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While we may not all be able to enjoy
California's sunshine and scenery,
you can take your tastebuds on a tour of delicious and healthy Californian
food.
On this page, you'll find a great selection of Californian Cook Books.
By Thomas Keller
Artisan Hardcover (336 pages)
 | List Price: $50.00 Lowest New Price: $28.33 Lowest Used Price: $25.93 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Amazon.com: To eat at Thomas Keller's Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry, is to experience a peak culinary experience. In The French Laundry Cookbook, Keller articulates his passions and offers home cooks a means to duplicate the level of perfection that makes him one of the best chefs in the U.S. and, arguably, the world. This cookbook provides 150 recipes exactly as they are used at Keller's restaurant. It is also his culinary manifesto, in which he shares the unique creative processes that led him to invent Peas and Carrots--a succulent pillow of a lobster paired with pea shoots and creamy ginger-carrot sauce--and other high-wire culinary acts. It offers unimagined experiences, from extracting chlorophyll to use in coloring sauces to a recipe for chocolate cake accompanied by red beet ice cream and a walnut sauce. You are urged to follow Keller's recipes precisely and also to view them as blueprints. To keep them alive, they must be infused with your own commitment to perfection and pleasure, as you define those terms. Keller's story, shared through the writing of Michael Ruhlman, shows how this chef was both born and made. After winning rave reviews when he was still in his 20s, it took a more experienced chef throwing a knife at him because he did not know how to truss a chicken to open his eyes to the importance of the discipline and techniques of classical French cooking. To acquire these fundamental skills, he apprenticed at eight of the finest restaurants in France. Grounded in classic technique, Keller's cooking is characterized by traditional marriages of ingredients, assembled in breathtakingly daring new ways, such as Pearls and Oyster, glistening caviar and oysters served on a bed of creamy pearl tapioca. Continually piquing the palate, his meals are a procession of 5 to 10 dishes, all small portions vibrantly composed. For example, Pan Roasted Breast of Squab with Swiss Chard, Seared Foie Gras, and Oven-Dried Black Figs require just three birds to serve six. The result: you are never sated, always stimulated. The 200 photographs by Deborah Jones include more than just beauty shots: they show how to prepare various dishes; how Keller, shown stroking a whole salmon, respects his ingredients; and how the perfection of baby fava beans still nestled in the downy lining of their succulent pod, or the seduction of an abundance of fresh caviar, calls out the best from the chef. --Dana Jacobi |
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By Alice L. Waters
William Morrow Cookbooks Released: 1996-03-27 Hardcover (368 pages)
 | List Price: $35.00 Lowest New Price: $20.05 Lowest Used Price: $18.50 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Amazon.com: By now just about everybody whose interest in eating runs deeper than fast food knows about Alice Waters. The creator of Chez Panisse, the legendary restaurant in Berkeley, California, that helped create a modern American cuisine based on fresh ingredients, she is also equally well-known as a teacher and cookbook author. Chez Panisse Vegetables is one of the best new cookbooks of the season; it's as useful for its information about vegetables and how to use and handle them as it is for its irresistible recipes, which lead to complex and interesting dishes built from simple ingredients and simple techniques. |
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By Jan Moore & Glenda Hushaw
Celestial Arts Paperback (95 pages)
 | List Price: $5.95 Lowest New Price: $4.32 Lowest Used Price: $1.69 Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Book Description: If ever a vegetable deserved a cult following, the asparagus is it. Packed with vitamins and minerals, high in fiber, and low in sodium, the asparagus is as healthful as it is flavorful. To celebrate this versatile veggie, Stockton, California, launched its first three-day Asparagus Festival in 1986 and has attracted thousands of ardent asparagus aficionados during the fourth weekend in April ever since. The highlight of the festival is the big-top tent, affectionately known as Asparagus Alley, where gourmet favorites featuring this edible cousin to the lily are prepared and served up to the discerning crowds. THE ASPARAGUS FESTIVAL COOKBOOK highlights the prize-winning recipes from cook-offs past and present, with dishes to please even the pickiest vegetable eaters. |
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By Judy Rodgers
W. W. Norton & Company Hardcover (504 pages)
