The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant

628 Pages·2003·4.72 MB·English

by  Judy Rodgers, Gerald Asher

DEDICATION

Méfie-toi du cinéma dans la cuisine

~Jean-Baptiste Troisgros

CONTENTS

Cover
Title Page
Frontispiece
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
WHAT TO THINK

ABOUT BEFORE YOU START, & WHILE YOU ARE COOKING
Deciding What to Cook

The Habit of Tasting, & Finding Flavor Balance
The Practice of Salting Early

On Weighing & Measuring
Consider Your Tools
Choosing the Wines by

Gerald Asher
STOCKS & THE SAUCES THEY MAKE POSSIBLE
DISHES TO START A

MEAL
LEAFY SALADS
SOUPS
EGGS
STARCHY DISHES
VEGETABLES, SAVORY

FRUIT DISHES, PICKLES & PRESERVES
SAUCES & RELISHES
SEAFOOD
POULTRY

BEEF, LAMB, PORK, & RABBIT
SAUSAGE & CHARCUTERIE
A SIMPLE CHEESE COURSE

DESSERTS & PASTRY
Notes on Frequently Used Ingredients & Related Techniques

Sources & Resources
Selected Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Illustrations
Index
A Note About the Author
Copyright

INTRODUCTION

ZUNI CAFE OCCUPIES AN UNLIKELY TRIANGULAR SPACE IN A 1913 BUILDING AT THE
corner of Rose Alley and Market Street in San Francisco, a few blocks to the
wrong side of Civic Center. The front door opens into a gaping bar with two-
story window walls framed by a handful of brick and iron columns. Liquor and
wine bottles are improbably arrayed against the Market Street glass. During the
day the natural light is stunning, and after dusk the space glows like a jeweled
box from two blocks away. The restaurant feels barely contained. It’s not fancy,
there are no expensive finishes, just handsome spaces. When there are just a few
customers, the space is airy and relaxing, a haven for reading or chatting over
drinks and a simple plate of anchovies or a comforting bowl of polenta. When
it’s crowded, the room warms to the bustle and excitement, and the same austere
plate of anchovies or shaky tower of shoestring potatoes becomes part of the

glamour. A mezzanine dining room overlooks this bar and leads to a warren of
smaller dining rooms, mostly more intimate, although one offers a bird’s-eye
view of the kitchen below. Sixteen tables skirt the wide-open kitchen, face a
glowing hearth, and back up to a dozen more slender, twelve-foot windows on
Market Street.

I was smitten on sight when I walked into Zuni in 1987. I’d been offered the

chef’s job, and suspected it could be a good place to serve the mostly regional
French and Italian food I adored. The crowd was eclectic~young, old, middle-
aged, dressed up, dressed down, in noisy groups or quiet deuces, some there for
the place, some for the drinks, some for the food, some for each other. I took in
the space and imagined you could eat as simply or as grandly as you wanted in
this setting, and that the food would only be a part of the seduction. Zuni was a
wonderful gathering place, it had a sense of romance and felt as if it had been
there forever.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, I USUALLY ENTER THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, WHERE MOST OF
the romance is tamed by the realities of running a busy restaurant. Deliveries are
late, the dishwasher breaks down, we’re short a thousand napkins on a Saturday,
one hundred fifty chickens come in four ounces too small. The glowing hearth
and brick oven require constant maintenance, the graceful window walls get
broken, and, in earthquake country, beautiful old brick pillars require costly
seismic braces. And yet, in that engaging setting, many thousands of clients, and
well more than a hundred cooks over the years, have sustained our mostly
traditional repertory. Love of those culinary traditions, both familiar and obscure,
and the cultures and remarkable individuals that have nurtured them, drives our
cooking. {Even where our techniques are unconventional~for example, we salt
most proteins in advance, and we don’t skim the fat off stock while it is
cooking~it usually turns out they are seeded in traditional cooking habits.} And
the privilege of working with a generous variety of organic products year-round
has been a defining force. Receiving these treasures has been a constant delight,
and the task of showing them at their best is one of my favorite responsibilities.
Seeking just the right preparation to magnify the charms of a knobby potato,
skinny stalk of asparagus, or the first freshly shelled walnuts of the year is
always a happy challenge, especially when the ingredients are so good they need
little done to them. In this context, I rediscover daily that the best dishes are the
result of honoring the ingredients, continually tasting, and heeding not just the

