Twelve Recipes

Winner of the 2015 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Award

Forewords by Alice Waters and Michael Pollan

In this dazzling, full color cookbook and kitchen manual filled with lush photographs and beautiful drawings, the chef of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse offers basic techniques and essential recipes for you to grow to be anyone into a confident home cook.

When his oldest son was once leaving for college, Cal Peternell, the chef of San Francisco’s legendary Chez Panisse, realized that, even supposing he steadily made dinners for his family, he’d never taught them the basics of cooking. Based on the life-altering course of instruction he prepared and honed through many phone calls with his son, Twelve Recipes is the ultimate introduction to the kitchen. Peternell makes a speciality of the core foods and dishes that comprise a successful home cook’s arsenal, Each and every building skill upon skill—from toast, eggs, and beans, to vinaigrettes, pasta with tomato, and rice, to vegetables, soup, meats, and cake.

Twelve Recipes will help home cooks develop a core repertoire of skills and increase their culinary confidence. Peternell tells you what basic ingredients and tools you want for a particular recipe, and then adds variations to expand your understanding. Each and every tip, instruction, and recipe connects with others to weave into a larger story that illuminates the connection between food and life. A deeply personal book, it was once written by the chef alone and it glows with warmth and humor as he mulls over such mundane items as toast and rice to offer surprising new insights about foods that only seem exceedingly unusual. It’s a book you’re as likely to keep by your bedside as your stovetop. With Peternell as your guide, the journey is pure pleasure and the destination is delicious.

Twelve Recipes features gorgeous color photos and inset illustrations by Peternell’s wife and sons (all artists), and forewords by celebrated chef Alice Waters and New York Times columnist and bestselling writer Michael Pollan.