Food and Wine Events

Cooks with Books: Greg Denton & Gabrielle Quinonez Denton - Around the Fire (A16 Restaurant)

Sunday, April 3, 2016 - 12:00pm

A16 Restaurant in San Francisco • Single $115; Couple $180 (one book)

Congratulations to Greg and Gabrielle Denton, James Beard 2016 Best Chef Northwest nominees!!

Please note: online registration is now closed. To inquire about ticket availability, please call Karen West at (415) 518-0338.  

One hundred innovative and exciting recipes for the backyard griller—inspired by the live-fire and asador cooking traditions of Latin America and the authors’ popular restaurant, Ox, in Portland, Oregon.

Food & Wine rising star chefs Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quiñónez Denton have earned rave reviews and legions of fans for the wonderfully creative, edgy, and surprisingly vegetarian-friendly wood-fired cooking at their acclaimed restaurant, Ox. Around the Fire translates their Argentine-by-way-of-Portland cooking into simple, flavorful, accessible recipes for the home cook. Grilling recipes are adapted for Weber grills and conventional barbecues, and feature unexpected, unfamiliar cuts of meat such as lamb shoulder, halibut tails, and bone-in fish steaks. An extensive section on grilled vegetable preparations—such as Grilled Artichoke with Espelette Mayo—will take summer barbecues to the next level, and chapters on starters, sides, and desserts are designed to perfectly accompany the grilled main dishes. The food is influenced by Argentine traditions but also showcases fresh, seasonal produce, and recipes for salads, ceviches, cocktails, and other grill accompaniments make this much more than a meat book.

Greg Denton and Gabrielle Quinonez Denton are the chefs and owners of Ox Restaurant in Portland, Oregon. 

The ticket includes the meal, wine, tax, tip, and a signed copy of the book.

A-16
2355 Chestnut St.
San Francisco, CA 94115

Literary Luncheon: Louise Erdrich - LaRose (Corte Madera)

Wednesday, May 18, 2016 - 12:00pm

Tickets: $55 (Includes Book)

North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. Our son will be your son now, they tell them.

As the years pass, LaRose becomes the linchpin linking the Irons and the Raviches, and eventually their mutual pain begins to heal. But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole.

Inspiring and affecting, LaRose is a powerful exploration of loss, justice, and the reparation of the human heart, and an unforgettable, dazzling tour de force from one of America's most distinguished literary masters.

Louise Erdrich is the author of fourteen novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, short stories, and a memoir.

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Literary Luncheon: Anna Quindlen - Miller's Valley (Corte Madera)

Thursday, April 7, 2016 - 12:00pm

Tickets: $55 (Includes Book)

Please note: online ticket sales are now closed. Tickets available at the door.

“Vintage Quindlen, a compelling family tale rich in recognizable characters, resplendent storytelling, and reflective observations. It is also an affectionate and appreciative portrait of a disappearing way of life.”
Booklist

“Keenly observed, quietly powerful … Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and former reporter, writes with great empathy, making you care deeply about her characters.”
Kirkus Reviews

“A moving exploration of family and notions of home … Quindlen’s prose is crisp and her insights resonant. This coming-of-age story is driven as much by the fully realized characters as it is by the astute ideas about progress and place.”
Publisher’s Weekly

“In this crisply told story of progress, loss, love, deception, loyalty, and grace, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Quindlen once again captures her readers’ attention from first page to last.”
 – Library Journal

Read the New York Times Book Reivew review of Miller's Valley

Listen to Anna Quindlen discuss Miller's Valley on "The Diane Rehm Show"

Filled with insights that are hallmarks of Anna Quindlen’s bestsellers, Miller's Valley is an extraordinary novel about a woman coming of age, as she unearths secrets about her family and her town, and surprising truths about herself.

Anna Quindlen is the author of several bestselling novels: Rise and Shine, Blessings, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue, and nonfiction books Good Dog. Stay., Being Perfect, Loud & Clear, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Living Out Loud, Thinking Out Loud, and How Reading Changed My Life. She has also written two children's books The Tree That Came to Stay, and Happily Ever After. Her New York Times column Public and Private won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in Newsweek.

