Alice Waters started America’s farm-to-table revolution. When she founded the iconic restaurant Chez Panisse, her local, organic ingredients sparked a movement and earned her the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef. In her first-ever online cooking class, Alice opens the doors of her home kitchen to teach you how to pick seasonal ingredients, create healthy and beautiful meals, and change your life by changing the food you make at home.
Overview
Syllabus
- Alice's Philosophy of Food
- Meet Alice in her home kitchen as she introduces you to her philosophy of cooking. She’ll teach you how to cook deliciously, with spontaneity, and in harmony with nature.
- The Farmer’s Market: Learning From the Source
- Alice teaches you how to become a discerning shopper whether at the farmers’ market or grocery store. Learn her guidelines for selecting ingredients, including questions to ask vendors and farmers.
- A Vegetable Lunch: Roasted, Steamed, and Raw
- Alice walks you through her process of planning an India-inspired lunch based on the ingredients in her shopping basket. Learn how to prepare vegetables three ways, and reach into your pantry to round out the meal.
- Alice’s Essential Kitchen Tools
- Alice feels the same way about ingredients and kitchen tools—sometimes less is more. Alice demonstrates her favorite tools and challenges you to pare down your own collection for usefulness and beauty.
- A Well-Stocked Pantry
- Alice teaches you how to choose the best quality ingredients with which to stock your pantry. She shares seven dishes all sourced from her own pantry including “Coming Home Pasta,” her go-to when returning home to an empty fridge after a long trip.
- Cooking For Your Pantry: Alice’s Staples
- Alice’s distinctive pantry also includes items she mixes and makes herself to use throughout the week. Learn how to make Alice’s pantry staples including Quick Pickles, Sautéed Greens, and Oat Pancakes.
- Leaves, Herbs, and Aromatics
- Fresh herbs are an essential element in Alice’s cooking. Learn how she uses tender and strong herbs for different dishes, and how she finds use for the whole plant—not just the leaves.
- Cooking From Your Kitchen Garden: Salsa Verde
- Alice teaches you to make one of her favorite and most versatile sauces, salsa verde. Alice demonstrates a version made with macerated shallots and offers variations on the sauce to serve with meats, vegetables, and fish.
- Preparing a Beautiful Salad
- Alice believes the making of a salad can bring as much joy as eating it. Learn Alice’s method for washing lettuces and follow her recipe for Mesclun Salad.
- Chez Panisse Cooking: Galette
- Alice teaches you how to make Chez Panisse’s everyday dessert, the galette. Learn how the perfect pastry dough results in a beautifully flakey crust.
- Chez Panisse Cooking: Ravioli
- Learn to make an egg pasta dough that can be used to make any shape of pasta. Then, use your dough to make Chez Panisse’s ricotta ravioli with chanterelle mushrooms.
- Follow the Rhythms of Nature: Seasonal Eating
- Learn why the most iconic dessert at Chez Panisse is the most unembellished—the fruit bowl. Alice teaches you how to engage all of your senses to test ripeness and choose fruits at the peak of their season.
- A Market Fresh Dinner: Planning and Prep
- Quality time with your guests is just as important as making a quality meal. Learn how to think in three courses and time each step of your cooking for a delicious menu that allows you time to enjoy the party.
- A Market Fresh Dinner: Finish and Serve
- Finish preparing Alice’s dinner party menu with a last-minute burst of cooking over the fire or stovetop. Then learn how to plate and serve each course.
- Coming Back to the Table
- Learn how a life-changing trip to France led Alice from the frozen dinners of her childhood to pioneering the farm-to-table movement.
- The Power of Food: The Edible Schoolyard
- Alice breaks down the five principles of her Edible Schoolyard Project to show that food is a powerful teacher. She encourages you to continue your edible education by shopping and cooking sustainably and remembering that food is precious.
- BONUS: Alice's Egg in a Spoon
- Now that Alice has covered her approach to home cooking, she challenges you to practice cooking over fire with the simple dish of an egg and grilled toast.
Taught by
Alice Waters
