"Blessings.
You're on your own.
Together with everything."
Edward Espe Brown
from the Tassajara Cooking
Showing posts with label Edward Espe Brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward Espe Brown. Show all posts
A quote from Edward Espe Brown
Edward Espe Brown
from the Tassajara Cooking
Edward Espe Brown: Cooking is not a mystery
Cooking is not a mystery.
The more heart we put out
the more heart we put in.
To bring cooking alive
we give our life. Giving
our life willingly we don't
get put out.
Washing cutting cooking cleaning,
exploring ways to give life to our life.
Not knowing already how and what to do,
practice feeling it
out of what is not known
through the warmth and anxiety,
not sticking to a particular way,
insisting it is the only way
even though it is quite good;
open to feeling the various possibilities,
the tentative ways of giving life to our life.
To feel out our left hand, our back, our toes,
to feel out our breathing, our movements, our stance,
this is our freedom, this is our wisdom.
The mystery is that it is possible to do
what we don't know how to do.
A poem by Edward Espe Brown, as printed in Tassajara Cooking, 1973, a Shambhala/ZenCenter book
Cooking down the middle path
“Take some time and do something that shares your heart. You give your body, your mind, your spirit to something, and that's nourishing. It's nourishing to you and it's nourishing to others [who share your food].” Mr. Brown, 65, will be in Toledo on Friday through Sunday to talk about food and life, about a way to offer emotional healing just by touching another person, and to give tips on cooking.
Reached last week on the phone at his home in Marin County, Calif., just north of San Francisco, he had just finished a lunch he called “very simple, but good.” In a sense, the meal was a manifestation of the Buddhist principle of The Middle Way — a path that avoids the extremes of sensuality and total self-sacrifice.
It was a salad that began with red cabbage (he put salt on it and squeezed out the liquid to make it easier to chew). Sweet and sour flavors came from honey and lime juice, with a bite provided by julienned radishes. He added pieces of apples he grows in his yard and some peppersmoked salmon, topped by chopped green onions and roasted sunflower seeds with just a little sugar on them for
sweetness.
“I studied Chinese medicine, and it says each of the five flavors has its value for nourishing the body: salty flavor, sweet flavor, sour flavor, bitter flavor, and spicy. And the colors have their value. There's a kind of poetry to it. Why not live by poetry instead of being told what to do?
“Whatever happened to pleasure and enjoyment and ease and comfort?”
For 20 years, Mr. Brown lived at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the United States. Located south of San Francisco, the center is known for its rigorous schedule of meditation, study, and work.
And thanks to Mr. Brown, it is also known for its food.
In 1970, he wrote The Tassajara Bread Book and essentially launched a breadbaking revolution. The book used one basic method to create a number of baked variations, and reminded the Baby Boom generation, and the generations that followed, that the act of baking bread can be enriching for the soul.
Three years later, he wrote Tassajara Cooking and then The Tassajara Recipe Book, both of them classics of vegetarian cooking.
“I wanted to encourage people to go ahead and do something. Don't be intimidated, don't be scared. Not everything will turn out perfectly, but you'll do something you like to do,” he said.
The Zen center serves only vegetarian food, but whenever he would leave to visit family or friends, as he did several times a year, he would eat meat if they served it. Ever since he left Tassajara in 1985 he has incorporated more meat into his diet. He said he now eats it four or five times a week.
Young people are idealistic and many are vegetarian, he said, but he does not recommend it as a way of life. He cited the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, who was a vegan for 20 years. It ruined her health, he said, giving her a degenerative bone disease that caused so much pain she eventually could not stand for more than a few minutes at a time. She only returned to health after she was convinced to start eating meat.
In addition, he said, vegetarians tend not to look at the totality of where their food comes from. Trees were killed and plowed over to create fields, and the gasoline used to haul the crops and put the fertilizer in the ground was made from animals who died long ago.
“There's already killing to get the habitat,” he said. “At some point it seems sort of facile: ‘Let's not kill the animals that have a face like us, let's only do the killing of things we can't see.”
