rodgers has helped define California cuisine, and this cookbook captures it well."
― Bookmarks, five star review
About the Author
Judy Rodgers (1956―2013) was chef and owner of the Zuni Café in San Francisco.
Gerald Asher is a lifelong devotee to wine. Wine editor of Gourmet for 30 years, he has been honored for his writing and work in the international wine trade. He holds the Order of the Mérite Agricole from the French government and is an inductee of California’s Vintners’ Hall of Fame.
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