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By Root 219 0

but her renown had not yet reached the East Coast. I met her by accident, and reluctantly. In the spring of 1979, I was in San Francisco and had made a dinner date with my friend Bob Scheer, a writer at the time for the Los Angeles Times, who had run unsuccessfully for Congress the year before. Alice had been Bob’s campaign manager, and he suggested we go to her restaurant in Berkeley for dinner. “You’ll like it,” he said. I resisted. I still thought of Berkeley as a scruffy academic town of hippies, Hare Krishnas, and macrobiotic cafés. I wanted a nonideological dinner in San Francisco. Bob insisted. I submitted. We crossed the bay to Chez Panisse. I knew from the moment I sat down that I was about to be dazzled.

For dinner I ordered bouillabaisse, which turned out to be a silken fugue of textures and tastes whose clarity and honesty were poetry in a pot. I remember mumbling something to Bob that if Emily Dickinson owned a restaurant it would be Chez Panisse. Bob introduced me to Alice. I had not offered to publish a cookbook since the Uncle Tai mess, but I was besotted, and when Alice joined us at our table I proposed a contract then and there. I knew the book would become a classic. Moreover, I wanted her bouillabaisse recipe and hoped she would include it. She did: Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, if you have a copy. This wonderful recipe appears in a section called “Uncomplicated Menus,” an optimistic placement.

ALICE’S BOUILLABAISSE

Her bouillabaisse for eight to ten fills three pages, beginning with a marinade, then a rather complicated fumet, which becomes an even more splendid broth and a brilliant rouille. First she fillets and marinates eight pounds of firm, white, nonoily fish—halibut, striped bass, sea bass, snapper, etc.—in pieces of various lengths about an inch thick, in a half-cup of extra-virgin olive oil, two cups of dry white wine, two sprigs each of aromatic thyme and fennel tops, six parsley sprigs, three peeled garlic cloves, two tablespoons of Pernod, and a pinch of saffron, for an hour or so. She places in a separate bowl three and a half dozen littleneck clams and a dozen and a half Prince Edward Island mussels.

For the fumet, she cleans the fish bones, leaving no blood or gills (my fish market sells the fillets already boned, but supplies the bones and heads on demand), coarsely chops two carrots, a leek, a medium onion, two tomatoes, six mushrooms, and two garlic cloves, and cooks them with the bones in olive oil for ten minutes in a twelve-quart stockpot. Then she adds a bouquet garni of parsley sprigs, fennel seed, bay leaf, dried tarragon and thyme, a dozen peppercorns, and six coriander seeds; two cups of dry white wine;six mussels;six clams;the peel of a small orange (the pith removed); two tablespoons of Pernod; and a pinch each of saffron and cayenne. She simmers this for thirty minutes, skimming it often, lets it stand off the heat for fifteen minutes, and strains it, discarding the vegetables, shells, and bones. Meanwhile, she makes the rouille. She blackens a red bell pepper over an open flame and peels it, roasts and seeds a ripe tomato, and softens a slice of good Italian bread, crusts removed, in a quarter-cup of fumet with a pinch each of saffron and cayenne. She then beats three egg yolks into this mixture and slowly adds a cup and a half of olive oil to make a mayonnaise. She makes a purée of the peppers and tomato in a mortar and adds it to the rouille, which she adjusts with salt, pepper, cayenne, and saffron to taste. While this is happening, she rubs two dozen thin slices of baguette with garlic and oil and browns them in a 400-degree oven.

Then she makes the broth. In a quarter-cup of olive oil she sautés the white parts of two leeks, diced, and two medium onions, diced, with a large very ripe tomato, seeded and peeled, and adds a bay leaf, a pinch of saffron, the rest of the fumet, three cloves of garlic, minced, a sprig each of fennel and parsley, the peel without pith of half an orange, a cup each of white wine and Pernod, a pinch of saffron, and salt and pepper to taste.