season, but also the weather outside, which has an immeasurable effect on how
well a dish works. Like much of what is thought of as culinary wisdom, this
sense of what to cook, and when, is distilled through experience and is a pleasure
to acquire. The other bits of culinary knowledge that guide me daily are mostly
the casual gifts of many teachers and fellow cooks, and such shared wisdom,
coupled with simple observation and an interest in food chemistry, is at the heart
of all my methods.

The recipes here represent our entire repertory: a battery of appetizers; a

group of mostly leafy salads; the hot dishes that make a hearty middle course or
a comforting one-course meal; a collection of vegetable dishes, preserved things,
and sauces; the fish, poultry, and meat-centered preparations they
interchangeably complement; suggestions for after-dinner cheese; and, finally,
desserts. You will find a number of labor-of-love-intensive dishes; having made
them hundreds of times, we’ve learned which extra steps guarantee depth of
flavor, making the extra minutes more than worthwhile. But most often these
dishes take their time, not the cook’s time. Many other recipes call for little
active work and require only the skill and will to select excellent ingredients,
perhaps the most useful culinary skill of all. These simple dishes, celebrating the
particular affinity of two or three ingredients, can either stand alone or quietly
frame more elaborate dishes in a meal. I have included recipes that, while
obscure sounding, are representative of our cooking, have consistently proven
satisfying, and show not just what, but how we cook, and how to change a dish
to suit your ingredients and palate. A number of the recipes may sound
inconvenient~for example, most of you won’t rush to start deep-frying, or
stuffing sausage first thing after skimming these pages~but with just a little
experience, both become fun. Like the restaurant, this book asks you to consider
trying something unfamiliar, along with that friendly, popular roast chicken~if
not right away, then as you become more intrepid.

The best meals are more than a succession of great dishes resulting from a

number of great recipes. They are fashioned with wisdom and experience and
are shaded, always, with spontaneity. So don’t chart every turn before going to
the market, and don’t feel you must follow a recipe slavishly. As you use this
book, choose a few recipes, or suggestions, that appeal to you~then shop with
those in mind, but be prepared to change plans if the market doesn’t deliver or
the weather changes abruptly. As you cook, taste constantly, watch closely, smell
and touch the ingredients as they change, and then adjust~for your palate, for the
weather, for the ingredients, for your equipment. Make dishes more than once,

and pay attention to the slight or substantial differences in each variable and how
each affects the results, for the better or the worse. This effort, more important
than any recipe, rewards even the most experienced cook with insights and
surprises. Recognizing the little differences in ingredients, and learning how to
optimize them rather than dilute or ignore them, is a mantra in the kitchen at
Zuni. Along with sharing our repertory, I hope to show that this approach to
cooking is not only accessible to everyone, but is also fun, and essential to
producing consistently delicious food.

MY EDUCATION IN COOKING BEGAN UNASSUMINGLY IN 1973 WITH A DELICIOUS HAM
sandwich on chewy, day-old pain de compagne, a spoonful of very spicy
mustard, tarragon-laced cornichons, and a few sweet, tender crayfish as an hors
d’œuvre. Jean Troisgros chose the menu for us and prepared our little meal with
enthusiasm, surprising to me at four in the morning after a flight from New York
and a high-speed seven-hour drive from Paris to Roanne. It was actually our
second ham sandwich of the night; our first was a nondescript effort on stale
baguette that we left half-eaten in an all-night autoroute resto-stop. But I am sure
the redundancy was no coincidence; Jean had it in mind to demonstrate how
good such a sandwich could be, and his dark brown eyes twinkled when I
finished and then reached for another slice of ham. We ate standing in his
kitchen, which was dark and quiet and gave no hint of its legendary status,
except for the rich aroma of a veal stock slowly reducing to demi-glace. This
was my first meal in the best restaurant in France. I had the singular good
fortune to spend the year that followed under Jean’s wing, and in the embrace of
his brother, Pierre, and their extended family and staff at their restaurant, Les
Frères Troisgros.

