Product Description

This beloved cookbook is now available in a handsome paperback edition. Completely revised and updated with 45 all-new recipes, each delicious dish reflects acclaimed chef John Ash's commitment to sustainable agriculture and his love of fresh fruits and vegetables. More than 300 recipes, inspired by the California Wine Country featuring soups, salads, pastas, pizza, risottos, poultry, fish, meats, vegetarian courses, desserts, breads, and more include wine recommendations and abundant tips on how to incorporate everything from chipotle chiles to persimmons into delectable meals. This is a time-honored classic, sure to continue enticing cooks for years to come.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261473 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Ash, a noted Northern California restaurateur (his Santa Rosa restaurant bears his name) and author (he collaborated with Goldstein on American Game Cooking) is immersed in the wine-country gestalt, according to which dinner?and what we drink with it?is a way of life. A passionate advocate of cooks knowing where, when and how their food is grown and raised, he urges readers to eat "seasonally and locally." Instead of using tasteless tomatoes in a salad in December, he suggests the likes of Warm Red Cabbage Salad with Pancetta and California Goat Cheese. Along with imaginative salads (Fresh Corn, Orzo, and Smoked Chicken Salad with Pine Nuts), Ash offers a bountiful array of soups (Roasted Eggplant Soup with Sweet Peppers), pastas (Fusilli with Collards, Bacon, and Garlic) and desserts (Peach-Mint Granita). Fish (Seared Ahi Tuna with a Lavender-Pepper Crust), poultry, meat (Pork and Pepper Stew with Oranges) and vegetable dishes are innovative and tempting. For each salad and main dish, he suggests a wine ("Gewurztraminer is a showstopper" with Crab Wontons with Orange-Chipotle Sauce), and his cooking tips (e.g., "never throw away shrimp shells," which can be frozen and counted on to save a fish stock or soup) are jewels. This is a cookbook for those who truly want to live with their food. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Here are lots of beautifully fresh recipes from the authors of American Game Cooking (LJ 10/15/91). Ash is the culinary director of Fetzer Vineyards' Wine Center, which happens to have a huge organic culinary garden. With that as well as the produce and other ingredients available in abundance in California's wine country, he creates dishes like Orecchiette with Red Wine-Braised Chicken, Fresh Cherry Flan, and other delicious combinations. There are lots of sidebars on ingredients, and Ash suggests substitutions for seasonal or hard-to-find ingredients. Most recipes are accompanied by informative wine notes that explain the particular food-wine match. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
It is unrealistic to imagine that the relatively unaccomplished cook will take to many of these more than 120 recipes. The long shopping lists and the demands on time prohibit such. But more experienced cooks will find the book difficult to ignore. Each recipe is accompanied by a wine recommendation. Barbara Jacobs

Customer Reviews

My most used cook book
As a collector of cook books and as one who entertains regularly (both for friends and for business - it is not unusual for us to have over a100 people in a month at home for corporate related dinners) I find this book the one that I most often turn to. It is imagnative yet practical, sufficiently different to a lot of theothers that I have and everything that I have tried has been a huge success. Would love to know if John Ash has written another one.

The best, freshest food that I've ever tasted!
I have used this book more than any other cookbook in my home. I am constantly learning about new, fresh ingredients and the results are really wonderful. Every time I cook using these recipes, my friends ask me for the recipe. I've purchased this book for several friends too - it's a great gift, especially if you live in Northern California. Visiting John Ash's restaurant is a wonderful experience too!

Finally a New Revised and Expanded Edition
A new revised and expanded edition of an old favorite. We all know that the process of getting food is to plant, raise, or catch it, then cook and eat it. But John Ash takes it a bit further. He concentrates primarily on serving what is in season now, what he can get fresh - especially fresh from his own garden or at least local.

Sometimes, of course that's a little hard to do. For instance he cooks a lot of fish, tuna, sturgeon, pacific rock cod, halibut and more. It's a whole bunch of miles from here (Nevada) to the ocean, you want tuna, it's frozen. Sturgeon, never seen it here. Cod, I got some a couple of weeks ago for the first time. Now I wish I had had this book then, as the recipie of cooking it with oranges, tomatoes, and olives sounds really different and something worth trying. ==One point I really like about this book is his wine recommendations. With the rock cod he says sauvignon blanc, rieslings, Pinot Grigio or Noir. I think I could go with any of these.

On the whole, his earlier version of this book was good, this new one is even better, more recipies, more things to try, and nearly all of them sound good.