Mr. Brown said he has seen any number of diet fads come and go, and he is on a quiet quest to get people to think and judge for themselves. He recommends that people who are interested should learn for themselves about health and food. Then they can judge what works best for them and not do something simply because someone else told them to or out of habit.
And that idea is at the heart of what he calls “mindfulness touch,” a way of healing by putting your hands on someone else.
“When you touch someone, you can receive them and allow them to be who thy are, instead of telling them who to be. And it turns out that can be healing,” he said.
“Mindfulness is the ability to perceive without immediately judging ‘this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong.' You're letting go of diagnosing and letting go of fixing.
“Boy, is that a relief when the world stops telling you how to be. After awhile, they realize they can let down their guard, their barriers.”
Source of the article: ToledoBlade.com
THE COOKS OF TASSAJARA
THE COOKS OF TASSAJARA
Vegetable mavens: Clockwise from lower left: Annie Somerville,
Deborah Madison and Dale Kent.
The influential kitchen at the heart
of the Ventana Wilderness
of the Ventana Wilderness
BY DEBORAH LUHRMAN
Like so many students before him, Dale Kent arrived at Tassajara attracted by Brown’s iconic Tassajara Bread Book, which was first published in 1970. Equipped only with a degree in philosophy and some work experience baking cookies, Kent was assigned to clean rooms for his first summer but eventually found his way into the legendary kitchen that he had read about in the bread book. There, he began learning how to work magic with vegetables.
For two seasons, from 2002 to 2004, Kent served as head cook, or Tenzo, which is an important post at the Zen Buddhist center because along with preparing three meals a day for up to 80 guests and 70 students, the Tenzo is also a teacher who guides the spiritual growth of some 20 kitchen staff.
“We have a little service every morning, offering incense and chants to remind ourselves that this is a much bigger process than just filling empty stomachs,” he says. “It is actually offering energy for the flourishing of people.”
At Tassajara, which is part of the San Francisco Zen Center, cooking is not just working on food but also working on yourself. So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to attend Dale’s summer workshop called “Finding Yourself in the Tassajara Kitchen.” Getting there was hard enough. Driving that last 12 miles down a rutted, winding, dirt road at the end of Carmel Valley and into the Los Padres National Forest took more than an hour. Since I’m more of a gardener than a meditator, I was nervous about what was in store for me at the Japanese-style Zen center and hot springs at the end of the road.
IN THE KITCHEN
Anyone who was around in the 1970s probably remembers when The Tassajara Bread Book first came out. In my little kitchen up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I stood at a flour-drenched wooden table and kneaded loaf after loaf. It was fun. My friends appreciated hot bread from the oven, and it was liberating for me to discover I could make something so basic as bread, and not feel dependent on Staff of Life bakery or the supermarket.
Dale’s workshop was just as fun and empowering. Along with Tassajara’s current head cook, Graham Ross, we sat calmly in the meditation hall in the morning, discussing the experience of cooking and the Zen manuscript Instructions for the Cook, written by Eihei Dogen back in the 13th century but still oddly relevant today. Then in the afternoon, we prepared food for the staff and other guests staying at the center.
If you do not pay attention in the kitchen and “cook with mindfulness,” then the results will be meaningless, we were told—meaningless to the soup of your own soul and damaging to the community you are feeding. So trying to be mindful, we entered the fabled kitchen and began chopping carrots and slicing cucumbers under its rough-hewn beams. Graham showed us how to sharpen knives and chop properly. Dale taught the class how to make delicious vegetable sushi filled with carrots, scallions and avocado.
Talking is normally prohibited in the Tassajara kitchen—to help with the mindfulness—but the rules were bent for us novices. Even so, we tried to stay as quiet as possible and just focus on our work. Surprising thoughts bubbled up in my mind. How did my sushi rolls look compared to those made by others in the class? How could they be satisfied with their less-than-perfect products? What’s the point of making mine look good if they are going on the same plate with others that are falling apart? Hmmm…am I a competitive perfectionist? Maybe that’s what they meant by finding yourself in the Tassajara kitchen. The food at Tassajara is traditionally vegetarian because Tassajara is a monastery, but vegetarianism is not a requirement of Buddhism and there is nothing Spartan about the cuisine.
