The Chez Way: Evolution of a Dinner

Interview just about any young, aspiring American chef, and she or he will cite Alice Waters and her restaurant, Chez Panisse, as models to emulate. Of course, the places they eventually open are often quite different from the model. We spent a Friday dinner shift at Chez Panisse a few weeks ago and found a kitchen unlike any other in the country.

2 p.m.: Meeting of the Cooks

“So we’re back in France tonight,” says Waters to the cooks and staff forager gathered at a dining room table near the open kitchen of Chez Panisse. It’s time to settle the night’s menu, a daily ritual that at times resembles a story meeting for an episode of “ER.”

“I picture our first course as a custardy tart, the French way,” Waters says. A big bunch of fresh rosemary and savory holds her place in a worn hardcover copy of Richard Olney’s “Simple French Food,” the jacket long gone, the white cloth cover spotted with various food stains. Waters hugs the book, which contains the recipe for tonight’s tart, close to her chest, as if for inspiration as she talks.

“Make the tarts as charming and irregular as you can,” she says. “Though I guess we have to put them in form pans. Have we used Bob’s sorrel before?”

“Not yet,” says forager Alan Tangren.

Chez Panisse famously serves a single fixed-price menu, one that changes every day. If you want steak when they’re serving squab, you’re out of luck (though substitutions are made for diners with special diets and the less expensive upstairs cafe has a full menu). As far as anyone can remember, no menu has been repeated in the 25-year history of the restaurant.

Each Thursday, the next week’s menus are turned in, but they aren’t finalized until the chef’s meeting to allow the cooks to respond to the seasonal nature of the products they cook with or simply to change their minds.

“OK. For the salmon,” Waters says, “I haven’t tried this but I can taste it in my mind: Blanch a piece of bacon, wrap the salmon and bake it on a little juicy mirepoix, a little tiny dice of carrot and fennel and onion, with rosemary and savory in it.

“What’s your experience?” she asks the chefs. “Will it work? I’m traumatized because I have to cook dinner for the president on Tuesday.”

“Is the baking getting the bacon brown?” asks Christopher Lee. “People don’t like raw bacon.”

“You could put the bacon in the mirepoix,” suggests Jerome Waag.

“But then it doesn’t flavor the salmon,” Waters says.

“And the salmon’s been kind of lean lately,” Tangren adds.

“What if you grilled it?” proposes Seen Lippert.

“That would be cool,” Lee says.

Waters agrees. Cool. On to the squab.

“I was thinking of putting some lime on the birds. I like Sauternes-roasted garlic for the sauce. Do we have good garlic?”

Tangren nods.

“Let’s get some more from that guy at the farmers market,” Waters says. “And what about squab liver? Or do they not like that?”

“They like that!” Lee says.

“We just don’t tell them what’s making it taste so good,” Waag says.

“Now with the squab, I was thinking of little roasted potatoes,” Waters announces.

“We can rub them with salt,” Waag suggests.

“Salt?” she asks.

“It takes the water out,” Waagsays. “They do taste a little different. It’s good. They get really nutty like chestnuts. It’s a little time-consuming, but it’s easy.”

“Let’s do it,” Waters says. “Does anyone want to try the fish?”

Lee takes the salmon. Lippert agrees to the squab. John Luther is the designated sorrel tart man.

“I’ll do the salt-rubbed spuds,” Waag concludes.

“All right, Waters says, “andiamo.”

2:30 to 4 p.m. Jam Session

As if on cue, the downstairs cooks, prep persons and a few chefs from the upstairs cafe join in the common goal of getting the night’s ingredients out of the walk-in coolers and out on the work tables. Huge plastic bins arrive in procession: sorrel, squab, potatoes, salmon.

*

With everything in place, the core team of cooks for the night discuss the pros and cons of blanching the sorrel and the thickness of the night’s potato skins as they go about their tasks.

Lippert, who has a business background in real estate, an artistic background as a painter who spent time in Florence, and a scholarly background in biology and zoology, seasons the Paine Farm squab.

Downstairs sous chef Lee, who normally leads the restaurant’s Monday night crew and who has been in charge of the Monday through Thursday dinners the last few weeks since downstairs chef Jean-Pierre Moulle has been on vacation, performs the exacting job of removing tiny bones from the salmon with a pair of tweezers.

