Most Popular Books by Alice Waters

Alice Waters, the iconic food luminary, presents 200 new recipes that share her passion for the many delicious varieties of vegetables, fruits, and herbs that you can cultivate in your own kitchen garden or find at your local farmers’ market. A beautiful vegetable-focused book, The Art of Simple Food II showcases flavor as inspiration and embodies Alice’s vision for eating what grows in the earth all year long. She shares her understanding of the whole plant, demystifying the process of growing and cooking your own food, and reveals the vital links between taste, cooking, gardening, and taking care of the land. Along the way, she inspires you to feed yourself deliciously through the seasons. From Rocket Salad with Babcock Peaches and Basil to Moroccan Asparagus and Spring Vegetable Ragout to Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, Alice shares recipes that celebrate the ingredients she loves: tender leaf lettuces, fresh green beans, stone fruits in the height of summer, and so much more. Advice for growing your own fruits and vegetables abounds in the book—whether you are planting a garden in your backyard or on your front porch or fire escape. It is gleaned from her close relationships with local, sustainable farmers.

Offers a look at an organic garden on school grounds, which are tended and harvested by students and the benefits that arise from it.

The New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed memoir from cultural icon and culinary standard bearer Alice Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of what is arguably America''s most influential restaurant. When Alice Waters opened the doors of her "little French restaurant" in Berkeley, California in 1971 at the age of 27, no one ever anticipated the indelible mark it would leave on the culinary landscape—Alice least of all. Fueled in equal parts by naiveté and a relentless pursuit of beauty and pure flavor, she turned her passion project into an iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers. In Coming to My Senses Alice retraces the events that led her to 1517 Shattuck Avenue and the tumultuous times that emboldened her to find her own voice as a cook when the prevailing food culture was embracing convenience and uniformity. Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing to Berkeley in 1964 at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, she was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic figures whose views on design, politics, film, and food would ultimately inform the unique culture on which Chez Panisse was founded. Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is at once deeply personal and modestly understated, a quietly revealing look at one woman''s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist who effects social and political change on a global level through the common bond of food.

"Extraordinary," "poetic," and "inspired" are only a few words that have been used to describe the food at Chez Panisse. Since the first meal served there in 1971, Alice Waters''s Berkeley, California, restaurant has revolutionized American cooking, earning its place among the truly great restaurants of the world. Renowned for the brilliant innovations of its ever-changing menu, Chez Panisse has also come to represent a culinary philosophy inspired by nature -- dedicated to the common interest of environment and consumer in the use of gloriously fresh organic ingredients. In Chez Panisse Cooking, chef Paul Bertolli -- one of the most talented chefs ever to work with Alice Waters -- presents the Chez Panisse kitchen''s explorations and reexaminations of earlier triumphs. Expanding upon -- and sometimes simplifying -- the concepts that have made Chez Panisse legendary, Bertolli provides reflections, recipes, and menus that lead the cook to a critical and intuitive understanding of food itself, of its purest organic sources and most sublime uses. Perhaps best described by Richard Olney, "Paul Bertolli''s cuisine is what ''health food'' should be and never is: a celebration of purity. The food is imaginative but never complicated; it is art." Enhanced by Gail Skoff''s breathtaking hand-colored photographs, Paul Bertolli''s recipes remind us of the simple and passionate joys in cooking and of the inspiration to be drawn from each season''s freshest foods: glistening local salmon creates a wildly colorful springtime carpaccio or is grilled later in the season with tomatoes and basil vinaigrette; autumn''s fresh white truffles are sliced into an extraordinarily textured salad of pastel hues with fennel, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese; figs left on the tree until they grow heavy and sweet appear in a fall fruit salad with warm goat cheese and herb toast. Season by season, Chez Panisse Cooking will captivate the senses and imagination of the cook with such entrancing recipes as Sugar Snap Peas with Brown Butter and Sage; Buckwheat Cakes with Smoked Salmon, Creme Fraiche, and Capers; Grilled Fish Wrapped in Fig Leaves with Red Wine Sauce; Lamb Salad with Garden Lettuces, Straw Potatoes, and Garlic Sauce; Marinated Veal Chops Grilled over an Oak Fire; or Seckel Pears Poached in Red Wine with Burnt Caramel. Here, some of the restaurant''s most remarkable recent menus for special occasions are recreated, from a White Truffle Dinner to the Chez Panisse Tenth Annual Garlic Festival, to a supper for poet Vikram Seth that began. with "The Season''s song, a summer ballad/Tomatoes, basil, flowers, beans/In unison dance, Lobster Salad..." Many of these recipes reflect Paul Bertolli''s love of northern Italian food; for other dishes, the inspiration is French; in all, there is a keen awareness of the abundance of uncompromisingly pure, seasonal ingredients to be found in America. Above all, the Chez Panisse recipes are meant to inspire the cook to create his or her own version; to awaken the senses to the nuances of taste, texture, and color in cooking; to "discover the ecstatic moments when the intuition, skill, and accumulated experience of the cook merge with the taste and composition of the food." Since its original publication in 1988, this classic cookbook has proved to be indispensable to the shelf of every serious cook and every serious cookbook reader.