It is about 80% organic, with most of the produce grown at James Creek Farm in the Cachagua Hills, so the ingredients are top notch. The food at every meal was delicious. One morning we had Whole Wheat Ginger Bread with Orange Syrup. For lunch we slurped Broccoli Soup with Mint Crème Fraiche and the famous homemade Tassajara breads. The dinner we prepared included Sushi, Sweet Ginger Tofu, Cucumber Salad, Sautéed Daikon and Chocolate- Dipped Strawberries.
“It’s tricky to get meat eaters to feel satisfied at the end of a vegetarian meal, and I think we do a really good job of that,” Kent says. “We walk a fine line between preparing kind of fancy food, nicely presented, and offering rustic, home-style cooking.”
Vegetarian food isn’t always easy to make pretty, so garnishes are especially important at Tassajara. There’s a flower garden that supplies nasturtiums, lavender, calendula, bachelor buttons, grape leaves and roses. “Lots of our food is brown, but put a few flowers on it and it sparkles and people are excited to eat it,” he says. “Just putting one rose petal on a bowl of yogurt, for example, is a nice touch and makes that yogurt seem even more special.”
Kent’s own Tassajara Dinners and Desserts, lusciously photographed by Patrick Tregenza, is the latest in the series of influential cookbooks to come out of Tassajara. It reflects his love of Asian flavors and current tastes for lighter vegetarian meals. The book includes lots of amusing parables from the kitchen and makes Kent the latest in a long lineage of cooks who’ve contributed to the Tassajara mystique.
Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara’s first head cook.
Photo by Deborah Luhrman.
Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara’s first head cook and author of the bread book as well as The Complete Tassajara Cookbook and many other volumes, is now 66. As an ordained Zen priest, he still lectures and leads meditations in Marin County. I tracked him down one sunny morning in his writing studio at the back of a weathered wood house on Tomales Bay. As seagulls squawked overhead and ducks paddled by, we talked about his early days at the center and some of his cooking secrets.
“Some things end up speaking to you, and bread certainly spoke to me,” he says. “Wheat is earthy, it’s sweet, it’s hearty and substantial, but on the other hand you can do things with it that are fairly delicate and light.” He attributes the tremendous success of The Tassajara Bread Book to drawings that actually demonstrated, for the first time in print, how to knead dough. He also credits the book’s attraction to a primal need people have to do something “real.”
“There’s a deep longing to produce something with your hands, so you have something to show for it and share with other people. It makes you feel you have some way of taking care of your own life,” he says. Tassajara’s Japanese founder, Suzuki Roshi, once told Brown and other students, “I don’t understand you Americans. When you put so much milk and sugar on your cereal, how can you taste the true spirit of the grain?” It was a turning point in Brown’s cooking style. Instead of making things according to recipes or the way the dishes were supposed to taste, he started experimenting with ways to bring out the best in each ingredient.
In Zen, this is a life lesson as well: “Why don’t you taste the true spirit of yourself?” Brown explains. “Why don’t you know yourself instead of trying to make yourself over the way you’re supposed to be?
By carefully tasting each ingredient, Brown started to develop the Tassajara style of cooking. “It turned out I liked a sharp knife,” he says. “I liked cutting up the ingredients, and I found out over the years that small pieces work best. Cut surfaces release more immediate flavor and it is especially true with vegetables.”
Brown also likes to use fresh herbs, peppers and lots of lemon. “At one point I put lemon in every dish,” he says with a laugh. “Lemon gives a floral, fresh, tart flavor and that tartness is important to me in cuisine; it’s so good.” Peppers warm the palate. “The food seems to fill up the mouth more,” he says.
