Remembrance of people past
and an ode to the cooking genius of Judy Rodgers, plus a recipe for the best chicken salad
T.S Eliot famously said that April is the cruelest month. I beg to differ.
In its meek and mild mood, March is a lamb of a month, the harbinger of the warm and sunny days ahead. And then, without warning, it takes sudden delight in being contrarian, a toddler having a tantrum. It throws back its head and roars loudly, spitting out rain and sleet and snow with a snarly grin.
As we round the corner on March, I have to agree with my husband. March is not your friend.
The last week of this long month has been a particularly heavy one, with news of a loss that was extraordinarily sad. It made me think about the other side of grief that we strive to get to - the place of celebration and gratitude for lives well lived, for joy bestowed, for the generosity of spirit that abides. And it made me think about the importance of remembering, of keeping front and centre those we hold dear, even those we might not have known personally.
For while March is full of contradictions, it also asks us to celebrate. So, as we close off Women’s History Month, to stave off grief and get to a place of peace, I go to my favourite place of contemplation, meditation and restoration - the kitchen. And to honour a wonderful woman, I go to one of my most treasured cookbooks, written by someone who I’ve never met, who we lost too soon, but who can stand by our side still, sharing with deep generosity the wisdom of her knowledge.
Learning to cook from a cookbook
When you have over 500 cookbooks, choosing a favourite can be next to impossible. The criteria is arbitrary at best. Is it the number of recipes you’ve made from that book? The writing that captured your imagination? The new things you learned and the “ah ha” moments you experienced? Or is it the deep connection you feel to the author, almost as if they were right there with you in the kitchen, gently guiding your hand?
The Zuni Café Cookbook, first published in 2002, is all that. Written by Judy Rodgers, the beloved chef at the Zuni Café, and subtitled “A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco’s Beloved Restaurant”, this is no celebrity restaurant cookbook, full of impossible techniques and ingredients. This is both the book you pull off the shelf at 3 pm to make dinner that night, and the tome you reach for when you want a challenge and a lesson, and have the time for both.
What is most wonderful about the cookbook - and what I imagine might have been most wonderful about Rodgers herself - is the common thread running through every one of these recipes. Rodgers’s generous spirit, inquisitive mind, and attention to detail shine brightly on every page. How else would you know that adding a bit of water to rapini before grilling has a steaming effect that makes the thicker stems cook and not char? Or that salting a whole chicken for two days in the refrigerator yields the most delicious results? As she said:
“Making even a simple dish three times in two weeks can teach you more about cooking than trying three different dishes in the same period. Pay attention to the process of making it, and to the small and large differences in the results.”
From the perfect duck braised with red wine and prunes, a soupy and utterly delicious braising broth of white beans, fennel and tomato, and duck stock, to marinated roasted beets and boiled kale on toast with fried eggs – every dish is intelligent, delicious and deeply satisfying. And of course there is the famous roast chicken - a dish that Rodgers developed soon after taking the helm at Zuni Café and that remains on the menu to this day.
Rodgers also advocated for seasonal cooking long before it was a mantra. “Cookbooks will give you ideas," she advised, "But the market will give you dinner — study your market at least as avidly as your library." In cooking with Rodgers, you become, not just a better cook, but one that is curious, that is willing to take the time to experiment, to question, to constantly evolve, and ultimately, to trust your instincts and your palate. In a key chapter called “What to Think About Before You Start, & While You Are Cooking”, we are given a master class in cooking techniques that alone makes this cookbook essential on your shelf.
Salt of the earth
If there is one lesson that is paramount, it’s in the salting of proteins. We know about brining, but this technique is even more elemental. So elemental, in fact, that Rodgers identified it as the leitmotif of the restaurant. “It is a part of the restaurant’s personality,” she said. “The flavor of Zuni Café is pre-salting, and if I can’t pre-salt, I can’t get the right flavor.”
Tragically we lost Judy Rogers in 2013 at the age of 57; way too young and too soon. But her generosity of spirit lives on in this must-have cookbook, and at Zuni Cafe itself. When you’re on your own one night and want a revelatory dish, try my all time favourite home alone dinner: eggs fried in bread crumbs. It demonstrates that truly understanding the alchemy of ingredients can create magic, even with the simplest of ingredients.
Roast chicken salad with peppers, pine nuts, olives and bitter greens
Excerpted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Judy Rodgers
serves 2-3
So many recipes to choose from! In writing about Judy Rodgers, and leisurely leafing through her cookbook, I am at once inspired, curious, excited and most of all - hungry! It’s hard to choose what to highlight here, so I’ll start with something you can make today, with a cheater’s rotisserie chicken. And if I have intrigued you enough, you can find many versions of Rodgers’s famous roast chicken and bread salad recipe online, including here. But what I really want you to do is buy this cookbook. You will be vastly rewarded with good food, wonderful advice and a new best friend in the kitchen. Thank you, Ms. Rodgers. May your spirit live on in our kitchens for many years to come.
Note: if you are using store-bought roast chicken, and don’t have those precious drippings, moisten the chicken lightly with olive oil or chicken fat if you have it. This step prevents the vinegar from being absorbed into the chicken.
Another important step is to ensure that everything is at room temperature or slightly warmer to make the flavours shine.
Ingredients
About 8 ounces of roast chicken, room temperature or warmer
2 tablespoons of the gelatinous drippings from the chicken (see headnote)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
A crusty chunk of bread, about 4 to 8 ounces
1 garlic clove (optional)
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1 small red, yellow or green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and thinly sliced, at room temperature
3 big handfuls of bitter greens such as dandelion, watercress, or arugula, at room temperature (dandelion is the best!)
12 pitted oil cured olives, such as Nyons, or 24 pitted brine cured black olives
1½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oven to 400F.
Tear the chicken into bite sized pieces and remove any fat and sinew--and the skin, if you wish. Place in a small dish and set aside.
Warm the drippings and discard any fat. Moisten the chicken with the drippings. Set in a warm spot.
Cut the crust off all sides of the bread to make irregularly shaped croutons. Brush the crust with olive oil to coat, spread on a baking sheet, and toast until golden on the edges, about 6 minutes. Cool slightly and rub the croutons with garlic, or skip this step if you are not a garlic fan.
Set the olives and pine nuts into a small bowl and place in the warm but turned off oven.
Whisk together the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
Set a salad bowl and serving plates in the warm oven for a minute, to warm through.
To assemble the salad: Place the peppers and greens in the warm bowl, and toss with the vinaigrette to coat . Add the warm chicken, pine nuts and olives and toss well, coating every surface. Add the croutons and drizzle more of the vinaigrette over them and toss the whole salad again. Taste for seasoning and serve on warm plates.
So sorry for your loss, LizPizz... Was it someone I might also know? Glad to hear you leaned on Zuni during this difficult time. Take care and hope to see you again soon.