gfron1

I also find them mostly flavorless so this year I've been pickling and fermenting to see what might come of them. Last night I even treated some as if I were preserving lemons.

We're finally getting rain the desert so I've pulled plums, puffballs, shaggy parasols, dropped walnuts, some polypore (awaiting identification), oysters. Tis the best time of year.

Looking forward to hearing more in your posts. Welcome.

Today's unexpected surprise - fonts! Back in the days I did a lot of graphic design and remember the days of buying 1000 fonts for $80. My designer's initial layout had a font that was really beautiful and I complimented him on it. He said, yeah, its $600 but I think its worth it. $600!!!!! Holy crap! Unexpected expense but we've said that we want award winning design. And as my designer responded to me, "I can go eat at your restaurant or spend a buck at Taco Bell. There's a difference."

That's printing 3000 books in China shipped to my door. We hope to sell at $40ish understanding how Amazon drops the price way down. And that's comparable for similar size and quality books.

The big question of the day is - how the hell do chefs get a cookbook done on top of their other work!? I'm doing my best but I can't seem to carve enough time out to make it happen. Deadline is looming so my staff needs to step up!

Not sure if you'll read this fast enough but Judy Shertzer formerly of Terra Spice is offering a complete set of Chocolatier magazine free - you pay the shipping. Please PM me if interested.

I did hit the wokshop and loved it. Grabbed a specialty wok, but also picked up some new mooncake molds and got a lesson in using them.

I'm another black pepper fan. Rosemary isn't too bad either in limited quantities.

I love that - many I've never heard of!

I do not. I used to when I first started until I learned how it moved when poured into my bowl.

I don't think your suggestions need to be specific to me. I'll research what I can do and not do, but that said, we did install a hive this year.

I'll start with a couple that the seed guy suggested: One of his favorite catalogs - Seeds of Change His favorite tomato - Matt's Wild Cherry

I just came back from a week in the San Francisco area and the highlight turned out to be my trip to the Berkeley Bowl grocery store. What was most impressive was the produce. I counted 30 types of tomatoes. 10 types of pears. 12 plums. And on and on. I returned home to my lame grocery produce and extremely limited farmers market selections. Interestingly, a few days ago I had a customer at the restaurant who turned out to be a professional seed grower for a business owned by Mars inc (we know them as the candy bar company). He started rattling off name after name of tomatoes, lettuce, squash, beans that are "the best flavors" among their type. And then he would tell me what company carried his seeds...all companies I had never heard of. I asked him about Seed Saver Exchange since its an amazing catalog that I'm familiar with and he said that they were just "okay." Now I'm meeting with an architect to put in a large greenhouse behind the restaurant. My goal is to try out seeds and the ones that work best in our high dessert climate will be turned over to our farmers market growers to do their magic. So my question is twofold. First, among various produce are there any superstars that you would suggest I look at. And second, which seed companies do you prefer? Thanks.

Here's my publishing strategy. As I previously mentioned, one of the models that we're using is a small restaurant in Northern Arizona. A good restaurant, but not particularly notable. They're in a mid-size city with 40 covers...so slightly bigger than us, but not as recognized. They went the route of self-publishing and because of their sales were ultimately picked up by a regional publisher. They've grossed $110K in three years. Because of a conversation here on eG years ago with Dorie Greenspan about one of the Pierre Hermé books and choices her publisher made against her will, I want to retain as much creative control as possible. And I want to retain as much of the profit as possible. Our research on printing suggests that for a run of 3-5,000 book in the format that we're designing the cost will be between $9-11 per book. Please correct me if you think this is off. So what I want to do is design the book in a common format (size, layout, etc) to allow for the possibility of a publisher grabbing the project, but take the process all the way to final proof. At that point, approach a few publishers that I think will be open to being a distributor moreso than publisher. I would pay for the printing. They would handle distribution, and importantly, include it in their catalog. We are creating the book with aspiration of awards (JBF, IACP, etc) and I think having a publisher including the book in their catalog is important to that end (hence not self-published). This would reduce their percentage and allow me to not have to store a cargo container in my driveway. I know this isn't traditional, nor the way it works, but is there any reason why it couldn't?

Interesting question. I don't know the mechanics of creating an e-book. And I would love to hear thoughts about this - when the book straddles the line between functional cookbook and coffee table cookbook, does an e-book have merit. For comparison, I think the Manressa book share many similarities. From a design perspective we've been watching Chapter One by Ross Lewis, and my favorite book of all time is Black Pudding & Foie Gras by Andrew Pern.

Sesame oils vary but my current favorite is a Japanese brand, Kadoya

I've considered availability, and in fact, its one of my complaints about other books that tend to be coastal - mushrooms, seaweed, etc. I'm focusing on more commonly found items like acorns, cattails, hackberries, wild grapes, prickly pears (you won't have that one), walnuts, etc. But i'm also hoping to create a confidence in substitutions...if you don't have cattail, sub cucumber for example. This editing question keeps being brought up so I'm meeting with my team later this weekend to talk about how we want to handle it.