Chefs weren’t stars in 1973; nouvelle cuisine had not been pronounced, and

“California Cuisine” had just been seeded. As a sixteen-year-old from Saint
Louis, I had never taken an interest in cooking, and nearly everything I ate in
Roanne was as unfamiliar as it was delicious. Happily, I was prodded by the
neighbor at home who had arranged for my stay with his French friends, the
Troisgros, to document everything I ate there. As a result, and with the brothers’
blessing, I recorded recipes for every dish on the menu, and then some. Their
focus on raw ingredients was relentless, and the attention they lavished on each

detail of every preparation was as routine for them as it was revelatory for me.
Hearing about the traditions surrounding each dish made each one more
memorable. What had begun as a high school exchange student sojourn veered
swiftly away from academics and toward la cuisine. Although I had not landed
at a restaurant, much less Les Frères Troisgros, by any design, observing this
routine became all-consuming. As soon as I got home from school, I headed for
the kitchen to watch, listen, and take notes. Jean relished calling me Mata Hari,
and he punctuated the accusation with a thrust of his meat fork, which was his
favorite all-purpose kitchen tool. Having made the joke, Jean would return to the
piano {the edge of the stove}, pause, and then dispense a bit of culinary wisdom
as he checked the doneness of a côte de bœuf.

“Do you see how this pan is à taille {the right size}? This is the first and

most important thing to know. Always choose a pan that is the right size. Too
small, and you crowd the meat and steam it; too large, and you burn the fat you
are cooking in, and it’s not so good for the pan either. This is why we have the
batterie de cuisine.”

He turned to the array of copper casseroles, six to eighteen inches wide,

hanging behind him. Jean could always explain cooking techniques in a practical
and logical way.

Following this unplanned curriculum, I learned many of the lessons I still

apply daily, although I never really cooked at Les Frères Troisgros. Timidity and
respect for their métier held me back. I occasionally summoned the confidence
to help sort through spinach leaves with a commis {beginning cook}, or gingerly
pluck a thrush before dropping it whole into a Robot-Coupe for their famous
mousse de grives, but mostly I watched, and wrote.* But if my hesitation cost
me hands-on experience, Jean, Pierre, and their cooks compensated; they made
sure I tasted as many dishes, as frequently, and in as many stages of preparation,
as possible.

“It tastes different today, the cream, n’est-ce pas? You see? It’s more acidic

and thicker. We’ll use less lemon in the sauce.”

Or, “Taste this. Do you like it? It’s a truffle. First of the year. But they’ll get

better.”

Jean had just popped a whole truffle steamed over Sauternes in my mouth.
I watched Pierre measure portions of aged Charollais beef by eye, carve

them with nonchalant precision, and then taste a sliver of the raw meat that clung
to his knife. Always checking. A lesson I have never forgotten.

A parade of Troisgros devotees from a dozen countries passed through the

kitchen that year and most confided to me that this was not the usual three-star
restaurant. It was not just the best food, it was also the simplest and purest, and
the restaurant the most convivial. The seasonality and regional character of the
food, coupled with lack of pretension, brought clients back over and over. The
most frequent diners were business people, purveyors, neighbors, fellow
restaurateurs, and the local taxman, all of whom stopped in the kitchen for a visit
before Jean or Pierre prepared a simple lunch for them “off-menu.” Les amis
dined on a plain dish~an omelette, half a roast chicken left from the repas du
personnel {staff meal}, or the signature Troisgros escalope of salmon, but
without their legendary sorrel sauce~just perfect local salmon, barely cooked,
strewn with freshly chopped herbs, and moistened with olive oil and lemon
juice. These clients ate very, very well.