Luther, raised in Ohio, spent time in France and took a year away from cooking to work for wine merchant Kermit Lynch, whose wines fill the bins at Chez Panisse. He checks the condition of the sorrel before an intern begins the job of removing the stems from the leaves; he then examines every cherry tomato that will go into the salad garnish for his tart.

Waag, who grew up in France near the estate of Domaine Tempier, Waters’ favorite winery, peels shallots, rejecting one that doesn’t meet his approval.

It’s almost unheard of in most restaurants for chefs on the line to spend their time peeling shallots and garlic. Waters herself spends hours shelling beans each week when she’s cooking. Jobs that are typically done by prep cooks are done as a matter of course by the chefs at Chez Panisse (though there are interns and staff to do a little advance work).

“We spend a lot of time doing a lot of practical, boring things,” Waag says. “This kitchen is very peculiar.”

“I think you have to be involved with the preparation of food from top to bottom instead of segregating the jobs,” Waters says, coming back into the kitchen after checking with her assistant, Gayle Pirie, in the office.

“Every time I do the beans, I’m debating. Are they tough enough? Are they fuller than they were yesterday? Do we have to cook them a little longer? It’s the kind of information that only somebody thinking about the final result can do.”

Waag has begun the long process of rubbing each walnut-sized potato with coarse salt. Ideally, the salt would rub through the skin immediately, drawing out moisture and leaving the outside slightly wet. But these potatoes are thicker-skinned than the ones he used last time he tried this dish and at the moment they’re just salty.

“Those other ones were really young Finns,” he tells Lee. “These are a lot stronger. It might be a matter of waiting a little longer. If it doesn’t work, we’ll just bake them like that. The idea of them being in salt, getting some of the water out, is still going to work. I have faith. But that’s a lot of what we do here; we make it up as we go along.”

“We talk a lot about the things we do,” Lee says. “We respond to these subtle differences. We have to because it’s not the same thing every night. And if someone has a better idea about how we’re going to get there, we listen to each other.”

“If you want to put in some wild fennel,” Waag says, “it’s not super-set. The imagination kicks in. It’s like playing music. We’re the Grateful Dead of cooking.”

“I’d rather think of it as jazz,” Lee says.

“OK,” Waag says, “that’s a better metaphor. Yeah.”

“It’s like interplay,” Lee says. “I mean, we all know that the tune goes like this and it’s in G-minor, but maybe I see the melody this way. Maybe a little modal?”

“I think it’s very privileged work we do here,” Waag says. “We have the best ingredients. It’s very creative, free-floating. There’s a lot of exchange. A lot of friendship. Other places seem more like a dictatorship.”

“Yeah, well,” Lee says, “that’s why we’re all working here.”

4 p.m. Oral Exams

Waters is back in her office going over details for the fund-raising dinner she and the staff will prepare for President Clinton at Esprit founder Susie Tompkin’s “apartment,” as Waters calls it. Various place setting configurations are arranged among the piles of papers and invoices on Tangren’s desk.

“Are we going to have room for a bread plate?” Waters wonders. Tangren doesn’t think so.

*

Now Lee comes in from the kitchen with yet another plate, this one topped with salmon, a first try at the night’s fish course.

Waters grabs a fork and pokes at the bacon wrapping the salmon. “It gets this brown?” she asks.

“It will be cooked more than that,” Lee says. “I took it off early, but yeah, it gets that brown.”

Waters takes a bite and says nothing for the moment.

“That’s unseasoned,” Lee points out. “I wanted to see how salty it gets.”

“I’m just wondering,” Waters says, “if it were cut a little bit different, then it would cook it a little bit more quickly and it would stay that, that . . . “

“So you want it less brown?”

“No, no, it’s great that brown,” Waters insists.

“But see, if you had to cook it any more it would get too brown. And you wouldn’t want that. So maybe to get it a little bit more cooked it might be better to do it on a . . . “

” . . . a thinner slice? OK. The trick is that the salmon are big, so the fillets are that wide and yea thick. But I can cut them into pieces that are the right width.”

“And then you can put them on the grill flat. OK, that’s the way it should go. Although I guess it does have to be seasoned some.”

4:30 to 6 p.m. Crunch Time

Somehow the word has gotten out that the sorrel tart is in trouble. Lindsey Shere and her pastry crew appear around the plate that Waters and Luther are picking apart.

“Put us to work; we’re ready to help,” says dessert-pastry chef Samantha Wood.