 | List Price: $35.00 Lowest New Price: $18.00 Lowest Used Price: $9.97 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Amazon.com: 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 |
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By Larry Flax
Wiley Hardcover (112 pages)
 | List Price: $22.00 Lowest New Price: $8.91 Lowest Used Price: $5.94 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description: The California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook BBQ Chicken Pizza, Mixed Grill Vegetarian Pizza, Tandoori Chicken Pizza, Thai Chicken Pizza. These are just a few of the delicious pizzas, baked fresh in wood-burning ovens, that have helped to make California Pizza Kitchen into one of America's hottest and most successful restaurant chains. Founders Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield "put the world on a pizza" and the results are fantastic. Now, for the first time, here are the recipes that have made CPK restaurants so popular, with step-by-step directions to make pizza cooking easy and fun, even for beginners. In addition to the pizzas and calzones, Rick and Larry include recipes for creative pastas, salads, soups and appetizers, not to mention the tempting dessert pizzas. Whether CPK is already your favorite place to dine with family and friends or you're a creative cook with a taste for bold, fun, international flavors, The California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook is the cookbook for you. |
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By Alice L. Waters
William Morrow Cookbooks Released: 1999-08-25 Hardcover (288 pages)
 | List Price: $34.95 Lowest New Price: $10.89 Lowest Used Price: $8.05 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Amazon.com: In the 1970s, Alice Waters helped launch the revolution in American cuisine. She inspired a generation of food lovers with her passion for freshness and the best ingredients. Her influence helped infuse menus all over the U.S. with dishes rooted in Mediterranean cooking, often with a sunny, California twist. Dishes at the casual café, located upstairs in the same enchanting house as Chez Panisse, her more formal restaurant in Berkeley, California, include Wood Oven Baked Porcini Mushrooms, Tuna Confit, and Meyer Lemon Éclairs. Waters suggests making the mushrooms in your fireplace if you can, although recipe directions are for a conventional oven. Typical of the ingredient-driven cooking Waters encourages, the stunning tang of the éclairs requires Meyer lemons: a cross between a lemon and an orange, which are now exported beyond their native California. But the fresh tuna steak gently simmered in olive oil with garlic, fresh thyme, and fennel seeds and served with barely cooked green beans and aïoli, a pungent garlic mayonnaise, is sublime even made in an apartment kitchen. Her point is that you should use her recipes as guides, letting them inspire you to make the most of locally produced, seasonal foods in your area. Alice Waters is an enchanting raconteur and an activist as well as a chef. In The Chez Panisse CaféCookbook, she weaves her beliefs about food as pleasure, sustenance, art, and politics in with over 200 recipes. Bringing you into the community she has been instrumental in creating to preserve the earth's resources as well as to provide great ingredients, Waters tells about the producers who share her passions. They respect the environment, using only sustainable production methods while delivering the freshest possible product, be it free-range poultry and eggs, acorn-fed pigs, impeccable oysters, or organically grown fruits and vegetables. Jewel-colored Art Nouveau-style illustrations by David Goines give this book the same distinctive look as earlier Chez Panisse cookbooks, including those devoted solely to pasta, vegetables and desserts. --Dana Jacobi |
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By Cindy Pawlcyn
Ten Speed Press Hardcover (276 pages)
 | List Price: $39.95 Lowest New Price: $24.95 Lowest Used Price: $22.99 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Amazon.com: "I have always thought of Mustards as a cross between a roadside rib joint and a French country restaurant," writes chef-owner Cindy Pawlcyn, neatly characterizing the culinary pedigree of her famed Napa Valley, California, dining spot. Pawlcyn's Mustards Grill Napa Valley Cookbook, written with Brigid Callinan, offers 150 popular recipes from the restaurant, treats like Slow-Smoked BBQ Pork Sandwiches with Ooo-Eee! Sauce, Wild Mushroom "Burgers" with Apple-Jicama Slaw, and Artichokes with James Beard's Beer Batter and Tarragon Aioli. The recipes can entail a kitchen workout, but they are easy enough to do once the commitment is made. Readers wanting to treat family or guests to sophisticated down-home eating will welcome Pawlcyn's unique repertoire. In chapters that cover appetizers, soups, and salads, Pawlcyn presents standout recipes like Crab Cakes with