And I learned from le Patron, Jean-Baptiste Troisgros, Jean and Pierre’s

father. I shared some of my most memorable meals with him. A proud
Burgundian, Jean-Baptiste was the patriarch of the house, who held court at table
and struck a mix of fear and adoration in all who attended to him. The Patron,
feisty at seventy-five, wore wire-rimmed glasses with dark gray lenses that
enhanced his mystique tremendously. Although he could have anything he
wanted, on or off the menu, Jean-Baptiste favored simple food and became
utterly euphoric when presented with a carefully fried egg deglazed with sherry
vinegar, flanked by pain grillé {toast}, and followed by a salad of pissenlits au
lard {dandelion greens and bacon}. Likewise, he was never more irritated than
when he thought a dish was even slightly overwrought, not honest or
“généreux.” Le Patron admonished me never to be taken in by “cinéma dans la
cuisine”~akin to saying “food for show.” His culinary edicts were always
passionate, and I wrote all of them down.

The Troisgros sœur, Madeleine Troisgros Serraille, also did her part. At least

twice a week she’d fetch me from her brothers’ restaurant and calmly produce a
perfect family meal in her own modest kitchen~a blanquette de veau, pot-au-feu,
or gratin de nouilles {macaroni and cheese, sort of}. I loved her miroton, a
homey beef and onion casserole, based on the leftover pot-au-feu she had
deliberately made too much of. Madeleine was a champion of the salad course
and was rigorous about its seasonality~she was visibly thrilled to dress the first
mâche or tender dandelion of the season. She loved every leafy thing you could
eat en salade~escarole, frisée, watercress, endive, roquette {arugula}, Batavia or
butter lettuce~and had a knack for choosing one or two nonleafy things~nuts, or
croûtons, or hard-cooked egg~that made the salad more satisfying. Every leaf

was in impeccable condition, and the ritual of dressing it at table was an
important moment in every meal. There was never a leaf left over. Then, before
clearing the salad plates, Madeleine served the cheese. This course, never
omitted, consisted of a few perfect cheeses, always in season, and just right for
the dishes that had preceded~whether a local goat cheese, the regional Fourme
d’Ambert, or a chunk of Beaufort she had brought back from the Alps. She never
offered too many choices, lest they compete or clash or overwhelm. She tended
to sample only one herself, knowing which was the best that day. Madeleine
fashioned perfect meals; beyond being generous in flavor and tradition, there
was a balance and focus to the menu: everything complemented everything else
in an uncanny way. And there was always a simple dish with the goût du
revenez-y~”the taste you return to” for another nibble that prolongs the meal.
Her cooking never demanded your attention, it simply kindled conviviality.

Within a very few months, I had succumbed to the philosophy that guides

Zuni cooking today. While growing international attention swirled around the
more glamorous three-star restaurants, and parades of gastronomic pilgrims
clamored after the fanciest, cleverest, and most exclusive truffle, lobster, and foie
gras dishes incorporating exotic fruits and Japanese garnishes, I was taking
thorough notes on how Michel made hachis parmentier {shepherd’s pie à la
française} for the staff meal. Or I was heading for the slightly drab but friendly
café up the street with Jean on his night off for a hanger steak and perfect
pommes frites. My mentor always congratulated the café owner on the delicious
bifteck and insisted this was as good a meal as any, lest one think classical or
nouvelle cuisine could challenge the virtues of simplicity. There was surely a
place for creative new restaurant cooking, and even for classical cuisine, but it
wasn’t for every day. And Jean constantly reminded me that the food we eat
every day ought to be taken just as seriously. It deserved to be just as well
prepared, and just as celebrated.

