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Product Description - When Jeremiah Tower started cooking in California in the 1970s, fine food in America was typically a pale imitation of French haute cuisine. Taking the reins at a small Berkeley restaurant named Chez Panisse, Tower looked around at the extraordinary fresh ingredients available from local producers, began experimenting with a cooking style that emphasized pure flavors and inventive combinations...and changed the face of American cooking. In a few years, he went on to open San Francisco's glittering Stars restaurant, becoming this country's first celebrity chef and winning two James Beard Foundation awards, including one for best chef in the U.S. Without debate, Tower is one of the country's greatest cooks. In this extraordinary new cookbook, he presents over 250 recipes representing the last fifteen years of his creative cooking. More than a cookbook, however, Jeremiah Tower Cooks reveals Tower's extraordinary gift as a writer and storyteller. The result is a book of exceptional delights from a marvelous writer and a brilliant cook.
Amazon.com Review - As founding chef at California's famed Chez Panisse, chef at San Francisco's Stars, and author of the award-winning New American Classics, Jeremiah Tower is a forefather of New American cooking. His culinary signature is pristinely flavored food made with the freshest seasonal ingredients. Jeremiah Tower Cooks presents 250 recipes for dishes like Chilled Mushroom Soup with Spiced Crab, Ricotta Dumplings with Fava Beans and Savory, and Spiced Duck Sichuan Style. Though dishes like these can demand a shopping and cooking commitment, there's nothing difficult about putting them together. For cooks interested in simple yet refined cooking that veers to the deluxe (Tower's favorite hamburger is made with truffles), this cookbook is a must.
Organized by courses and food categories, the book begins, provocatively, with "Delights and Prejudices," a compendium of often-wry observations. (Tower favors using a microwave, for example, but only for reheating food--"[so used] it changes the food less than any other method," he says--but is against the pervasive roasted garlic purée, which he finds "indigestible.") Tower is also a culinary reader and dishes like English Autumn Salad (adapted from Robert May's 1685 Accomplisht Cook) and The Anchovy Toasts of Austin de Croze (from his 1931 What to Eat and Drink in Paris), among others, reflect that pursuit. A selection of mostly simple, mostly fruit desserts includes New Summer Pudding, "Burnt" Passion Fruit Curd, and Black Bottom Pie, which Tower says "needs no comment. Or rather, I can't think of any that would do justice to this perfect pie." With many more opinions, and illustrative paintings that are a welcome change from the usual food photography, the book will fill many hours with good reading as well as superior cooking. --Arthur Boehm
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