Zoe Nathan - Huckleberry Stories, Secrets, and Recipes From Our Kitchen

Text copyright 2014 by Zoe Nathan.
Photographs copyright 2014 by Matt Armendariz.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2352-3 (HC)
ISBN 978-1-4521-3238-9 (EPUB, MOBI)

Design by Alice Chau

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

Being part of a restaurant is the same as being part of a large, complicated, supportive, sweet, and sometimes not-so-sweet family. I dedicate this book to my familyboth blood and restaurant. Without you, I have no reason and no way to do all of this.
Love, Zoe

Yes, Im biased. Im married to Zoe, plus share a family and several businesses with her, so I dont blame you if youre a bit skeptical about my ability to write objectively about her culinary skills. But the truth is I fell in love with Zoes cooking and baking even before I fell in love with her (though the two were not very far apart).

Zoe came into my life when my first restaurant, Rustic Canyon, was just a six-month-old baby. My mom, Shirley, desperate for me to meet the right girl, met Zoes mom, Jesse, a fellow Santa Monica resident, and after hearing about Zoe and her passion for food decided that the two of us should meet. Now, granted, I wasnt looking for a wife at the time, Zoe had plenty of other job offers, and the last thing I wanted was to be set up with someone by my mom; we met.

Zoe came to Rustic Canyon and did a tasting for me, and it was amazing. Up until then I didnt really know what Rustic Canyons pastry program should be, I just knew that it wasnt there yet. Zoe had a vision and her execution was perfect. She wowed me with moist and buttery Warm Blueberry Cornmeal Cake and a beautiful assortment of cookies including her glorious Kouign Amanns, a cookie she picked up during her travels through France. She made homespun ice cream and chocolates the way they should be made, not too sweet and with enough salt to bring out the true flavors without tasting salty.

She was everything I was looking for professionally and personally, but until then I didnt know I was looking for either. After I wrestled her away from more lucrative jobs and more prestigious restaurants with a promise that she could make her own mark at Rustic, she finally took the job. That was when my restaurant and my life changed forever.

Zoe is a baker and chef in the same way that I imagine most great sculptors work. She has an amazing instinct for food, gets an idea, and works and works at it until it is exactly as it should be, which usually looks painfully simple yet delicious in a way that is unparalleled. While many people refer to her as a natural, she debunks the myth that naturals at anything even exist. Insteadas she says and teaches her staffshe just cares more and will not compromise anything in the creating of a dish and certainly will not serve it if its not perfect. As she tells her girls every day, Make mistakes, throw things away, just dont put anything out unless you know its perfect. Remember, were trying to fool these people into thinking were perfect!

Zoe and I officially started dating just a couple short months after we began working together. I vividly remember one of the first moments I knew she was the one. My dad underwent an emergency heart procedure and I spent the night with my family in the hospital down the street from Rustic Canyon while they operated on him. It was touch and go, but around 6 A.M . we got news that it was all going to be okay, and I headed out relieved and completely emotionally spent. I needed to be out of the hospital but I also needed a little warmth and something to take my mind off the difficult night before. I headed to Rustic Canyon because I knew that at 6 A.M . the one person who would be there was Zoe, and I wanted to see her in a way I couldnt explain. I walked in the door and it turned out she knew already (my brother, who left shortly before me, had already come through for his hug). She gave me a big hug and a chocolate chip cookie and both were the best of their kind.

The early stages of our relationship moved at lightning speed. Within two months we were living together, four months later we were engaged, and early the next year we were married. Along the way she wowed me with freshly baked croissants out of our home oven (still my favorite). I put on a very happy extra thirty pounds, because everything she made, from her baked goods to braised chicken at night, tasted so good I couldnt stop eating it. Every time I saw a friend that I hadnt seen in a while, they would pat my expanding belly, give me a smirk, and say, You look so happy. While Ive since learned to eat her delicious cooking in moderation, she still makes me happier than ever; Zoe has that effect on people.

In April of that year, Zoe told me that she wasnt satisfied just being a pastry chef of a restaurant and wanted to do more. She wanted to open her own bakery and restaurant, a place where she could serve all her favorite pastries alongside heaping breakfast plates, freshly baked breads, rotisserie chickens, and more. We tested out the breakfast portion of her dream place on Saturday mornings at Rustic Canyon, and it turned into a huge hit. For a few hours every Saturday morning, our dinner-only restaurant was transformed into a breakfast oasis, with a bar heaped with fresh fruit crostatas, prosciutto-Gruyre and chocolate croissants, stone fruit tarts and galettes, scones, savory flatbreads, cakes, and much more. It became clear that we had something special on our hands. People asked when we would open Zoes place, how much they could invest, and the rest was history.

We came across a soon-to-be vacant Chinese fast-food restaurant across the street from Rustic where we saw potential, and Zoe told me if I could get if for us, she would make it special. Mine was the easy part, and she more than delivered.

Huckleberry opened in February of 2009, three weeks after we got married. It was a hit from the very beginning, with people flocking to everything she put out. Huckleberry offers a lot: great artisan coffee, freshly baked breads, sandwiches, salads, soups, dinner entres to take home, plus desserts and of course great breakfast items and pastries. When it came time to write this book, Zoe said that she didnt want to tackle it all at once, but that she loved breakfast and felt there werent enough great breakfast cookbooks.

Zoe is a cookbook aficionado. One of the many bonuses I got when she moved into my house and my life were hundreds of great cookbooks. She reads them, flips through recipes, scribbles notes all over the pages, but mostly just gets inspired. This book comes not only from a chef but also a true cookbook lover. So enjoy it, get inspired, make notes in the margins, rip out pages, make delicious stuff, and occasionally eat more than you should because it just tastes so good. Its worth it, I promise.

If I didnt have a very good sense of humor and love Zoe with every fiber of my being, Id probably want to strangle her most days. In fact, at this moment I want to strangle her. We are right up against our deadline for this book, and she is creating new recipes like a mad scientist. Of course, few of them will make any sense when she hands them to me to flesh out. Most will have at least three measurements wrong, and the bake times will only be vaguely in the ballpark. But after years of working side by side at all hours of the night and day, in all states of body and mind, including her at nine months pregnant or me with my jaw wired shut after major surgery, all I need is a sketch to know what she means. To me that is one of the most precious things about our partnership.