Brown, who was the subject of the award-winning 2007 documentary How to Cook Your Life, says one of the key lessons he learned as a cook at Tassajara was that “you are only as good as your last meal,” so cooks should just put their hearts into their work and try to ignore complaints.
“Certainly if you are cooking for a group of people, somebody will not like it. So if your self-esteem is based on your performance, your self-esteem is always going to be shaky,” he says. “But if you know that you’ve put a wholehearted, sincere effort into something, then you can let go of the other part.”
A wholehearted connection with the true spirit of ingredients is easier nowadays, he believes, because of farmers’ markets and the farm-to-table movement. “If food is local, it’s more likely that you may know the producers, you may have visited the farm and it’s more likely that it speaks to you. Then you have much more connection with the food, the people and the earth.”
“I’m more interested in what speaks to your heart, rather than if it’s local or it’s organic…but what’s local and organic tends to speak to me more,” he says as we munched on a tasty apple from the tree in his front yard, cut into very thin slices.
FROM SIMPLE TO SUPERB
Brown and Deborah Madison, who followed him as head cook at Tassajara in the 1970s, took vegetarian cuisine another giant leap forward with the opening of Greens restaurant in San Francisco. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Madison spent a year working at Chez Panisse in Berkeley—a noisy kitchen where the radio was always turned up loud—before opening Greens as part of the San Francisco Zen Center. At Chez Panisse she was exposed to the cooking style of Alice Waters, and the cuisine at Greens reflected that influence. “When Greens started, the food was pretty sophisticated,” Madison recalls. “It didn’t have meat but it had enough complexity that people didn’t miss it.”
“Lots of our customers were not vegetarians. They were food people coming to a beautiful restaurant with a beautiful view. The food happened to be vegetarian, but it wasn’t the drab, heavy food of the ’60s. It was light and bright and attractive and delicious,” she says.
Madison and Brown collaborated on The Greens Cookbook and since then, she has gone on to author 10 more books about food, including the celebrated Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone—which she envisioned as a kind of vegetarian Joy of Cooking. Because of that book and her role as founding chef at Greens, Madison is sometimes considered the goddess of vegetarians, a role she bristles at. “You know what, I really don’t care about vegetarianism, and it’s not my purpose to advance it,” she said in a recent telephone interview from her home in New Mexico. “When I wrote the book, I had other more important concerns, like what do we do about organics? What do we do about how meat is raised? Eating local food and seasonal food and looking at heirloom vegetables, things that people weren’t talking about so much back then.”
Madison thinks eating meat is fine as long as people do it in the best possible way—for their own health, for the environment and for the welfare of the animals. She sums up her beliefs like a Zen master at Tassajara: “My philosophy is to be aware and know the consequences of the choices we make, paying attention to what you are eating, to how much, to where the food comes from and how it connects to the rest of your life.”
“If you are eating food that is harmful to other people to produce, grown with a lot of pesticides that poison rivers and groundwater, and is therefore hard on wildlife…well, then you need to know that,” she adds.
Ever the teacher, Madison is hard at work on a 12th book called Vegetable Literacy, due out in 2013. The book will profile individual vegetables and plant families and should help cooks improvise and create new dishes. Judging by excerpts from the book that appeared in many Edible Communities magazines around the U.S. last year, it will also make fascinating reading.
GREEN-ING OUR TASTES
Annie Somerville served in Tassajara’s kitchen in the late 1970s, and like Kent, Brown and Madison, became head cook during her time there. Later, she worked with Madison at Greens, and since taking over as Green’s executive chef nearly 30 years ago, Somerville has gained a national reputation for her imaginative approach to vegetarian cooking.
A sparkly woman with a pixie haircut, Somerville loves to see how excited chefs and home cooks are about using vegetables nowadays. “Tassajara has really influenced the way people cook, and I think we’ve had a sizeable influence, too. Particularly in the early days, what we were doing was so unusual because it was hard to find a restaurant that prepared really delicious vegetarian food,” she says. “Now almost all restaurants have good vegetarian dishes.”
