Books |
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco’s Beloved Restaurant
Judy Rodgers
By
Published: Dec 11, 2013
Category:
Food and Wine
Mental Clarity: How crazy is this? So many of you bought Mental Clarity from Amazon that now they’re out of stock and don’t know when they’ll have more. If this significantly frustrates you, many health food stores and wellness emporiums sell Banyan Botanticals products. And if you’d like to order online from Banyan, here’s a link.
———-
I know I said there’d be no more cookbook reviews this month, but a few days ago I came across this headline in the New York Times: Judy Rodgers, Chef of Refined Simplicity, Dies at 57.
“Refined Simplicity.” Does that phrase thrill you? I’ve never put the words together that way, but it’s everything I aspire to: getting to the core of whatever and manifesting it clearly and elegantly. It’s Orwell’s “prose like a windowpane,” Wittgenstein’s “Everything that can be said can be said clearly.” So although I had no idea who Judy Rodgers was — I’m not a foodie — I read her Times obituary.
Judy Rodgers, I learned, was major. As a kid, she was an exchange student in France, where she had the great good fortune to live with the Troisgros family, proprietors of the famous three-star restaurant Les Frères Troisgros. At Stanford, she studied art history. And might have done something with that if not for a second Hand of God moment: a meal at Chez Panisse. Soon, although she had no formal training, Alice Waters hired her as a lunch chef. A few restaurants later, she had her own kitchen at San Francisco’s Zuni Café.
Judy Rodgers didn’t do TV. Didn’t build an empire. Didn’t court fame at all, really. She just cooked. In 2003, Zuni Cafe won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant in America in 2003. In 2004, she was named Outstanding Chef in America, beating Mario Batali, Tom Colicchio, Alfred Portale, and Nobu Matsuhisa. And although it took her a decade, she wrote every word of the 500 recipe “Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco’s Beloved Restaurant.” [To buy the book from Amazon, click here.]
That star-bound trajectory is the stuff of legend, but this is the line that grabbed me:
Ms. Rodgers tasted sauces, dressings and combinations until she found exactly what she had in mind. Then she stuck with it. Many preparations stayed on her menu for years.
And with that, I was in love. For this is my grail: one good thing, perfected.
I learned more. Judy Rodgers was pencil-thin. She cooked in a uniform of her own: a sweater, a long skirt. She wore her hair piled on her head, anchored with #2 pencils. She was graceful, a dancer at the stove: “Good cooks have smooth motions. They have economy of movement, no wasted hand work.” Her ego was smaller than a truffle: “I’ve never thought of myself as having invented a single solitary dish. I’m just sort of the thing through which this food gets made.” And, again, she had total focus: “My guideline at this restaurant has always been I want only things here that I would love to have and the way I’d love to have them. If it doesn’t make me happy, then it’s false.”
Among the things she loved were Caesar salad, Bloody Marys, polenta, chocolate pot de crème and hamburger, freshly ground, served on a focaccia bun. But most of all, she was the queen of Roast Chicken. It was what you ordered the first time you went to Zuni. And then? “I have probably been to Zuni at least 25 or 30 times since Rodgers took over the formerly Southwestern restaurant in 1987,” a critic wrote, “and I have failed to order the chicken only twice.
What’s special about Zuni Cafe Roast Chicken? Rodgers only served small, organic, antibiotic-free chickens. (“It has to be small, so you have a high degree of skin-and-fat ratio to the lean muscle, and you can cook it hot and fast. With really big chickens, you don’t have the experience of the crispy skin in every bite.”) She sprinkled the bird with ¾ of a teaspoon of sea salt per pound of chicken and ground tellicherry black pepper. Then — plan ahead, home cooks! — she let the chicken cure for up to three days in the refrigerator. Finally, she cooked the chicken in an unusually hot oven, so it would begin to brown quickly. And about twenty minutes into the roasting process, she flipped the chicken. Complicated? Hardly.
The restaurant survives her. Her cookbook is a classic; every word reads true. How I wish she could read this.
Zuni Cafe Roast Chicken
serves 4
One 2 3/4-pound free-range chicken
4 thyme sprigs
4 small garlic cloves, lightly crushed and peeled
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
Using your fingers, gently loosen the skin from the chicken breasts and thighs. Stuff the thyme and garlic under the skin and spread in an even layer. Sprinkle the salt all over the chicken and season with pepper. Cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours.
Preheat the oven to 500°. Preheat a large cast-iron skillet in the oven for 5 minutes. Put the chicken in the skillet, breast side up, and roast for 30 minutes. Turn the chicken breast side down and roast for about 15 minutes longer, or until the juices run clear when a thigh is pierced. Transfer the chicken to a board and let rest for 10 minutes; carve.
Zuni Cafe Chocolate Pot de Creme
Serves 6
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
8 large egg yolks
Preheat the oven to 300°.
Melt the chocolate with 1/2 cup of the cream in a 2-quart saucepan or in a bowl over simmering water. Remove from the heat.
Combine the remaining 1 cup cream, the milk and sugar in a saucepan; warm until sugar dissolves.
Whisk yolks in a bowl, then slowly stir in the warm cream mixture. Pour the resulting custard mixture through a strainer into the melted chocolate and stir to combine.
Pour the mixture into 6 custard cups and place them at least 1 inch apart in a baking pan. Add enough hot water to the pan to reach just under the lip of the cups.
Bake until custards are just set at edges, about 45 minutes. They will continue to cook after you remove them from oven and the water bath, and chocolate will harden as it cools. Take care not to overcook; this custard is best when slightly soft.
Serve warm, or cover loosely cover and refrigerate.
