Chez Panisse Fruit

Alice Waters's Chez Panisse is one of America's great restaurants. Dedicated to serving French country food made from the finest American ingredients (and furthering the cause of local, conscientiously produced foods of all kinds), the restaurant is also responsible for a remarkable series of cookbooks, including Chez Panisse Vegetables and the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. Chez Panisse Fruit, coauthored by Waters, proceeds in the innovative spirit of its predecessors, offering 200 exquisite sweet and savory fruit recipes, plus essays that attune readers to growing and marketing issues so they can make wise seasonal selections. Conceived with utmost simplicity, recipes like Spit-Roasted Pork with Onion-and-Apple Marmalade, Caramelized Red Banana Tartlets, and Grilled Cured Duck Breasts with Pickled Peaches truly celebrate the fruits they feature. Though not difficult to prepare, the recipes demand a cook's full attention--at the market as well as in the kitchen. The reward is memorable eating.

Arranged alphabetically from apples to strawberries, the book treats familiar and less familiar fruit, including citron (in dishes like Sautéed Scallops with Citron), loquats (used in Catherine's Loquat Sauce, a delicious accompaniment to grilled meats), and mulberries (delightful in ice cream and sherbet). There are also superb versions of raspberry ice cream, cranberry relish, and blueberry buttermilk pancakes, as well as must-try "original" fare like Rocket Salad with Pomegranates and Toasted Hazelnuts, Tangerine and Chocolate Semifreddo, and Moroccan Chicken with Dates. A section of basics also provides exemplary formulas for the likes of pie dough, biscuits, and pastry cream. Illustrated in the Chez Panisse tradition with relief prints of the fruit, the book is an appreciation of one of our most glorious resources and, tacitly, a call to consciousness about the need to preserve it at its best. --Arthur Boehm