Alice Waters has been a champion of the sustainable, local cooking movement for decades. To Alice, good food is a right, not a privilege. In the Green Kitchen presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart plus more than 50 recipes—for delicious fresh, local, and seasonal meals—from Alice and her friends. She demystifies the basics including steaming a vegetable, dressing a salad, simmering stock, filleting a fish, roasting a chicken, and making bread. An indispensable cookbook, she gives you everything you need to bring out the truest flavor that the best ingredients of the season have to offer. Contributors: Darina Allen * Dan Barber * Lidia Bastianich * Rick Bayless * Paul Bertolli * David Chang * Traci Des Jardins * Angelo Garro * Joyce Goldstein * Thomas Keller * Niloufer Ichaporia King * Peggy Knickerbocker * Anna Lappé & Bryant Terry * Deborah Madison * Clodagh McKenna * Jean-Pierre Moullé * Joan Nathan * Scott Peacock * Cal Peternell * Gilbert Pilgram * Clair Ptak * Oliver Rowe * Amaryll Schwertner * Fanny Singer * David Tanis * Poppy Tooker * Charlie Trotter * Jerôme Waag * Beth Wells

Chez Panisse opened its doors in 1971. Founded by Alice Waters, the restaurant is rooted in her conviction that the best-tasting food is organic, locally grown, and harvested in ecologically sound ways by people who are taking care of the land for future generations. The quest for such ingredients has always determined the restaurant’s cuisine, and, over the course of forty years, Chez Panisse has helped create a community of local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures the restaurant a steady supply of fresh and pure ingredients. In Forty Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, Alice takes readers on her journey from the humble and visionary beginnings of the restaurant, through its rise and the acclaim, to the Café and the influential Chez Panisse Foundation. Organized by decade, the book includes a wealth of archival material and photographs—menus; invitations; pictures of Alice at the restaurant and around the world, with those who have passed through her life—and interviews from public figures and cooks who have been inspired by or mentored at the restaurant. This tribute to the delicious food revolution that began with Alice Waters and Chez Panisse is an important work for anyone who cares about food, sustainability, and the powerful legacy that Alice has built.

In this collection of essays and recipes, Alice Waters showcases the simple building-block ingredients she uses to create gratifying, impromptu meals all year long. In her most intimate and compelling cookbook yet, Alice invites readers to step not into the kitchen at Chez Panisse, but into her own, sharing how she shops, stores, and prepares the pantry staples and preserves that form the core of her daily meals. Ranging from essentials like homemade chicken stock, red wine vinegar, and tomato sauce to the unique artisanal provisions that embody Alice’s unadorned yet delightful cooking style, she shows how she injects even simple meals with nuanced flavor and seasonal touches year-round. From fresh cheeses to quick pickles to sweets and spirits, these often-used ingredients are, as she explains, the key to kitchen spontaneity when combined with simple grains, vegetables, and other staple items. With charming pen-and-ink illustrations by her daughter, Fanny and Alice’s warm, inviting tone, the latest book from our most influential proponent of simple, organic cooking ensures a gracious, healthy meal is always within reach.

From chef and food activist Alice Waters, an impassioned plea for a radical reconsideration of the way each and every one of us cooks and eats In We Are What We Eat, Alice Waters urges us to take up the mantle of slow food culture, the philosophy at the core of her life’s work. When Waters first opened Chez Panisse in 1971, she did so with the intention of feeding people good food during a time of political turmoil. Customers responded to the locally sourced organic ingredients, to the dishes made by hand, and to the welcoming hospitality that infused the small space—human qualities that were disappearing from a country increasingly seduced by takeout, frozen dinners, and prepackaged ingredients. Waters came to see that the phenomenon of fast food culture, which prioritized cheapness, availability, and speed, was not only ruining our health, but also dehumanizing the ways we live and relate to one another. Over years of working with regional farmers, Waters and her partners learned how geography and seasonal fluctuations affect the ingredients on the menu, as well as about the dangers of pesticides, the plight of fieldworkers, and the social, economic, and environmental threats posed by industrial farming and food distribution. So many of the serious problems we face in the world today—from illness, to social unrest, to economic disparity, and environmental degradation—are all, at their core, connected to food. Fortunately, there is an antidote. Waters argues that by eating in a “slow food way,” each of us—like the community around her restaurant—can be empowered to prioritize and nurture a different kind of culture, one that champions values such as biodiversity, seasonality, stewardship, and pleasure in work. This is a declaration of action against fast food values, and a working theory about what we can do to change the course. As Waters makes clear, every decision we make about what we put in our mouths affects not only our bodies but also the world at large—our families, our communities, and our environment. We have the power to choose what we eat, and we have the potential for individual and global transformation—simply by shifting our relationship to food. All it takes is a taste.

