Seasonal Pantry: Recalling Zuni Cafe's Judy Rodgers

Early last week, the food community throughout the Bay Area and beyond awoke to heart-wrenching news. Judy Rodgers, beloved chef and co-owner of Zuni Cafe, had died of a rare and painful cancer diagnosed just over a year ago. Our thoughts turned to Judy's warm smile and easy laugh, her meticulous and inspired cooking, leisurely late-night dinners at Zuni and our countless home kitchens where we all tried to duplicate the extraordinary roasted chicken and bread salad for which the restaurant is known around the country and beyond.

As I read the news, I could nearly taste a dish I enjoyed more than two decades ago, mussels with chorizo, tomato and garlic, and thought of a late night nearly as long ago with a dear friend over a platter of oysters on the half shell and what may have been the best hamburger I've ever had.

In 2003, I was enough lucky to be in the audience at the James Beard Awards in New York City when "The Zuni Cafe Cookbook" (2002, Chronicle Books) was voted Cookbook of the Year. Zuni Cafe took the Outstanding Restaurant Award that year, too. It was a happy night, when the world seemed right and the awards well-deserved.

Not all cookbooks by chefs are actually written by those chefs. There is often a ghost writer, a team of assistants and a crew of sous-chefs creating and testing recipes in a huge professional kitchen. These books can be disappointing because, at their core, there is no voice, no genuine point of view, no personality. But Judy Rodgers wrote every word of the 500-plus page tome herself, with what many reviewers have called "a nearly obsessive attention to detail."

The recipe for the roast chicken and bread salad, for example, runs nearly five pages, but not because it is complicated or difficult. The roast chicken has just four ingredients, the salad not quite a dozen, counting water. The length comes from Rodgers' specific instructions and explanations. She guides you intelligently through every action, including how to approach the chicken — from the edge of the cavity — and slide a finger under the skin to make pockets into which you will insert little sprigs of herbs. She leaves nothing out and, before long, you feel her in the kitchen with you.

And that is where she will remain, in our kitchens and in our hearts and in the restaurant that she turned into a San Francisco icon.

Judy Rodgers, may you rest in delicious peace.

For more information about Zuni Cafe, visit zunicafe.com, where you may also purchase copies of the cookbook.

--

When the staff at Zuni Cafe celebrated its 20th anniversary, they layered the cheese with slivers of fresh black truffle, which Judy Rodgers describes, in the introduction to this simple but luscious appetizer, as exquisite. Even without the truffle, these little nibbles are a favorite appetizer on a cool winter night.

Sage Grilled Cheese

Makes 4 sandwiches or 20 bites

— About a dozen fresh sage leaves

2 tablespoons mild-tasting olive oil

1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

6 ounces chewy, peasant-style bread, sliced ?-inch thick (8 slices from a batard — a fat French baguette — will do perfectly)

4 ounces Fontina or Swiss Gruyere cheese, all rind removed and sliced 1/16-inch thick or coarsely grated

Chop the sage. You should get about 1 tablespoon. Place in your smallest saucepan, add the olive oil and cracked pepper, set over low heat and warm to the touch. Turn off the heat and leave to infuse while you assemble the sandwiches.

Blanket half of the slices of bread evenly with the cheese, taking care to bring the cheese all the way to the crust. Top each with a second slice of bread and press flat. Lay a heavy or weighted cutting board on top of the sandwiches for 10 to 20 minutes.

Use a pastry brush to spread the sage oil lightly on both faces of the sandwiches. Make sure you go all the way to the edges and try to distribute the sage and pepper evenly over the bread.

Preheat a griddle or warm a seasoned cast-iron pan over low heat. Sprinkle a few drops of olive oil, then rub it over the whole cooking surface with a paper towel. Add the sandwiches and cook until golden, about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Keep the heat low so you don't burn the sage or pepper.

Eat quickly, while the cheese is still soft.

--

Zuni Cafe's Caesar Salad is probably its second most famous dish, right behind the legendary roast chicken and bread salad. In her introduction to the recipe, Judy Rodgers writes about the importance of using the best possible ingredients and preparing the dressing and grating the cheese at the last possible moment. By the time you read the full introduction, you have already had an outstanding lesson in cooking that applies to much more than just this simple salad.