Over the years, Somerville has adapted the menu to suit evolving tastes and to take advantage of the increasing variety of fresh ingredients available to chefs.
“Early on we used dairy products more heavily than we do now, lots of cream, and we sautéed with butter and used a heavier hand with cheese,” she recalls. “Then we went through a low-fat period, but now we’ve reached a happy medium. We find the right places to use really good cheeses, a touch of cream here or there, a nice butter sauce—a brown butter pasta or Meyer lemon cream, that sort of thing.” Somerville thinks it’s important that a vegetarian meal feature distinct and diverse dishes, including vegetable appetizers and both standout entrees and side dishes. Otherwise, the items on a vegetarian menu can all sound the same.
The goal is “really nice dishes that stand on their own but just happen to be made with all vegetables,” she explains. “People come to Greens and have a great salad or a great vegetable ragout, a tagine or a delicious pizza or pasta. All of these things can be made with vegetable ingredients, and they are delicious.”
She delights in going to the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market twice a week and watching the seasons change through the produce that’s available. “It’s probably the main thing that keeps me engaged and excited about food,” she says. “Some people might really get tired of this after 30 years, but I love those direct connections with farmers and experiencing first-hand the moments of the seasons.”
Somerville, along with gardener Wendy Johnson, will return to Tassajara in June to teach a workshop on vegetarian cooking from harvest to plate called “Dragon Greens: A Cooking and Gardening Summer Solstice Celebration.”
Since the San Francisco Zen Center still owns Greens, it will probably always remain a vegetarian restaurant. Along with the former cooks of Tassajara and cooks to come, it will continue to set the pace for American vegetarian cuisine and shape our continuing passion for vegetables.
Deborah Luhrman was once the Santa Cruz County bureau chief for Channel 46 news. She has been traveling the world and spending too much time on airplanes for the past 25 years. So she returned to Santa Cruz to grow a garden and write about local issues.
RECIPES
Grahm Ross, Tassajara’s current head cook, at work in the fabled kitchen. Photo by Kodiak Greenwood.
TASSAJARA TIPS FOR COOKING
WITH VEGETABLES
WITH VEGETABLES
- Keep your kitchen clean If the place is a mess, it can’t be calm
- Do all prep work before cooking It is less stressful
- Cut vegetables in small pieces Cut surfaces release more flavor
- Use lemon To add tartness to dishes\
- Garnish with edible flowers To add sparkle
- Put your whole heart into it So the food nourishes the body and soul
The Shambhala Sun March 2010 Guide to Mindful Living issue
Why The Shambhala Sun Is Taking Mindfulness to Heart
By Barry Boyce, Senior Editor
feature
section:
the shambhala sun guide to mindful living
Mindfulness
Is a Source of Happiness: Thich Nhat Hanh on Mindfulness Practice
“Breathing
in, I know that I am breathing in.” It is such a simple
practice, but it can transform your life. The great meditation master
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches five mindfulness exercises to help you live
with happiness and joy.
Let Your Passion Cook: Edward Espe Brown In the Kitchen
Mindful
cooking is not detached or subdued, says Complete Tasajara Cookbook author Edward Espe Brown.
It’s
cooking with your whole being engaged—mind, body, and emotions.
RELATED SHAMBHALA SUN AUDIO EXCLUSIVE:
Audio:
Edward Espe Brown on Mindfulness in the Kitchen
The author of The Complete Tassajara Cookbook talks with Shambhala
Sun
Associate Editor Andrea Miller about the aesthetics of food, cooking “in
the dark,” his relationship with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, “insipid
tomatoes,” and more.
Romantic
Vision Versus Everyday Disappointment: Judith Simmer-Brown on
Relationships
In meditation we cut through our fantasies
and relate with life as
it really is. Then something magical can happen. Judith Simmer-Brown
says it’s exactly the same in our relationships.