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Literary Luncheon: Tracy Chevalier - At the Edge of the Orchard (Corte Madera)

Thursday, March 24, 2016 - 12:00pm

Tickets: $55 (Includes Lunch and a Book)

In At the Edge of the Orchard, the Goodenough family have left nineteenth-century New England to settle in the swamps of western Ohio, bringing with them branches of a favorite apple tree. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle between James and Sadie Goodenough over what to do with the fruit, revealing irreconcilable differences in character. The escalation of this war resonates through their children and forces the youngest, Robert Goodenough, to make an agonizing choice that haunts him as he runs away, grows up, and moves ever farther west. Only among the redwoods and sequoias of goldrush-era California does he find solace and, eventually, answers.

Moving back and forth between Ohio and California and anchored by two real-life tree men—legendary Johnny Appleseed and the English plant collector William Lobb—this epic novel chronicles the implosion of a pioneer family and the shock waves it sends through the generations and across America.

Tracy Chevalier is the New York Times bestselling author of seven previous novels, including Girl With a Pearl Earring, which has been translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., she lives in London with her husband and son.

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Dining with Writers: Michele Anna Jordan - The Good Cook's Book Series

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 6:30pm

Please note: online ticket sales are now closed. Call (415) 927-0960 x1 to inquire about ticket availability.

Spinster Sisters Restraurant, Santa Rosa
Ticket: $95 per person (Includes Meal and Choice of Michele Anna Jordan's Books)

How do you cook with flavored vinegars and should they be bought or made at home? What are the best oils for frying? The Good Cook's of Oil and Vinegar: One of the World's most Delicious Pairings, with More Than 150 Recipes answers these and many other questions about this important culinary duo. The most comprehensive oil and vinegar guide available today, it offers key scientific, nutritional, and culinary facts as well as interesting history behind oil and vinegar. In addition, award-winning author Michele Anna Jordan shows how a distinctive oil or vinegar can add spark to a meal. She showcases a whole realm of delicious cooking with recipes such as: Bruschetta, Fall fruit gazpacho, and more.

Salt is indispensable and pepper is superfluous. Michelle Anna Jordan guides you through this cookbook where salt and pepper is a one-word dictionary term in her kitchen vocabulary. This exquisite cookbook will go over the necessities of salt, and the luxury of pepper via 135 seasoned recipes. The Good Cook's Book of Salt and Pepper: Achieving Seasoned Delight, with More Than 150 Recipes separates itself from other competitors by offering scientific facts, a healthier exposure to salt and pepper, and some interesting worldwide trivia. Recipes in this book include: 
Au poivre rouge steak, Three-peppercorn bread, and Pepper-crusted pizza with porcini, fontina, and sage.

Michele Anna Jordan has twelve years of experience as an award-winning chef and has written a multitude of cookbooks. Currently, she writes three weekly columns for The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Savuer magazine, which recently took a first place award from the Association of Food and Wine Journalists. Jordan has held positions as restaurant critic for San Francisco Focus Magazine, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle, and has written for numerous national publications, including: Cooking Light, Wine Enthusiast, Kitchen Garden, Fine Cooking, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Asian Week, and more. Jordan also teaches and lectures on a variety of food-related topics and is a frequent guest on radio and television around the country. Jordan lives in Western Sonoma County with her two black cats, Poe and Rosemary.

Spinster Sisters
401 South A Street
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

Dining with Writers: Cat Cora - Cooking As Fast As I Can

Saturday, October 3, 2015 - 6:30pm

Spinster Sisters in Santa Rosa 
Tickets: $95 (Includes meal and signed book)

Please note: online ticket sales have closed. To inquire about ticket availability, please call Karen West at (415) 518-0338.