The crust is too brittle, but that would be acceptable if it weren’t for the filling. There’s an odd, stringy texture to the filling. Still, if you were cooking for friends at home, you would be impressed with yourself for making something that tasted so amazingly delicious. The threads are really a small nuisance. But tonight’s customers will pay $65 per person, and perfection is expected.

“It must be the sorrel,” Luther says.

“Could it be the stem?” Waters asks.

“We removed them,” Luther says. “Maybe the veins in the leaf.”

“It shouldn’t be,” says Tangren, who has joined the group. “But it’s obviously the sorrel.”

“We could put the filling in a blender,” Luther suggests.

For a moment Waters considers scrapping the sorrel filling and making onion tarts instead. In a flash, upstairs cafe cook Mona Talbott appears with a box of onions, ready to peel, eager to help out. The pastry crew stands by, ready to make a new crust if needed.

But there’s no time. Customers are due in a little more than an hour, and the tarts are the first course. At 4:55 p.m., a decision is made. The tart is now a sorrel souffle pudding, with salad on the side.

Out goes the crust. The filling stays, but it gets put in the blender to pulverize the offending threads. Cooks are dispatched to find as many individual ramekins as possible to hold the souffles.

“Sometimes you just have to call it and say it doesn’t work,” Waters says.

“You’ve just seen the most painful part of this process,” Luther tells a visitor.

By 5:20 p.m., maitre d’ Janet Lee appears with the night’s menu, fresh from the printer. The sorrel souffle pudding is now called sorrel flan. Luther pulls a test flan out of the oven.

“Maybe you should add more yolks,” Lippert suggests when Luther says he’d like it lighter.

At 5:45 p.m., Waters is back in the kitchen to taste Shere’s strawberry soup laced with orange blossom water.

“The flavor builds up in your mouth as you eat the soup,” explains Shere, who has been with Waters at the restaurant since Day One.

Still, the consensus among the tasters, who include pastry cooks Hye Paik and Tasha Prysi, is that a little more orange blossom water would be nice, especially if a scoop of sorbet is added.

“The cold from the sorbet will tone down the blossom water,” Shere says.

Luther now appears with another sorrel flan. And it is good. Waters smiles.

As they discuss the best way to present the flan, waiters Charles Richardson and David Stewart place the last napkins on the tables in the dining room. Runner Kelly Dedel fills rose-tinted glasses with icy water. The staff doesn’t know it now, but the guests will rave over the subtlety of the salmon, the earthiness of the squab, the nuttiness of the roasted potatoes, the exquisiteness of the strawberry soup. And the most popular dish of the night will be . . . the sorrel flan.

At 6:03 p.m., Janet Lee walks the first guests of the evening to their table. Dedel delivers crusty Acme bread and water. Luther readies his first course.

Dinner is served.

CHARCOAL-GRILLED CHICKEN WITH GARLIC PUREE

This is an earthy chicken dish for the barbecue grill from the “Uncomplicated Menus” chapter of “The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook.” Waters suggests serving a garden salad topped with baked goat cheese and a carrot and shallot soup with chervil cream before the chicken. With the chicken, she likes oven-roasted potatoes and a garnish of watercress and lemon wedges. For dessert, she suggests almond cookies and fresh cherries.

1 (about 3-pound) frying chicken

2 heads garlic

3 cups dry red wine

2 to 3 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried

1 cup olive oil

Salt, pepper

Cut chicken into serving pieces. Peel 8 to 10 cloves garlic and roughly chop. Marinate chicken with wine, chopped garlic and thyme 2 to 4 hours in refrigerator.

Spread remaining cloves garlic, with skins on, in small baking dish in single layer and cover with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste and bake at 300 degrees until garlic is completely soft, about 1 1/2 hours. Puree garlic through food mill. Discard skins and reserve puree.

Remove chicken from refrigerator about 1 hour before cooking. Prepare medium-low charcoal fire. When fire is ready, remove chicken from marinade, pat pieces dry and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook chicken slowly on grill about 35 minutes, turning frequently. Chicken should be nicely browned but juicy and slightly rare. Spread garlic puree over chicken and heat in 375-degree oven 5 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

437 calories; 188 mg sodium; 115 mg cholesterol; 30 grams fat; 3 grams carbohydrates; 29 grams protein; 0.17 gram fiber.

