About the Author

Paul Bertolli is executive chef and co-owner of Oliveto restaurant in Oakland, California. He has received numerous accolades, most recently the award for Best Chef: California from the James Beard Foundation in 2001. He is also known for his tenure as chef of Chez Panisse restaurant, where for 10 years he guided the restaurant’s cooking toward Italian sensibilities. Active as a chef, writer, and artisan food producer, Bertolli tends to his garden, bread oven, salumi cellar, vinegar loft, pickle vats, distillations, wine, and other mysterious fermentations from his home base in North Berkeley, California.

Reviews

"It is one of the few books that I have seen for some time that makes me want to get in the kitchen. I especially like the menus, and how and why Paul Bertolli makes them as he does. I also like his artful use of information about how to cook ... the section called 'Boiling-Water Bath' is a little masterpiece. And so are every one of the deviations from straight recipes. In other words, the book is the kind that could quickly become essential. It is written with great authority and yet with a touch that is both light and realistic. I wish I'd done it myself."

-- M. F. K. Fisher

"The recipes in this book ... are magnificently toothsome and smack invitingly of California at its best."

-- Craig Clairborne

"What a wonderful book ... full of country wisdom, market savy and a real passion for savory eating."

Gael Greene

Paul Bertolli's cuisine is what 'health food' should be and never is: a celebration of purity. The food is imaginative but never complicated; it is art."

-- Richard Olney