Before she became a celebrated chef, Cathy Cora was just a girl from Jackson, Mississippi, where days were slow and every meal was made from scratch. Her passion for the kitchen started in her home, where she spent her days internalizing the dishes that would form the cornerstone of her cooking philosophy incorporating her Greek heritage and Southern upbringing from crispy fried chicken and honey-drenched biscuits to spanakopita. But outside the kitchen, Cat's life was volatile. In Cooking as Fast as I Can: A Chef's Story of Family, Food and Forgiveness, Cat Cora reveals, for the first time, coming-of-age experiences from early childhood sexual abuse to the realities of life as a lesbian in the deep South. She shares how she found her passion in the kitchen and went on to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and apprentice under Michelin star chefs in France. After her big break as a co-host on the Food Network's Melting Pot, Cat broke barriers by becoming the first-ever female Iron Chef. Cora writes movingly about how she found courage and redemption in the dark truths of her past and about how she found solace in the kitchen and work, how her passion for cooking helped her to overcome hardships and  find happiness at home as a wife and a mother to four boys. Above all, this is an utterly engrossing story about the grit and grace it takes to achieve your dreams.

Cat Cora grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the Culinary Institute of America and worked in New York City before travelling overseas to apprentice in Europe with world-renowned French chefs Georges Blanc and Roger VergE. She settled in Napa Valley in her first job as a chef. After The Food Network discovered her in 1999, she went on to become the first female Iron Chef for the Network. She is the founder of the charitable organization Chefs for Humanity, a grassroots organization that mobilizes chefs to lend their skills to communities in need, and she has built a brand that includes two food lines, cookware a shoe line, cookbooks and restaurants, in Orlando, Costa Mesa, Houston, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Singapore. She lives in Santa Barbara with her wife and four sons.

Spinster Sisters
401 South A Street
Santa Rosa, CA 95401

Literary Luncheon: Elizabeth George - A Banquet of Consequences

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - 12:00pm

Please call (415) 927-0960 x 1 for ticket availability.

Tickets: $60 (Includes Lunch and a Signed Book)

The unspoken secrets and buried lies of one family rise to the surface in Elizabeth George's A Banquet of Consequences.  As Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the London angle of an ever more darkly disturbing case, his partner, Barbara Havers, is looking behind the peaceful facade of country life to discover a twisted world of desire, deceit, and murder. The suicide of William Goldacre is devastating to those left behind, but what was the cause of his tragedy and how far might the consequences reach? Is there a link between the young man's leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge? After various career-threatening issues with her department, Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself. So when a past encounter with a bestselling feminist writer and her pushy personal assistant gives her a connection to the Cambridge murder, Barbara begs Thomas Lynley to let her pursue the crime. Full of shocks, intensity and suspense from first page to last, Lynley and Havers are pushed under mounting pressure to solve one of the most complex cases they have ever encountered.

Elizabeth George, whose books have sold more than 9 million copies, is the author of several books for teens including A Young Woman's Guide to Making Right Choices, A Young Woman's Call to Prayer, and A Young Woman After God's Own Heart--A Devotional. She's taught high school and college students and currently teaches and speaks at Christian events worldwide. Elizabeth and her husband, Jim, have two married daughters.

51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925

Cooks with Books: Nigella Lawson - Simply Nigella

Wednesday, November 18, 2015 - 6:30pm

Please note: online sales are now closed. Please call (415) 927-0960 x 1 to inquire about ticket availability.

Left Bank Brasserie in Larkspur
Tickets: $125
Price includes meal, wine, tax, tip, and signed copy of the book

Internationally bestselling author Nigella Lawson's Simply Nigella is an inspirational and practical cookbook about cooking food that makes our lives easier, the sort of cooking that can be incorporated into our daily lives and celebrated without any stress. This is food that will make everyone feel better, both in body and mind. In this cookbook there are everyday recipes that are lighter and easy to prepare and cook, but also indulgent dishes for special occasions-the message is simple: balance is all! Containing 150 recipes for nourishing oneself, friends, and family, including breakfasts and brunches; fast, easy, and light suppers; a feasting chapter for entertaining a group; and a section dedicated to "Bowlfoods," to be eaten in comfort with a fork or spoon. There is also a wide array of sweet treats-including fabulous dairy-free and gluten-free recipes.