WHEN I RETURNED TO AMERICA IN 1974, I HAD NO PLANS TO BECOME A COOK, much
less a chef or restaurateur; it was obviously too late. A commis at Troisgros
enrolled by age fourteen, and I was already seventeen. I headed to California to
college. But late in 1977, a friend told me about an unusual restaurant in
Berkeley where the menu was based on the best seasonal ingredients, and
changed daily. She was already working at Chez Panisse and described a
community of passionate cooks and kindred spirits. I booked a table a few weeks

later and walked into Chez Panisse with a stack of Troisgros recipes, my
meticulous food logs, and the tantalizing hope that the enchantments of that year
in France could be conjured in America. I was not disappointed. Alice Waters
pushed the Patron’s notion of cuisine généreuse into new territory~no effort was
spared to offer the most delicious, beguiling, satisfying meals. Every detail of
preparation and presentation was favored with care, from the handwritten menus
to the extraordinary flowers that graced the dining room. When Alice shocked
me with the proposal that I help out at Saturday lunch, I discarded a stack of
graduate school applications and asked her what cookbooks to buy. It was too
good to be true, but I was scared to death. I graduated a few months later to
cooking lunch every day by myself, although the convenient title “lunch chef”
was not really apt, since I was “chief” to no one. But being in charge of myself
was plenty, given that I had never actually cooked many of the things I had so
carefully recorded. I rapidly learned that a simple pan of crispy, golden sautéed
potatoes, no problem for the tenderest commis chez Troisgros, was beyond my
reach. My potatoes often stuck viciously to the pan~when they didn’t jump to
the floor. And when they didn’t stick, I had no idea why. I did begin each day
with an exceptional advantage: the delicious leftovers from the night before~I
just had to avoid wrecking them. However, considering my limited skills, even
this was fraught with risks and resulted in plenty of nervous scrambles. But
Alice made a point of coming through the kitchen in the late morning, when she
carefully tasted and corrected my troubled efforts~she seemed to sense where a
dish should go and could always make it better {or gently suggest that we did
not have to serve it, which was a revelation to me}. I wasn’t sure how she
arrived at these miraculous fixes, but her example ingrained in me the habit of
reconsidering every option at every stage of preparation. Alice and her
colleague, pastry chef Lindsey Shere, along with chefs Jean-Pierre Moullé and
Mark Miller, were generous, inspiring, adventurous, and patient. I managed,
thanks to them, and to the very best leftovers in America, to look competent. I
am convinced there was no better place in America to learn to cook.

While at Chez Panisse, I set out to learn the repertory of French cuisine,

classical and traditional, reading cookbooks every night after work. I pored over
Richard Olney’s Simple French Food~the thorough, practical lessons reminded
me of Jean. I cooked through Elizabeth David’s volumes on French food,
partially in the kitchen and partially in my head, and, almost incidentally, made
tentative forays into her brilliant compendium of Italian food. This too sounded
like the generous, honest cooking Jean-Baptiste craved and demanded. And I fell

for Waverley Root when I saw he subdivided France based on cooking fats.