Did
You Get the Message?: Steve Silberman on The Wired World
The
“real-time web” offers round-the-clock pressures and
distractions that make it hard to tell where the virtual world ends and
the real one begins. Steve Silberman shares some tips on how to handle
it mindfully and save your sanity.
RELATED SHAMBHALA SUN AUDIO EXCLUSIVE:
Steve
Silberman on mindfulness in the Wired World
The author of "Dig You Get the Message?" gets personal about the
hows and whys of bringing mindfulness with us as we enter and exit the
online realm.
Do Dishes, Rake Leaves (And Don’t Forget the Endless Loads of Laundry):
Karen Maezen Miller In the Home
Karen Maezen Miller on how the domestic practice of
ancient Zen masters can lead us to intimate encounters with our own
lives.
RELATED SHAMBHALA SUNSPACE BLOG:
The Laundry
Line: A blog on everyday dharma by Karen Maezen Miller
SEE ALSO:Karen Maezen Miller's 10 Tips for a Mindful Home
Toward
a Mindful Society: Jon Kabat-Zinn on The Mindfulness Movement
As
creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Jon Kabat-Zinn
has brought the benefits of meditation practice to hundreds of
thousands of people and inspired a movement that is changing our
society in many ways. In this exclusive interview with the Sun’s Barry
Boyce, he discusses the philosophy, goals, and promise of the
mindfulness movement.
The Science of Mindfulness: Daniel Siegel, MD on Brain, Body & Benefits
Daniel
J.
Siegel, M.D. looks for the “active ingredient” that makes
mindfulness so beneficial to our health, psyche, and overall quality of
life.
Beyond the Elevator Speech: Michael Carroll At Work
The
intersection between professional fulfillment and mindfulness
can’t be fully unpacked between floors one and seven. Michael Carroll
offers a deeper exploration of his own elevator pitch.
Making the Right Choice: Daniel Goleman on Shopping and Consuming
Daniel
Goleman says the key to becoming a socially engaged consumer
is to be mindful at the moment we’re deciding whether to buy something.
Knowing the full range of its impacts is one of the best things we can
do for ourselves and for the Earth.
RELATED SHAMBHALASUN.COM SPECIAL SECTIONS:
The Mindful
Society
Here you'll find some of the finest articles on mindfulness, from our extensive archives, plus Shambhala SunSpace exclusives, and more.
Mindfulness
Meditation
Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon
Salzberg are among the
most prominent teachers of mindful meditation in America. They drew
their inspiration from Burmese meditation masters Mahasi Sayadaw and U
Ba Khin, and from the Thai forest tradition of Ajahn Chah. Enjoy our
extensive archive of teachings from masters of Vipassana meditation and
Theravada teaching.
Love,
Passion & Relationships
A
special ShambhalaSun.com collection of writings and teachings from
Thich Nhat Hanh, John Welwood, Sylvia Boorstein, and many more.
other voices
Sakyong
Mipham Rinpoche on How to Be a Peacemaker
Polly
Young-Eisendrath: The Hidden Treasure of Anger
The Tao of the RZA: Rod Meade Sperry's Q&A with the RZA
RELATED SHAMBHALA SUN AUDIO EXCLUSIVE:
The
Heart Sutra Ain't Nuthin ta F Wit: An interview with The RZA
The
producer and rapper behind the Wu-Tang Clan talks about what he calls
Buddhism's "dopest verse" — and, the idea of Right Speech in a musical
genre that some might have a hard time defending.
the mindful society
Books to Keep in Mind
Barry
Boyce shares his top picks from his ever-expanding collection of books
relating to mindfulness.
books
Born to Be Kind?
On Kindness, by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor; Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, by Dacher Keltner; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, by Rebecca Solnit. Reviewed by Gaylon Ferguson.
Books in Brief
Andrea Miller reviews
The Way of Mountains and Rivers by John Daido Loori, Wholesome Fear by
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Awakening Joy by James Baraz and Shoshanna
Alexander, Sky Train by Canyon Sam, The Bag Lady Papers by Alexandra
Penney, Uncommon Happiness by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, The Awakener by
Helen Weaver, The Heart of the Universe by Mu Soeng, The Novice by
Stephen Schettini, and Eyes Wide Open by Mariana Caplan.
