CHEZ PANISSE COOKING: New Tastes and Techniques

In 1982, Waters' Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook rode in on the crest of her restaurant's fame--and electrified American home cooks with her enthusiasm, creative verve, and exacting demands for particular fresh ingredients. Now Chez Panisse's current chef, Paul Bertolli, takes up the torch; and though his initial inspiration was Italian where Waters' was French, the text and recipes are here to show that the fires of innovation still burn at Chez Panisse. The experimenting continues (though Bertolli's double soups, two vegetables purges served out in layers or side by side, may strike some as gimmicky); the descriptions (of ""ebullient"" fish soups, ""soulful"" bread, a ""harmonious"" fennel-mushroom salad) are as rapturous as ever; and success has not relaxed the restaurant's exacting standards: Bertolli would have you salt your own cod; pound red peppers for sauce or pigeon flesh to paste with a mortar and pestle; select veal chops form humanely raised calves and grill them over embers of seasoned oak; and grow your own flat black cabbage, as that Oriental vegetable is ""not common in markets."" Few, one would think, are chosen for so dedicated a priesthood--but the first book's sales are proof that many respond to the call.