Edward Espe Brown - The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections From the Famed Zen Kitchen

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2009 by Edward Espe Brown

Illustrations 2009 by John David Simpkins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Library of Congress catalogues the hardcover edition of this book as follows:

Brown, Edward Espe.

The complete Tassajara cookbook: recipes, techniques, and reflections from the famed Zen kitchen / Edward Espe Brown.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2201-6

ISBN 978-1-59030-672-7 (hardcover: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-59030-829-5 (paperback: alk. paper)

1. Vegetarian cookery. I. Title.

TX837.B8575 2009

641.5636dc22

2008031653

for my daughter

LICHEN

Loving you at first glance,

and wishing you health and happiness,

joy and well-being.

Cooking is not a mystery.

The more heart we put out

the more heart we put in.

To bring cooking alive

we give our life. Giving

our life willingly we dont

get put out.

Washing cutting cooking cleaning,

finding ways to give life to our life.

Not knowing already how and what to do,

practice feeling it

out of what is not known

through the warmth and anxiety,

not sticking to a particular way,

insisting it is the only way,

open to feeling out what is possible,

what gives life to our life.

To feel out our left hand, our back, our toes,

to feel out our breathing, our movements, our stance,

to savor the taste of a radish or a fresh fig,

this is our freedom, this is our wisdom

Spirit moves.

The mystery is that it is possible to do

what we dont know how to do.

PUTTING TOGETHER THE COMPLETE TASSAJARA COOKBOOK HAS been quite the adventure in time travel, as the materials that make up this current volume go back thirty-five years to the first edition of Tassajara Cooking, and twenty-two years to the original edition of The Tassajara Recipe Book. Materials from Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings (published in 1997) fill out these pages. As Tassajara Cooking and Tomato Blessings have been out of print for a number of years, I am delighted to have found a new venue for sharing these writings.

Much of my initial cooking and writing developed out of my experiences at Tassajaraa Zen retreat center in the Santa Lucia mountains of California where I was the head cook and baker for two and a half years. During this time I came to see my task as empowering people to cook, not just to follow recipes, but to cookto see, smell, taste, touch, and to know ones experience closely enough to act on it, to bring forth food. While I now find the early writing in Tassajara Cooking to be rather immatureand I have rewritten most of it!the basic principles still seem apt and relevant: placing emphasis on awakening ones own capacity to respond to circumstances; to be inspired by the ingredients; to know for yourself whats what; to go beyond getting it right; to making food alive with your aliveness.

One Zen admonition has it that, to give instructions is like gouging a wound in good flesh. Let your innate capacity flourish! And so I wrote Tassajara Cooking largely without recipes in the usual sense, listing ingredients without listing quantities. The basic instruction for each recipe was, you can do it, go ahead. One friend was so enthusiastic, saying that she had always wanted to cook like that, using what is on handbut that when company was coming she would still get out a real cookbook.

After reviewing the material in Tassajara Cooking, I realized that thirty-five years ago there was no mention of balsamic vinegar, goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, red bell peppers. Times have changed. Not that more people are cookingthere are probably fewerbut those who are cooking have a larger palette of ingredients to choose from. And so many more fresh greens: arugula, dinosaur kale, mesclun salad mix, fresh basil, thyme, chives, oreganoa great delight for those of us who love live flavors.

Since writing Tassajara Cooking I came to have a greater appreciation of the virtue of recipesnot that you have to follow them exactly, but hey, heres something that works, something you could try, something you could build on. Following recipes can add to your repertoire of possibilities, and you grow as a cook. Out came The Tassajara Recipe Book, recipes collected from several years of (many people!) cooking for visitors during the summer guest season at Tassajara. While Tassajara Cooking was more about a day-in, day-out approach to cooking, The Tassajara Recipe Book was more about tried-and-true standards.

The Tassajara Recipe Book also had some poem-like writings expressing facets of Zen teaching. Similar to my understanding of cookingwork sincerely and offer what you have to offerI have offered these somewhat unpolished efforts at expressing possibilities for deepening awareness. And these poems have carried over to the new book. If they touch you, fine, and if not, hey, find something that does. To be touched you need only give your bright, warm-hearted awareness to somethingthe world is full of things that will light up with your clear attentiveness.

The third book, which has largely found its way into The Complete Tassajara Cookbook, is Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings, which appeared after a long labor in 1997. With forty-five stories and one hundred recipes I consider it my best book, as it recollects more than thirty years of Zen practice and cooking(again I am so pleased to have much of this material back in print!). This is not writing that conveys the illusion that you, too, could become masterful at cooking (if you just do what I tell you to do). Instead I convey that if you have the heart for it, while you work on cooking, cooking will work on you, and refine you, so that you come out of the fire even more large-hearted.

Many of the recipes in Tomato Blessings are simple and carefully crafted, and I talk about what I consider to be the five flavors and three tastes that characterize all foods. In my cooking classes, students inspired by my talk will ask me, where are you getting this? The answer is, I taste things carefully.

The essays in Tomato Blessings helped to inspire the critically acclaimed movie How to Cook Your Life, made by the German film director Doris Doerrie, who said, Ed, lets make a movie about Zen Master Dogens Instructions to the Cook. She had highlighted all the stories in the book that she wanted me to articulate in my teachings for the film. Bless her heartDoris is a remarkable personand most of the essays used in the movie are included in this book.

By compiling the unique aspects of these three books into one volume, I hope to present a complete approach to cookingone that gives you recipes to follow, and also allows you to experiment, explore, and reflect upon the joys of cooking, as well as the value of being transformed in the process.

Of course, these books would never have come about if it werent for Tassajara and all the people practicing there over the years. As I write this I am poignantly aware that Tassajara itself just escaped the flames of the basin fire in Big Sur. Its been three or four weeks since the fire first started from lightning storms, and many people worked extremely hard putting in sprinkler systems, foil wrapping, fire breaks, and toward the end there was an evacuation notice which five people decided not to heed. I was so grateful and relieved when I heard that they had decided to stay put, and meet the fire. And this morning hearing the news that most of Tassajara survived, I burst into tears. I hadnt realized the depth of my concern and worry for the welfare of this sacred spot in the depth of the Los Padres National Forest.