WHOLE BAKED GARLIC WITH WHITE CHEESE AND PEASANT BREAD

Garlic is an essential part of the cooking at Chez Panisse. This is one of those wonderful dishes that you and a group of friends will stand around eating and eating until it’s done. It comes from “The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook.”

6 heads new-crop garlic (firm and unsprouting)

1/3 cup butter

1/3 cup olive oil

Salt, pepper

2 or 3 sprigs thyme

1/2 cup goat cheese

1/4 cup whipping cream

Peasant bread

Cut around head of garlic to remove outer skin from top half of head, exposing individual cloves. Arrange heads in baking dish just big enough to hold all. Dot with butter, pour olive oil over, and salt and pepper well. Put thyme sprigs in here and there. Bake at 275 degrees, covered, 30 minutes then take off cover and bake an additional 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on size of heads, basting every 15 minutes. Garlic should be very tender and sweet.

Make mild cream cheese to serve with garlic by mixing 1/2 cup goat cheese and 1/4 cup whipping cream together until easily spreadable.

When garlic is done, serve whole heads with oil from dish spooned over them, with peasant bread and white cheese. Dip bread in oil, squeeze on the garlic and eat warm with the cheese.

Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

286 calories; 199 mg sodium; 45 mg cholesterol; 28 grams fat; 8 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams protein; 0.41 gram fiber.

CHARD GRATIN

The gratin--from “Chez Panisse Vegetables”--is best if you tear and toast your own rough bread crumbs from a hard-crusted loaf of rustic bread.

2 pounds young red or green chard

3 tablespoons butter

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 cups milk

2 tablespoons flour

Whole nutmeg

Salt, pepper

3/4 cup toasted coarse bread crumbs

Shred the bread into small pieces and chop the pieces by hand or leave in irregular chunks if you like. Toss the crumbs with a pinch of salt and enough olive oil to just coat the bread. Spread the crumbs on a baking sheet in a thin layer and bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes, tossing every 10 minutes.

Cut off thick ends of chard stems. Blanch chard for 1 1/2 minutes in lightly salted boiling water. Drain, squeeze out water and chop leaves into 3/4-inch pieces.

Melt butter over medium heat in large, nonreactive skillet and add chard. Turn chard in butter as leaves begin to wilt, add garlic and continue cooking slowly, uncovered, for 7 or 8 minutes, until leaves have begun to soften. Warm milk in small saucepan.

Sprinkle flour over chard and stir to mix well. Cook for 1 minute more and then begin to slowly add milk, about 1/4 cup at a time. Continue adding milk in small amounts until milk is completely incorporated.

Season with light grating of nutmeg, salt and pepper. Transfer to buttered gratin dish, spreading about 1 inch deep. Cover evenly with bread crumbs and bake at 375 degrees until crumbs have browned nicely, about 35 minutes.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

245 calories; 801 mg sodium; 33 mg cholesterol; 12 grams fat; 27 grams carbohydrates; 10 grams protein; 1.88 grams fiber.

PASTA WITH TOMATO CONFIT

8 tomatoes

1 to 2 bunches basil leaves

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Extra-virgin olive oil

About 1 pound pasta, shape of choice

Waters finds that roasting tomatoes in oil with basil can bring life to even imperfect tomatoes. Of course, as with most Waters recipes, the better the original ingredient, the better the dish: We tried this dish from “Chez Panisse Vegetables” (HarperCollins, 1996) twice--once with tomatoes from a farmers market and once with everyday tomatoes from the supermarket. The supermarket tomatoes were good, but the farmers market tomatoes were amazing. The tomatoes can be served whole as a side dish with meat, poultry or fish. They can be used in sauces. And they can be served on top of pasta as described below. The recipe adjusts easily up or down--figure on two tomatoes and three to four ounces of pasta per person. You might also try throwing in a few cloves of garlic to roast with the tomatoes.

Make bed of basil leaves in bottom of oven-proof dish that will hold tomatoes snugly in 1 layer.

Peel and core tomatoes and place core-side down on basil. Lightly season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour in enough olive oil to come halfway up sides of tomatoes. Bake at 350 degrees until tomatoes are soft and lightly caramelized and have infused oil with their perfume, about 1 1/2 hours.

When tomatoes are nearly done, cook pasta in boiling, salted water just until tender, 8 to 10 minutes for most shapes. Drain pasta and place in serving bowl.

