Suzanne Goin - Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes From Market to Table

I n thirty-three years, a great many cooks have come through the kitchen at Chez Panisse, but even among those who moved on to start successful restaurants of their own, Suzanne Goin is a standout. When Suzanne started working at Chez Panisse, we all knew right away that one day she would have a restaurant of her own and that other cooks would be coming to her for kitchen wisdom and a warm welcome.

From her first day on the line in the Chez Panisse kitchen, Suzanne looked you right in the eyebut modestly!and she was always beautifully immaculate, whether in starched whites, or jeans and a T-shirt. She was the perfect line cook in the open caf kitchencharming, friendly, and funny. She had the sunny sarcasm of a young Rosalind Russell, and her sophistication and timingin and out of the kitchenleft the other young cooks behind. Always thirsty for more knowledge and with a gift for learning, she had figured out which European restaurants would take her as a stagire and chosen the ones where she knew she would learn the most. Best of all, she already knew exactly what she liked, and she had the two indispensable characteristics of a great restaurateur: impeccable taste and irrepressible generosity.

Every time I visit her restaurant Im amazed by her perfect calibration of good cooking and atmospheric joie de vivre. Sometimes when I go to a restaurant where Im known, the establishment tries too hard to show off its range and goes too far out of its way to impress with too much service and too many dishes in a dizzy display of artistry that becomes an unappetizing embarrassment of riches. They never do that at Suzannes. There, discernment is folded deftly into the hospitality. They stay focused on the diner and know just what to send out, in the right combinations and with the right balance and restraint, so that the emphasis is always on the purity of the raw materials, not on the kitchens dazzling technique. When I take friends there, its like giving them a wonderful gift. The ingredients they use at Lucques are supremely well chosen and appropriate but never utterly obvious, which is what makes Suzannes creativity of a sort we ought to prize. Recipe names such as Dungeness Crab Salad with Avocado, Beets, Crme Frache, and Lime; or Barbaras Apples and Asian Pears with Radicchio, Mint, and Buttermilk Dressing should tell you something about what youll find in these pages: recipes for food that is truly a creation, in the best sense of the word, but lacks any haughtiness.

Its no surprise that Suzanne has thrived as a down-to-earth chef in a city that often seems so up-in-the-air. Her way of cooking and thinking about food is firmly rooted in the age-old but still lively tradition of real food. Suzanne shares this tradition with everyone she cooks for. Now she shares it with her readers. Her book, which Im proud to introduce, is ultimately about simple food and pure ingredients.

Suzannes commitment to organic food of the highest qualityincluding everything from her tomatoes to her pasta to her oystersis a vitally important part of her cooking, both the process and the results. She goes above and beyond to find the ultimate examples of beautiful produce (which doesnt necessarily mean a perfectly round apple or a perfectly smooth-skinned tomato), and she is committed to supporting local farmers and food purveyors. Naturally, Suzanne shops at the farmers market. Its important that you do the same. Find ingredients that are in season, ripe, and organic, because they are the essence of Suzannes recipes. And the beauty of recipes like these is that they seduce those who make them into a happy awareness of how making the right choices about food makes our world a more sustainable and, at the same time, more meaningful place to live.

alice waters