Gjelina : cooking from Venice, California

554 Pages·2015·81.04 MB·English

by  Michael Graydon

Text copyright © 2015 by Travis Lett.
Photographs copyright © 2015 by Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission
from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-45213344-7 (epub, mobi) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2809-2 (hc)
Designed by Alice Chau
Prop styling by Amy Wilson
Food styling by Judith Babis, Travis Lett, and Nikole Herriott Chronicle books and gifts are
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In Memoriam
Lyla Louise Lett
June 25, 1942–April 30, 2011
My mother represented all that is good in this world. A constant source of
positivity and encouragement, she was the hardest-working, most-
dedicated mother I have ever known. Among other acts, she made
nutrition, environmentalism, animal activism, and sustainability her life’s
work and instilled a high value of them in me early on. Common colds
work and instilled a high value of them in me early on. Common colds
were treated with umeboshi plum and bancha tea in our house, not
Sudafed. Right or wrong, the idea of health and what we ate were not
conversations that were mutually exclusive, so naturally I grew up looking
at food as medicine and diet being an overall statement of health and a
person’s belief system. People thought my mother was out of her mind for
driving ninety minutes to the closest farmers’ market in western New
Jersey. Brown rice went into the pressure cooker and onto the stove early
in the day to be ready for dinner, and seasonal vegetable–based cooking
was all I knew. I can still hear the sound of the stove clicking on as she
started working on the night’s fare, only moments after coming through
the door from her first-grade teaching gig at the local public school. My
gratitude for the love and wisdom she imparted is immeasurable.