Remove tomatoes from oven, season with salt and pepper to taste and serve spooned over cooked and drained fresh noodles.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

592 calories; 98 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 16 grams fat; 97 grams carbohydrates; 17 grams protein; 1.94 grams fiber.

SAUTEED CHANTERELLES ON TOAST

1 pound chanterelle mushrooms

2 shallots

1/2 clove garlic

Parsley

1 tablespoon butter

Salt, pepper

1/4 cup whipping cream

4 slices bread

This is a terrific appetizer from “Chez Panisse Vegetables.”

Gently clean mushrooms with brush or paring knife to remove dirt. If mushrooms are large, slice; otherwise, leave whole. Peel shallots and garlic and chop very fine. Chop 1 tablespoon parsley and set aside.

Heat butter in skillet, add mushrooms, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook over high heat 3 minutes. Add shallots and garlic and cook another minute. Add cream, reduce heat and simmer until mushrooms are coated with silky cream reduction, about 5 minutes.

Toast bread slices and put on platter. Pour mushrooms over toast. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Makes 4 appetizer servings.

Each serving contains about:

184 calories; 242 mg sodium; 29 mg cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 21 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 1.02 grams fiber.

SAUTEED CHANTERELLES ON TOAST

This is a terrific appetizer from “Chez Panisse Vegetables.”

1 pound chanterelle mushrooms

2 shallots

1/2 clove garlic

Parsley

1 tablespoon butter

Salt, pepper

1/4 cup whipping cream

4 slices bread

Gently clean mushrooms with brush or paring knife to remove dirt. If mushrooms are large, slice; otherwise, leave whole. Peel shallots and garlic and chop very fine. Chop 1 tablespoon parsley and set aside.

Heat butter in skillet, add mushrooms, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook over high heat 3 minutes. Add shallots and garlic and cook another minute. Add cream, reduce heat and simmer until mushrooms are coated with silky cream reduction, about 5 minutes.

Toast bread slices and put on platter. Pour mushrooms over toast. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Makes 4 appetizer servings.

Each serving contains about:

184 calories; 242 mg sodium; 29 mg cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 21 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 1.02 grams fiber.

LINDSEY’S ALMOND TART

Lindsey Shere served almond tart at the first dinner Chez Panisse served on Aug. 28, 1971. Twenty-five years later she’s still in the kitchen, overseeing the desserts of Chez Panisse. This version of her signature tart is from “Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook” (Random House, 1982); it also appears in “Chez Panisse Desserts” by Lindsey Shere (Random House, 1985).

TART PASTRY

1/2 cup butter

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon sugar

3 to 4 drops almond extract

3 to 4 drops vanilla extract

1 tablespoon water

Cut butter into bits and let soften slightly. Mix flour and sugar in bowl. Cut butter into flour with pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal.

Combine almond and vanilla extracts with cold water in small bowl, then quickly stir mixture into flour. Gather dough into ball and flatten slightly. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 1 hour.

Allow dough to stand at room temperature briefly until it is malleable. Role out dough and press dough into 9-inch tart form with removable ring, reserving small amount. Press dough evenly over bottom and sides of pan, about 1/8 inch thick, and extend dough 1/8 inch above top of ring. Prick shell lightly and refrigerate at least 1 hour. Dough may be refrigerated 8 hours or frozen.

Partially bake tart shell at 400 degrees until shell begins to set and brown, about 10 minutes. Remove shell to cake rack and cool to room temperature. Patch any holes in shell by smoothing very small bit of reserved dough over tears.

FILLING

1 cup whipping cream

3/4 cup sugar

Pinch salt

1 tablespoon Grand Marnier

1 tablespoon kirsch

2 drops almond extract

1 cup blanched sliced almonds

Bring whipping cream, sugar, salt, Grand Marnier, kirsch and almond extract to full, rolling boil in large, heavy saucepan. Cook until liquid bubbles thickly and has silky texture, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add almonds. Set aside 15 minutes to steep and then pour into prepared tart shell.

Line floor of oven with aluminum foil and bake tart on center rack at 350 degrees 25 to 30 minutes. Filling will bubble up and may overflow, then settle and begin to caramelize. Rotate tart frequently during last 15 minutes of baking so top is even deep golden brown. Remove tart to cake rack and let cool to room temperature before cutting.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Each of 8 servings contains about:

450 calories; 160 mg sodium; 72 mg cholesterol; 32 grams fat; 35 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams protein; 0.46 gram fiber.