About
a Poem: Robert Pinsky on J.V. Cunningham’s Epigram 43
Shambhala Sun, March 2010,
Volume Eighteen, Number 4
Available on newsstands beginning in late January 2010.
To order a trial subscription to Shambhala Sun, click here.
Edward Espe Brown: Tassajara Cooking
When it was first issued, Tassajara Cooking became an overnight
classic. Ed Brown's recipes for cooking—for learning to appreciate all
the steps involved in making a meal, from selecting the ingredients to
serving the finished dish—struck a chord with people who care about food
and nutrition. This groundbreaking book, in a completely redesigned
format, is just as timely and relevant today, more than thirty years
later.
Brown discusses methods for working with vegetables, grains, beans, dairy products, and fruits; cooking techniques; and suggestions for planning good tasting, nutritious meals, from soups and salads to desserts. Generously seasoned with illustrations that detail every part of the cooking process, Tassajara Cooking is a comprehensive guide to inspired cooking, with joy.
"Rarely has a book of such simplicity underscored so well the joy of culinary discovery."— Bon Appetit
Edward Espe Brown began cooking and practicing Zen in 1965. He was the
first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to
1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San
Francisco, serving as busboy, waiter, floor manager, wine buyer,
cashier, host, and manager. Ordained a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi,
he has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes
throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several
cookbooks and the editor of Not Always So, a book of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He is the subject of the critically acclaimed 2007 film How to Cook Your Life.
Brown discusses methods for working with vegetables, grains, beans, dairy products, and fruits; cooking techniques; and suggestions for planning good tasting, nutritious meals, from soups and salads to desserts. Generously seasoned with illustrations that detail every part of the cooking process, Tassajara Cooking is a comprehensive guide to inspired cooking, with joy.
"Rarely has a book of such simplicity underscored so well the joy of culinary discovery."— Bon Appetit
Edward Espe Brown began cooking and practicing Zen in 1965. He was the
first head resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center from 1967 to
1970. He later worked at the celebrated Greens Restaurant in San
Francisco, serving as busboy, waiter, floor manager, wine buyer,
cashier, host, and manager. Ordained a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi,
he has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian cooking classes
throughout North America and Europe. He is the author of several
cookbooks and the editor of Not Always So, a book of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He is the subject of the critically acclaimed 2007 film How to Cook Your Life.
Edward Espe Brown: Tassajara Recipe Book
In a friendly and informal style, Ed Brown presents the recipes that
have made the kitchen at the Tassajara Zen Center famous for more than
thirty years. "Ordinary food for ordinary people" is the way Brown once
described his approach, but there's nothing ordinary about these
culinary offerings. From appetizers to desserts, the over two hundred
recipes use the freshest ingredients in ways that will tantalize the
palates of everyone from down-home vegetarians to the most
discriminating gourmet cooks. The recipes are interspersed throughout
with line drawings, photographs of the center and its environs, and
Brown's own poetry. This revised edition includes twenty-nine new and
four revised recipes, new photographs, and a new introduction.
"A vegetarian delight, filled with unusual recipes combining the flair of California nouvelle cuisine with the down-home charm of meals improvised from fresh garden fare."— Yoga Journal
The author introduces a 100 or so vegetarian recipes with charming stories and poems about where they came from, suggestions for how and when to serve them, and precise instructions for making them perfectly.
"A vegetarian delight, filled with unusual recipes combining the flair of California nouvelle cuisine with the down-home charm of meals improvised from fresh garden fare."— Yoga Journal
The author introduces a 100 or so vegetarian recipes with charming stories and poems about where they came from, suggestions for how and when to serve them, and precise instructions for making them perfectly.