I guess I'll start with why I'm writing a cookbook. Its odd actually because I rarely write down my recipes, and never repeat them. That's how I've cooked at home since 1990 (graduated from college in New Orleans), and how I do it in the restaurant. My food is very seasonal - for example, this morning I foraged recently dropped walnuts so I'm working on a young walnut croquette with thai curry. But over the years I've had many customers ask if we had a book. So quite frankly the book is a revenue source. How much? I don't know, but I have talked to a number of other small restaurants that put out books and have a good guesstimate on our revenue. Its also about building my brand. Things are going well for me and I want to keep them that way. I am constantly thinking about my relevance in the industry - something I have to fight extra hard for since we're 3 hours to any city. I'm also writing the book because I haven't been happy with the forage movement in restaurants and I think someone needs to make a statement about how it could or should look to have chefs traipsing around in the woods. I won't make the book a sermon, but I think making the statement is important. And lastly, I do feel like I have fresh perspective that might be enjoyable with modern foraged foods. Over the weekend I'll try to explain how we plan on getting this published, so stay tuned!

I am unlikely but if the dates work out, and life allows, then I'd love to see everyone again.

Recipe testing is one of the things that scares me the most since I'm at 6,000'.

The photo is a foraged mesquite chocolate chip cookie. Today I worked on all of my foraged booze and soda recipes. I won't shill here but part of what I'm learning about is the timing of production and printing relative to sales. Our hope is that we'll be on bookshelves next Christmas (2015) which we think means the book needs to be done and off to print in October. Crazy long turn around.

I've been around eG for quite some time, and what many of my eG friends know is that so much of what I've learned, I've learned through you all. I've always cooked interesting foods at home including in New Orleans, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado and now New Mexico, and with culinary travels to Peru, much of Europe, Canada and Mexico, I've done well eating and cooking various cuisines. And despite having never worked in a restaurant a day in my life, I opened my own place back in 2008 as documented here. Long story short, I've done fairly well since that time getting coverage in the NYT, WSJ Sunset, Saveur 100, Gastronomica and this year being a James Beard semifinalist. Not too bad for a guy essentially trained by many of you! Parallel to all of that I was one of three eGers that regularly reviewed cookbooks at The Gastronomer's Bookshelf which gave me the opportunity to hone in on what I liked and disliked in cookbooks. Last year I decided that I had enough requests to do a cookbook so I jumped in. My genre is modernist foraged with very strong roots in pastry. I also believe in intuitive cooking and am a staunch anti-tweezer chef. I want a book that is award worthy, but completely accessible to the advanced home cook, yet inspiring at the same time. My strength is fun and interesting uses of wild ingredients. My weakness is editing (as evidenced above). I have a killer team including Jay Hemphill as my photographer and food writer from Albuquerque as my co-author. I received my first page layout drafts today so now its real enough that I thought it might be fun to chronicle the process with you all and get even more support since I know many of you have your own books. Here's a teaser pic - not necessarily one we'll use, but pretty yummy nonetheless,

We just decide who is chef and who is sous and its all good. Normally he gets to be chef at home and I'm stuck chopping and washing.

To fuel up for the big exploration I hit many pastry shops. Arizmendi wasn't on a list but had a huge line so I jumped in. Good pizza and baguettes and a little cookie for the trail. I've been fans of Craftsmen and Wolves for a while so I stopped by for Chocolate Croissant and Hazelnut Financier. Then I grabbed a Berry tartlet. My take on C&W is that they are a great pastry shop but their design changes aren't necessarily an improvement on the classic design. Next door is Dandelion and got exactly what I expected - great chocolate Around the corner to Tartine. I'm pretty familiar with their work so I just grabbed a Fragniappe croissant. Went around the corner and fell in love with the BiRite grocery where I snagged cheeses and a Michael Mischer chocolate. Across the street to grab an ice cream: The Trifecta: Salted caramel, Brown sugar and Malted. Great and totally worth the wait in line. In Chinatown I had fun at the WokShop where I bought a flat bottomed cast iron wok. She also shared a recipe for mooncakes since I bought a few new molds for this year's festival. We lucked into a Szechuan place where we were asked to share a table with who turned out to be the chef's daughter so we got lots and lots of food. Last day we crossed over to East Bay for a lunch at Chez Panisse and a stroll through Berkeley Bowl. I was blown away by the produce which is what I bought but I coveted this...which I can't even get through my restaurant distributor. I tried to get knives at the hardware store in Little Japan but they were mostly factory knives - good knives but I wanted something special since they were a gift to myself for such a great year. I ended up at Bernal and got a sharpening lesson But here's what I ended up with - two very sharp Fujiwaras. On our last day we headed to Berkeley where we had lunch at Chez Panisse and then cruised the Berkeley Bowl. Amazing produce which is what I bought but what I coveted was this: What I missed - Castro Village Wines, Atelier Crenn. Hit Outlander and was very much not impressed although our server was fantastic.