"Chez Panisse" news and stories

Jonathan Waters. Photo: Robert Messick.

Strawberries with wine? It's not a pairing most people ask Chez Panisse sommelier Jonathan Waters about. In fact, he can't remember anyone ever asking him to take the sweet-tart berry -- which has dotted dessert menus for much of the summer -- and combine it with a crisp, ethereal vino. Champagne, yes, but wine, no.

"It's pretty rare that somebody would have strawberries with wine," says Waters (no relation to that other Chez Panisse Waters), who has worked at the restaurant for more than 20 years.

That said, he thinks the two are a very plausible match and was up to the challenge. We caught up with him to chat strawberries, Alice Waters' practice of finishing a meal with seasonal fruit, and his thoughts on organic wine.

Do you guys ever serve whole strawberries?
We do. We serve them at the end of a meal. Alice's idea is that the perfect end of a meal is a fruit. If you have ever read [David Mas] Masumoto's book about peaches ... we only serve strawberries for a very short window because it's a short season when they are perfect.

Does the restaurant serve them other ways?
We serve strawberries with other things for a longer period, like macerated strawberries over sherbet or strawberry shortcake.

Photo: Amazon.com

'A Great American Cook:
Recipes from the Home Kitchen of One of Our Most Influential Cooks'
Jonathan Waxman with Tom Steele
Photographs by John Kernick
Houghton Mifflin -- 2007
Buy it on Amazon

It's rather hilarious when a chef's cookbook matches his real-life persona.

We interviewed Jonathan Waxman -- of recent "Top Chef Masters" fame -- a year or two ago about how to properly cut open an artichoke. He was confident that we'd be able to briskly pick up the trick (which could cause an untrained cook to handily slice off a digit) without much practice.

It shouldn't have been a surprise that the man who trained Bobby Flay in the kitchen some 20 years ago is a pretty darn good teacher, and we were happily producing pretty decent artichoke specimens within minutes.

That same confident, coaxing voice is present throughout Waxman's cookbook, a hodgepodge of his culinary experiences. From the red-pepper pancakes with corn and caviar he introduced at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse to a potato gratin he picked up while training in France, this is a fine compilation from a man who has trained many of the American greats -- and who used to hobnob with the likes of James Beard and Julia Child.

What we tested and whether the book's worth buying, after the jump.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are embarking upon a Bento Boom. The prettily packaged (often very elaborate) box lunch has been around in Japan since the 1600s, has its share of obsessives stateside, and now boasts an upscale San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur as its, uh, bentoperson. Meet Peko-Peko (Japanese for "hungry").

How can a simple, typically cheap boxed lunch go upscale? Well, owner Sylvan Brackett's restaurant background is at Alice Waters' famed local eatery Chez Panisse. His tribute to the food of his childhood -- his mother is Japanese -- do not come cheap. When they're so gorgeously presented in beautiful "to go" boxes, or on traditional servingware when catered, we'd be inclined to shell out the $25 minimum. (Full disclosure: We sampled Brackett's incredible potstickers as college acquaintances). Seasonal, organic ingredients might include Marin Sun Pork Kakuni (soy and sake-simmered pork belly) with chrysanthemum greens or a layered box of Dungeness crab, pork cutlet, local pickled ginger and Brackett's house-brined umeboshi (pickles).

Though gourmet bento has not yet charmed all of America, Brackett studied the cuisine in Japan and declares, "Beautifully laid out food is common there." How does Mom feel about him taking the casual food she served him as a tot and bringing it to the Alice Waters crowd? "She thinks it's amusing."

Check out this week's New York Times magazine, which features several recipes from Chez Panisse chef David Tanis's new cookbook. The book, "A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes," embodies the Chez Panisse philosophy: "simple cooking meant to illuminate nature's perfect simplicity."

Think strawberries elevated with just a splash rose-petal syrup; braised carrots with a whiff of saffron, simple avocado salad of avocados, scallions, salt and limes. There are three featured recipes in the magazine: no-casing fennel sausage with nothing more than pork, salt, crushed red pepper, fennel seed and garlic; the aforementioned saffron carrots, and a moist, deeply mahogany duck breast with baked figs.

Source