Edward Espe Brown: The Complete Tassajara Cookbook
Tassajara, the California spa/retreat center, has long been renowned for
its gourmet vegetarian cuisine. In this comprehensive book, one of
Tassajara’s most well-known and beloved cooks, Edward Espe Brown,
presents hundreds of recipes using fresh, whole foods; detailed notes on
preparing seasonal ingredients; and, perhaps most important,
inspiration for cooking with joyful intention and attention. Presented
with humor and warmth, this book is full of wonderful insights into
living a life that celebrates simple food.
“Edward Espe Brown is as important to the history of California cuisine as Alice Waters. But it’s Brown’s Zen message of living in the moment that makes it unique. Anyone interested in flavorful vegetarian meals should look into it.”—Irene Sax, WeightWatchers.com “How could you not love a cookbook with a recipe for beet soup that “‘emphasizes the beetiness of beet’?”—from “The Chef is Talking to You: A good number of first-person narratives make our list of favorite cookbooks of 2009” in the Calgary-Herald
“An insightful guide, replete with more than just recipes, The Complete Tassajara Cookbook blends 35 years of work and food-writing with well-explained cooking techniques.”—Yoga + Joyful Living
"Brown is a true teacher, providing lots of basics. He also serves up a great deal of thoughtfulness."—The Bloomsbury Review
“A graceful tome . . . an extended meditation on food preparation as spiritual journey. It represents a new wave of interest in conscious cooking.”—Edible East Bay “A thoughtful tutorial. The detailed recipes that follow are eclectic and at times unusual but all celebrate vegetarian cuisine and the art of improvisation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“The book reads like a script from a (good) cooking show. The recipes are nicely simple and easy to follow. This cookbook should be on any cooking enthusiast’s shelf, whether you’re a vegetarian or not.”—Elephant Journal
“A baking Zen priest after [our] own heart!”—O, the Oprah Magazine
“With profound-yet-playful regard for his subject matter, Ed Brown has consistently graced us with the practical poetry of his delicious cooking. This tome ties it all together beautifully, bringing new meaning to the word essential. In our modern era of rapid media images and flashing-light information, The Complete Tassajara Cookbook will provide a glowing sense of calm—hefty with substance, light with spirit, and rich with the experience of a master.”—Mollie Katzen, author of Moosewood Cookbook
“Edward Espe Brown is as important to the history of California cuisine as Alice Waters. But it’s Brown’s Zen message of living in the moment that makes it unique. Anyone interested in flavorful vegetarian meals should look into it.”—Irene Sax, WeightWatchers.com “How could you not love a cookbook with a recipe for beet soup that “‘emphasizes the beetiness of beet’?”—from “The Chef is Talking to You: A good number of first-person narratives make our list of favorite cookbooks of 2009” in the Calgary-Herald
“An insightful guide, replete with more than just recipes, The Complete Tassajara Cookbook blends 35 years of work and food-writing with well-explained cooking techniques.”—Yoga + Joyful Living
"Brown is a true teacher, providing lots of basics. He also serves up a great deal of thoughtfulness."—The Bloomsbury Review “A graceful tome . . . an extended meditation on food preparation as spiritual journey. It represents a new wave of interest in conscious cooking.”—Edible East Bay “A thoughtful tutorial. The detailed recipes that follow are eclectic and at times unusual but all celebrate vegetarian cuisine and the art of improvisation.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“The book reads like a script from a (good) cooking show. The recipes are nicely simple and easy to follow. This cookbook should be on any cooking enthusiast’s shelf, whether you’re a vegetarian or not.”—Elephant Journal
“A baking Zen priest after [our] own heart!”—O, the Oprah Magazine
“With profound-yet-playful regard for his subject matter, Ed Brown has consistently graced us with the practical poetry of his delicious cooking. This tome ties it all together beautifully, bringing new meaning to the word essential. In our modern era of rapid media images and flashing-light information, The Complete Tassajara Cookbook will provide a glowing sense of calm—hefty with substance, light with spirit, and rich with the experience of a master.”—Mollie Katzen, author of Moosewood Cookbook
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