In this multigenerational cookbook for adults and children alike, Alice Waters, the award-winning chef and food activist, champions an empowered relationship between students and organic food, offering delicious recipes that will nourish future generations—and ourselves—from the inside out Education and food are two universal rights: all children deserve to go to school, and everyone should have the opportunity to eat nutritious food. After Alice Waters launched the farm-to-table movement with the opening of her acclaimed restaurant Chez Panisse, she went on to found the Edible Schoolyard Project, inspiring schools to source their food from local regenerative farmers and developing an edible education that would transform the school food experience for children worldwide. Now, in A School Lunch Revolution, the culinary icon reimagines the way we feed our children at school and at home. Beginning with what we cook in our kitchens, this book offers the first step to teaching the next generation the lifelong values of eating whole foods. Inspired by international food traditions, these versatile recipes explore an array of textures and tastes guided by the principles Waters believes compose memorable, organic meals: local and seasonal, affordable, diverse, simple and delicious, and beautiful. From one of the nation’s most beloved chefs, here is a revolutionary reinterpretation of the classic school lunch for a more sustainable future.

This classic cookbook brings together 87 recipes for pasta sauces and 36 pizza and calzone recipes, as well as tasty pasta doughs, such as buckwheat, red pepper and saffron. Featuring beautiful line drawings throughout, the book is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate. Alice Waters, whom Craig Claiborne has called “that great American rarity, a deservely celebrated native-born chef,” gives us here the extraordinary pastas, pizzas, and calzones that she serves in her famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkley, California. Based on the freshest and best seasonal ingredients, every recipe is bursting with flavor and unexpected combinations. Inspired as much by Providence as by Italy, these recipes reveal Chez Panisse''s strong Mediterranean affinities, not only in the choice of ingredients, but also in the combinations that make them so tantalizing. Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza & Calzone will send cooks from the garden to the kitchen, rejoicing in the bounty of nature and in miraculous transformations of fresh, beautiful ingredients into tantalizing meals. Praise for Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza & Calzone “After reading Alice Water''s new book, I''m ready to proclaim her a culinary oracle. She dazzles me—the things she does with garden-fresh ingredients, the unexpected and wonderful results she obtains. This is a glorious book by a great chef.”—Paula Wolfert “These recipes are fun to read, a good combination of the tried and true and the extrasensory perception that is almost a trademark of Alice''s cooking. I especially like havuing the four seasonal sections in which the accent is on what is fresh then. The fruits and herbs and everything else that goes on the table are of that one special time in the year.”—M.F.K. Fisher “Pizza? What an odd, ordinary thing for one of America''s most respected establishments to put on the menu. When the pizza came and I tasted it, I saw what Alice Waters was about: the ordinary made extraordinary by the use of fine unusual ingredients—in this case girolles in a general creaminess, spiked with a little Parmesan and onion—put together by a skillful and unusual taste.”—Jane Grigson

Biscotti is the first of eight to ten small hardcover cookbooks, each based on a single subject.

“Chez Panisse is an extraordinary dining experience. . . . It is Alice Waters''s brilliant gastronomic mind, her flair for cooking, and her almost revolutionary concept of menu planning that make Chez Panisse so exciting.”—James Beard Justly famed for the originality of its ever-changing menu and the range and virtuosity of its chef and owner, Alice Waters, Chez Panisse is known throughout the world as one of America''s greatest restaurants. Dinner there is always an adventure—a different five-course meal is offered every night, and the restaurant has seldom repeated a meal since its opening in 1971. Alice Waters is a brilliant pioneer of a wholly original cuisine, at once elegant and earthy, classical and experimental, joyous in its celebration of the very finest and freshest ingredients. In this spectacular book, Alice Waters collects 120 of Chez Panisse''s best menus, its most inspired transformations of classic French dishes. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook is filled with dishes redolent of the savory bouquet of the garden, the appealing aromas and roasty flavors of food cooked over the charcoal grill, and the delicate sweetness of fish fresh from the sea. There are menus here for different seasons of the year, for picnics and outdoor barbecues and other great occasions. Handsomely designed and illustrated by David Lance Goines, this is an indispensable addition to the shelf of every great cook and cookbook readers. “A lovely book, wonderfully inventive, and the food is very pure.”—Richard Olney