By Bonnie S. Benwick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008

David Tanis might be more of a kitchen wizard than even the fans of his work at Chez Panisse, including boss Alice Waters, give him credit for. It's pretty tough to peruse his first solo cookbook without thinking: These dishes look easy, and I want to try just about all of them.

"A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes" (Artisan, 2008; $35) begins with an engaging philosophy: Good food can be prepared simply when it's in season, and it's best enjoyed when shared with friends. (The recipes are built for eight to 10, but many can be scaled to four servings without a calculator.)

The chef reassuringly makes the case with each season's set of six menus, about 100 recipes in all. Parsnips that are part of the How to Cook a Rabbit meal are roasted with nothing more than salt, pepper and olive oil. A Catalonia-inspired meal of tomato bread and fish soup with mussels and chorizo is finished with a plate of goat cheese and honey.

Relatively few of the recipes call for hard-to-find ingredients. Tanis's Orecchiette al Forno uses fennel sausage, but that doesn't mean a search party must be organized through Italian specialty stores. He provides a five-ingredient recipe for it, dispensing with casings.

That's not to say his repertoire isn't challenging. The first course of Tanis's Peasant Fare From a Parisian Kitchen is a pig's ear salad with herb vinaigrette -- and that's not a coy reference to anything other than what it really is. Ears, or a combo of ears and snouts, are available in Chinese and Latino markets, we're advised. After salting, simmering, slicing and chilling to yield a rich accompanying jelly, Tanis says, the ears are suitable as bistro fare and haute cuisine.

Tanis, 54, has written much of himself into the chapter preambles and headnotes, which makes the cookbook personable and compelling.

Many readers will relate to his tales of a culinary upbringing in Ohio in which weekday fare was created with margarine, frozen vegetable medleys and iceberg lettuce.

Over time, he found a way to enrich his longtime curiosity about food by apprenticing with a chef during his college years and working on a farm in the Pacific Northwest. He worked his way up from dishwasher to chef and manager at Waters's famous restaurant in the San Francisco Bay area. He experienced the highs and lows of establishing a new style of restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., and then watched it close.

That last kind of experience can add a cynical edge to the business of preparing food, but "Figs" glorifies food compositionally, as does the book's photography. However, in the case of at least one dish we tested, Green Chili Stew, the photo and the real dish bore little resemblance to each other. About the only other shortcoming is the book's lack of chocolate; Tanis cops to a preference for light, fruited desserts.

If those are as good as everything else in "Figs," he might even convert chocoholics.