Red Beet and Horseradish Rémoulade; Tomato, Basil, and Tortilla Soup; and Chinese Chicken Salad with Sesame Noodles and Rice Vinegar Cucumbers. Smoker- and grill-derived specialties, including Half-Slab BBQ Baby Back Ribs with Crispy Yams and Coleslaw and Tea-Smoked Duck with 100-Almond Sauce and Ginger Pickled Mango, receive their own seductive space, as do pan and sandwich delights like Louise's Bouillabaisse with Rouille and Ahi Tuna and Shiitake Mini Burgers. Desserts such as Lemon-Lime Meringue Pie and Red Raspberry, White Peach, and Blueberry Cobbler follow in the deluxe-diner spirit of the place and should prove an irresistible finale to any meal. They're further tribute to Pawlcyn's one-of-a kind restaurant and its instantly seductive cooking. --Arthur Boehm |
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By Peggy Knickerbocker
Chronicle Books Paperback (288 pages)
 | List Price: $22.95 Lowest New Price: $8.03 Lowest Used Price: $7.15 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description: Internationally known as one of the most magnificent farmers' markets in the world, the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market has inspired this gorgeous illustrated market companion. The perfect guide and cookbook -- no matter where you live -- ;each page celebrates the abundant seasonal produce grown by local organic and specialty-crop farmers along with more than 100 fresh, remarkably easy-to-assemble recipes. Organized by season, the book details the availability of products at the market and offers advice on choosing, storing, preparing, and freezing items. A foreword by Alice Waters, the history of the market, and vivid color photos throughout bring this farm fresh market guide to life. |
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By Larry Flax
William Morrow Cookbooks Released: 1999-05-19 Hardcover (112 pages)
 | List Price: $22.00 Lowest New Price: $12.85 Lowest Used Price: $5.49 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description: At California Pizza Kitchen restaurants across the country, many of the favorite dishes (and most-requested recipes) are not the pizzas! Customers keep coming back for the boldly flavored pastas, soups, salads, and side dishes. The follow-up to the bestselling California Pizza Kitchen Cookbook, this new cookbook serves CPK customers just what they ordered -- secret restaurant recipes, never available before. With gorgeous color photographs of the finished dishes throughout the book, CPK fans will be tempted by recipes for Oriental Chicken Salad, Spinach Artichoke Dip, and Kung Pao Spaghetti, to name just a few.The new cookbook will include stories and anecdotes from CPK employees from around the country about favorite recipes, customers, and more. In the generous spirit they're best known for, CPK owners Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield will donate all royalties and proceeds from sales of the book in the restaurants to children's charities. Just like the first CPK cookbook, expect Pasta, Salads, Soups, and Sides to be one of the hottest cookbooks of the year. The CPK chain of restaurants is bigger than ever, and thi5 new hook will be published in the cool California style that has made the first book and the restaurants themselves so popular. |
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By Michael McCarty
Little, Brown and Company Hardcover (240 pages)
 | List Price: $40.00 Lowest New Price: $16.95 Lowest Used Price: $19.00 Usually ships in 24 hours (As of 16:45 Pacific 10 May 2008 More Info)
Click Here | Product Description: Michael McCarty has played a major role in defining a uniquely modern American attitude to cooking, dining, and entertaining since 1979, when he opened his first acclaimed Michael"s restaurant in Santa Monica, California. McCarty"s approach, now enjoyed on both coasts with the opening of Michael's New York in 1989, has always been refreshingly simple: start with the best ingredients, cook them in simple ways that highlight their natural qualities, pair them with great wines, and serve them in a relaxed yet stylish setting. The result, in Michael's own words, should be a "great party," which this book makes possible for any home cook. Adding to the lively spirit of Welcome to Michael's are the voices of dozens of luminaries from the worlds of entertainment, the arts, the media, business, politics, and cooking who share their own insightful, sometimes irreverent opinions about the Michael's experience. The result is a book to be savored on many levels: as a guide to cooking for yourself, your family, and your friends and to entertaining with style; as a primer on the rewarding relationship between food and wine; and as an experience that comes as close as words and pictures possibly can to enjoying a meal at one of Michael's restaurants, surrounded by the luminous personalities who dine there. |
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