Chez Panisse Fruit

"Alice Waters runs this absolutely amazingly cool restaurant in Berkeley and popularised the whole locally sourced organic thing we’re all so familiar with now. This book came out just before I was applying for jobs. I remember the Chez Panisse pastry chef gave a talk about apples at the local farmers’ market, and the way he talked about apples – the thousands of varieties – was amazing. And then he passed round different apples and made this apple and huckleberry crisp and passed that around – it was unbelievably good. I got the book and then I went to see Alice Waters and said ‘I want to come work at Chez Panisse’. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The book’s very simple. It’s alphabetical and it lists almost every fruit that you can use. There are sweet and savoury recipes – grilled cured duck breast with pickled peaches… They use a lot of fruits in the savoury dishes over there. They’ll use fig leaves to bake the fish in and then bake fig tarts or fig cookies or make fig ice-cream."