Nigella Lawson is an internationally-renowned chef, journalist, and cooking show host. Her many books of cooking and food writing, for which she has won several awards, include How to Be a Domestic Goddess, How to Eat, Nigella Bites, Nigella Express, Feast, Nigella Fresh, Nigella Christmas, and Nigella Kitchen. Her television cookery shows include "Nigella Bites", "Nigella Express", "Forever Summer, Nigella's Kitchen", and more. Her TV shows have been seen worldwide, on BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, and on the Food Network and the Cooking Channel in the US. In 2003, Nigella launched Nigella Lawson's Living Kitchen, a range of kitchen items designed in collaboration with Sebastian Conran, to widespread acclaim in the US. She lives in London.

Left Bank Brasserie
507 Magnolia Ave
Larkspur, CA 94939

Cooks with Books: Yotam Ottolenghi & Ramael Scully - NOPI: The Cookbook

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 - 12:00pm

Please note: this event is now sold out. To inquire about waitlist availability, please call (415) 927-0960 x1

Insalata's in San Anselmo
Tickets: $115
Price includes meal, wine, tax, tip, and signed copy of the book

Yotam Ottolenghi is beloved in the food world for his beautiful, inspirational cookbooks, as well as his Ottolenghi delis and his fine-dining restaurant, Nopi. In NOPI: The Cookbook, head chef Ramael Scully's Asian-inspired pantry meets Ottolenghi's Middle Eastern influences and brings the restaurant's favorite dishes within reach of the home cook.

Yotam Ottolenghi is the author of Plenty, Plenty More, and co-author with Sami Tamimi of Ottolenghi and Jerusalem, which was awarded Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and Best International Cookbook by the James Beard Foundation. All four books were New York Times bestsellers. He lives in London, where he owns an eponymous group of restaurants and a high-end restaurant, Nopi. 

Ramael Scully was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and started his culinary career at the age of 17 in Sydney, Australia. Now head chef at Nopi, Scully first worked under Yotam Ottolenghi in 2004 at Ottolenghi.

 


 

Insalata's, 120 Sir Francis Drake Blvd.
San Anselmo, CA 94960

Cooks with Books: Emeril Lagasse - Essential Emeril

Friday, October 9, 2015 - 12:00pm

Sold Out! Please call (415) 927-0960 x 1 for waitlist availability.

Tickets: $125 per person
Price includes meal, wine, tax, tip, and a signed copy of the book

One of the original Food Network stars, Emeril Lagasse has hosted numerous television shows, opened 13 restaurants, and become one of the most beloved personalities in the industry today, inspiring millions of fans with his great passion for food. In Essential Emeril: Favorite Recipes and Hard-Won Wisdom from My Life in the Kitchen, the iconic chef goes back to basics, presenting more than 130 recipes that defined his award-winning career, each tested and perfected for today's home cook. Emeril is at the reader's elbow throughout, offering valuable tips and step-by-step photo tutorials to ensure flawless results. Fans will delight in Emeril's anecdotes revealing the inspiration behind each recipe, with appearances from A-list names , Mario Batali, Roy Choi, and Nobu Matsuhira, to family members and early influences such as Julia Child and Charlie Trotter. Gorgeously photographed and imbued with his signature warmth, this book is Emeril's most personal cookbook yet, offering an intimate portrait of a chef at the top of his game.

Emeril Lagasse is a chef, restaurateur, and the author of eighteen bestselling cookbooks, including Emeril's Kicked-Up Sandwiches and Sizzling Skillets and Other One Pot Wonders. He is the proprietor of thirteen award-winning restaurants across the country and is the host of The Originals with Emeril and Emeril's Florida, both airing on the Cooking Channel. He has been the food correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America for fourteen years. In 2002, Emeril established the Emeril Lagasse Foundation to support children's educational programs that inspire and mentor young people through the culinary arts and promote nutrition and healthy eating.

Left Bank Brasserie
507 Magnolia Ave
Larkspur, CA 94939

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