The Complete Tassajara Cookbook - by Edward Espe Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

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 presents hundreds of recipes using fresh, whole foods.

Book Synopsis

Featuring gourmet recipes from the renowned Zen retreat center, this vegetarian cookbook is a celebration of cooking, spirituality, and tradition

California's Tassajara Zen Mountain Center has long been renowned for its gourmet vegetarian cuisine. In this comprehensive guide to the Tassajara way of cooking, the retreat center/spa's most celebrated chef, Edward Espe Brown, presents hundreds of recipes using fresh, whole foods.

In addition to recipes, Brown includes 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 insights for living a life that celebrates simple food.

Review Quotes

"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 The Moosewood Cookbook

"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

About the Author

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.