TWO YEARS LATER, I RETURNED TO FRANCE, THIS TIME TO TRAVEL. At the urging of a
friend in Paris, I headed to the Southwest into Les Landes, an idyllic region of
pine forests, two-lane roads, and small farms. My friend arranged a ride for me
and mentioned I’d be dropped off at a friend’s restaurant. {She had also told her
friend I’d like to stay and cook there. I hadn’t heard that part.} Thus I happened
into an apprenticeship with Pepette Arbulo at l’Estanquet, her tiny café-bar-
restaurant-inn-tabac-post office in a village of twenty people and hundreds of
ducks. In her care, Pepette made sure I learned how to use every part of that bird,
and did her best to convince me there was no place for butter in the kitchen
except on toast in the morning. La graisse {duck fat} was the choice for every
preparation. I admired her gentle dogmatism, and more, I loved her
ultratraditional food, especially the offbeat things like preserved goose gizzards,
carcasses grillées {roasted bones}, graisserons {a scrappy sort of gelée-bound
terrine made from the leavings at the bottom of the confit pot}, and merveilles
{pastry fried in duck fat}. Pepette had a foolproof method for preserving fresh
anchovies, and simple ones for putting up porcini mushrooms {in duck fat, of
course} and for stockpiling stone fruits in a stunning amount of Armagnac. In
Pepette’s kitchen, foie gras was not an aristocratic exclusivity to embellish and
transform for special occasions, it was simply a treasured regional staple whose
delicacy you did your best not to violate. Her favorite recipe for foie gras calls
for foie gras, sea salt, and experience. Pepette’s was not really restaurant food; it
was farmhouse cooking at a restaurant.

I stayed in France until I ran out of money, and after returning to California, I

turned to Alice for advice. She suggested that I meet with her friend Marion
Cunningham, who needed a chef for an American restaurant project she was
working on. And so I stumbled into good luck again, and had the chance to work
with Marion at the Union Hotel in Benicia. Her commitment to unpretentious
American cooking was irresistible. It felt odd to set aside French Country
Cooking, but the assignment~to prepare a set menu of simple, traditional
American dishes~could not have been more timely. Marion’s work on The
Fannie Farmer Cookbook had breathed new life into American food. She was
persuading America that delicious food did not have to be French, and that home
cooking belonged in restaurants too. The menu featured pickled beets and eggs,
scrapple, spoon bread, and oyster loaf. And Marion put Caesar salad on the

menu, which at the time was considered a bit retro~hard to imagine now. The
panfried chicken, cured in rock salt, then soaked in milk, was unusually
succulent, and became too popular~with only six burners, we couldn’t fry
enough fast enough.

I first heard the phrase “New American Cooking” about three months later.

And I recognized that this homey, American fare had a lot in common with
traditional French cuisine. Jean-Baptiste would have loved scrapple. And we
could make a boiled dinner as lovingly as Madeleine made her pot-au-feu.
Thinking of Pepette, I preserved and pickled every fruit and vegetable in season.
When we ground our hamburger in-house daily, I remembered the Patron
declaring a great steak haché could be worth an entrecôte à la moelle, if made
with the same care. Inspired by these memories, I was determined to explore the
entire repertory of regional American cooking and New World ingredients. To do
this, the set menu had to go.

But romance, variety, and discovery were not the most important rewards for

that change. Chez Panisse had taught me to heed the ingredients first of all, and
to change course if it meant the result would be better. A set menu often stymied
that agenda. It left little room to alter a dish to improve it, and some pressure to
accept less-than-brilliant, overpriced product to meet the demands of a printed
page. No ingredient was spectacular all the time, and no dish was appealing
every day. A short, changing daily menu eliminated these problems and was, in
truth, the only way I knew how to cook. This seemed the best of both worlds, but
still, with time, the Old World beckoned. Many American dishes had roots in
Europe, and I started looking more closely, and longingly, at those sources when
they were Italian.

IN 1983, I LEFT THE HOTEL AND BOOKED A FARMHOUSE OUTSIDE FLORENCE. From day
one, I wrote down everything I ate, a time-consuming old habit, and then started
making lists of everything I saw in every market. I tasted and cooked everything
I could. I didn’t understand why they gave me green tomatoes when I said they
were for salad, or why salt was sold with stamps and tobacco at the bar down the
street, and I was shocked by how “fresh” some of the salami was {it looked
raw}, but took a chance, found it tasty, and lived. The prosciutto with fur {wild
boar ham} got my attention, as did the columns of little birds in the market
{smaller even than the precious ortolan I’d had in France}. I caught the brief
season of minutina {a salad green shaped like a blade of grass} and sampled the