REVIEWS

A APPROACH TO COOKING Laura Deutsch discovers there’s no right or wrong way to prepare a dish.

The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections from the Famed Zen Kitchen Edward Espe Brown , 2009 ISBN 9781590306727 The Tassajara Bread Book Edward Espe Brown Shambhala Publications, 2009 ISBN 9781590307045 PHOTOGRAPH: ISTOCKPHOTO PHOTOGRAPH: Brilliantly red and curvaceous radishes

Show up, start anywhere, make and marinated tofu, in the new book exuberantly, as when he describes a mistakes,” advises Edward Espe he uses a wider array of ingredients, platter of radishes, “brilliantly red and “Brown, author of the recently recipes such as chili crêpes with curvaceous, some elongated and white published Complete Tassajara Cookbook. The goat cheese filling, and beet salad with tipped, rootlets intact with topknots of American master chef and Zen priest pomegranate vinegar. green leaves sprouting from the opposite applies this to both cooking and There’s no “right way” to prepare end. It was love at first sight.” life: take what you have and dream up a dish, Brown insists. While the book At other times he is philosophical. In the something tasty to do with it. teaches the basics, he encourages cooks to final lines of a poem at the beginning of Brown, 64, helped shepherd vegetarian express themselves and rely on their own the chapter on soups and stocks, he writes: cooking from hippie to mainstream in taste to decide what they like, and said it Appreciate this carrot, cabbage, the 1970s, introducing a generation to was a great compliment when a reader cucumber, and cress, this time the joys of baking with the Tassajara Bread told him, “I used to need your cookbook; with the less than perfect. Book, dubbed ”the bible for bread baking” now I don’t. I do what I want.” The remarkable flavor you have by The Washington Post. In celebration of its To help readers improvise, Brown searched for is everywhere. 40th anniversary, the bread book has been presents 300 vegetarian recipes, with Let it come home to your heart. redesigned and reissued to coincide with variations to suit different palates. He the release of Brown’s new cookbook. shows how to enhance a casserole of “Zen is about getting in the kitchen A few of the bread book’s recipes have grains, beans or vegetables, with sautéed and doing something with what you been lightly revised for this edition, onion, garlic or bell peppers for flavour, have,” says Brown, emphasising the but the primary change is the book’s or mushrooms or tomato for body and value of using what comes into your more sophisticated look. An index, new colour. He explains how to make a dish life, whether it’s food or an unexpected introduction, and colour inserts featuring taste Italian with garlic, thyme, oregano, experience. “There’s something to be said photos of recipes have been added. basil and Parmesan, or take it in an Asian for appreciating organic produce. But let’s A founder of Greens, ’s direction with seasonings like ginger and not waste what we have or value only celebrated vegetarian restaurant, and dark sesame oil. what’s perfect.” co-author of The Greens Cookbook, Brown “You can see me in the way I cook,” Based in Fairfax, California, Brown formerly headed the kitchen at Tassajara, a he says. “Spicy, pungent, sweet and sour, teaches cooking and meditation centre in California’s I’m willing to be seen.” That’s why he throughout the and in Carmel Valley and the new Complete Tassajara agreed to be in the critically-acclaimed Europe. He leads regular sitting groups in Cookbook combines and updates the best of 2007 documentary, How to Cook Your Life, a zendo, or meditation hall, attached to Brown’s three other cookbooks, Tassajara where viewers can watch his range of his home and will be teaching in Cooking, Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings emotions from wry and delightful to and Germany in June and July this year. and The Tassajara Recipe Book. what he describes as “angry, sad, moping, Wherever he’s teaching, Brown says, Zen may be timeless, but times have whining, fussing”. “My goal is not to create masterpieces changed. Thirty-five years ago Brown Throughout The Complete Tassajara Cookbook, or architectural projects on a plate. It’s didn’t mention balsamic vinegar, goat’s Brown sprinkles in poems and personal simply to bring out the best in things.” cheese, sun-dried tomatoes or red bell stories about food and Zen practice peppers in Tassajara Cooking. Now, along as palate cleansers and opportunities Laura Deutsch leads writing workshops from with standards like potato-leek soup for reflection. Sometimes he writes Tassajara to Tuscany: www.lauradeutsch.com

60 May/June 2010