Resting on a platter next to the sink in the tiny kitchen area of David Tanis's Greenwich Village apartment is a pile of baby artichokes, stripped of their outer leaves. Tanis takes a paring knife to them, strips off a few of the woodier bits of the stalk, then slices them vertically to reveal their beautiful layered cross-section. "I thought I ought to have a few of these," Tanis says, "given the title of the book." Indeed. Tanis, one of the head chefs at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, recently published Heart of the Artichoke, a follow-up to his 2008 debut, A Platter of Figs. Today, to celebrate, he is cooking lunch for a few friends – a fellow chef, a writer for a fashion magazine, his publisher, a big wheel from the art world, a few pals – and me.
He and Randal, his partner of two decades, have only just moved into the apartment, in a building owned by their friend the artist Bruce Nauman, and it is still a work in progress. He is using an electric two-ring hot plate and the kind of portable oven usually found in student dorm rooms. "The kitchen we have in Paris is no bigger than this," Tanis says. "But it's fine. Everything I need is here." Usually he and Randal spend six months in Paris and six months in Berkeley, where Tanis shares the role of head chef (although he will leave in November to pursue writing full-time). This year, though, a friend offered to rent the Paris space and so they decided to try a stint in New York. As a result the lunch is also something of a homecoming.
His guests sip their drinks as Tanis works up a few nibbles. He is a stocky man, with a salt and pepper scrub of beard, clear-framed glasses, and a wry, self-contained manner. He fries off almonds, and dresses them with sea salt and olive oil and we eat them warm. There are crisp radishes to be dipped in salt, slices of fennel dressed with more olive oil and lemon juice, and then the artichokes, sautéed slowly enough to soften them, with garlic and flakes of chilli. We stand around picking with our fingers at these ridiculously moreish bits and pieces. Suddenly the whole lunch becomes that rare and special thing: a delicious, aspirational cookery book made real.
Tanis describes himself as a "restaurant chef who has always preferred to cook at home", and his books and this lunch stand testament to that. He is, for the most part, dismissive of grandiose show cooking. The new book starts with pages dedicated less to recipes than ideas: the joys of porridge, the pleasures of a good ham sandwich, and the best way to eat these small objects of culinary desire. "I like food stories," he says simply.
He is equally dismissive of those who claim that good food can be quick. "Mesmerised by television shows hyping the 30-minute meal and the blood sport of competitive cooking," he writes in the introduction, "we have forgotten the pleasure of giving ourselves over to the true kitchen experience." Do those shows really drive him nuts? He laughs. "Look, 30 minutes is not realistic. Maybe 60 minutes is realistic. But Jesus, you want to enjoy the process."
His books are all about process, rather than cooking as a means to an end. His recipes require that precious commodity, time. All of that is present in today's menu: an Asiatic soup, based on a long simmered stock made with leftover fowl, holding in its base a duck-fat fried egg. There are braised duck legs, the deep, sticky sauce punched up with orange zest, alongside a crusty bake of white beans. As we eat he explains the meal. "I wanted something like cassoulet, but I also wanted something like coq au vin so I separated them out."
He talks a lot about the importance of certain types of gathering, of certain types of table. Tanis was born in Dayton, Ohio in the heart of the midwest to a family he describes as "uptight, slightly conservative". In short, very midwestern. He is Jewish and while he feels uneasy talking about himself in those terms – it has not been a part of his adult life – it was the ritual of the Friday night meal which first made an impression on him. "My father died when I was nine and so we would often go to eat at other people's houses. There was Aunt Edith and Uncle Marvin who weren't blood relatives at all but they had my widowed mother and her three kids to dinner on Friday nights."
His was not an especially foodie background. "As a child we weren't allowed in the kitchen because we had a housekeeper. I ended up cooking in spite of being deprived of the experience and the freezer being full of Birds Eye products." He would, he says, make forays into the kitchen for secret baking sessions, using recipes cut from the New York Times. At 18 he left home for a college in the Californian desert where he spent more time baking than studying. He left and, it being the period for such things, headed to a commune on an island off the coast of Washington state. It was there that he ate his first artichoke, "fed to me by some hippy from Iowa". It would all be invaluable experience for Chez Panisse where, after a stint in other restaurants, he arrived in the 80s.
Chez Panisse was opened in Berkeley in 1971 by Alice Waters, a graduate in French cultural studies, who had fallen in love with the country on her student travels. Its ethos – local, seasonal ingredients cooked to their best advantage – has today become mainstream, but even in the 80s when Tanis arrived, it was still regarded as part of Berkeley's sometimes self-consciously alternative scene. The food took its inspiration from Elizabeth David and Richard Olney but adapted to the ingredients of California.
It is, I suggest, slightly odd for a man who has made almost his entire living cooking in restaurants not to enjoy eating in them. In his first book. Tanis explained the appeal of the home-cooked meal in terms of the company. "Even if it's not a perfect meal, the overriding mood of friends at the table still trumps a bad – or just OK – restaurant meal."
He goes on to question the lack of openness of restaurant kitchens, the harried waiters, the desperation of the big ticket places trying to wow you. Tanis does not want to be wowed. He wants to eat and he wants to talk. "There are so many variables in play when you go to eat in a restaurant which can influence whether you have a good time," he says.
Chez Panisse was really the only restaurant that was ever going to suit him. Having two chefs take control for different parts of the week – the other is the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Moullé – was an unusual arrangement. In 2001 it became odder still, when Tanis announced that he wanted to move to Paris. Waters suggested a compromise: the two men each take six months. Tanis agreed.
He and his partner began a supper club out of their Paris apartment, named after their dogs, Ajax and Arturo. Expats from asked him to arrange dinners. "The Whitney Museum of Art commissioned one. There was another for Stephen Sondheim, one for the American School. We'd do them weekly, sometimes two or three times a week." That kind of cooking – one menu, for a big collection of disparate people – made him happy. It also led to the idea for A Platter of Figs.
"The original plan was a cookbook born out of the Paris suppers. But I submitted my proposal as the 2003 Iraq war broke out." Anti-French feeling forced a change. "It morphed, which was a good thing, because I was suddenly free to bring in other influences."
It is late afternoon in New York and outside the light is falling on a lunch which began fashionably late. "It's funny how we talk up local food these days," Tanis says. "There was a time when the fashion was to have foods that are imported." How religiously does he keep to the idea of local? "People should do the best they can. I like to support farmers' markets given that the farmers have made the effort to come into town. But we have olive oil from Italy and vinegar from France." It is, he says, no big deal.
So what is the secret to a good home-cooked meal? "The rule is that you only need to serve one hot course. It's good to be able to do cooking the day before." To prove his point, dessert is a lemon tart he made yesterday, plus a cheese board and a simple bowl of tangerines. And is that the message he wants to get across in his books? "I want to encourage people to cook, because I think many of them have forgotten that cooking is really pleasurable. Getting people round the table is a lovely thing to do." He slices up the lemon tart. We eat our cheese, we peel our tangerines, and we sip the last of our wine. Who could disagree?
Jay Rayner stayed at the Muse Hotel, W46th Street, New York; themusehotel.com
Click here to see David Tanis's spicy summer recipes
