Latest news with #Reicher
Washington Post
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
This pasta with cauliflower captures the best of California cuisine
When you walk into Greens, the landmark San Francisco restaurant, one of the first things to catch your eye is a masterpiece redwood installation by sculptor JB Blunk: The main piece rises from the floor like some kind of giant's gnarled hand, shadowing smaller tables and chairs — all of it cut from a single stump. When you get closer, you can't help but run a hand along the smooth polished wood, and you can practically feel its energy simultaneously lifting and anchoring the room. The installation, the other custom woodwork throughout, the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of San Francisco Bay: Greens has never looked like your typical restaurant. And that's fitting for this pioneer of upscale vegetarian cooking. In 1979, when the San Francisco Zen Center opened the restaurant, the first chef was someone who went on to influence vegetarian cooking in America perhaps more than anyone else before or even since: Deborah Madison. Get the recipe: Pasta With Cauliflower and Chard Since then, the restaurant's kitchen has continually been helmed by women. After Madison, the great Annie Somerville was executive chef for decades, and most recently, Katie Reicher has led the efforts to reestablish the restaurant's place, especially after covid lockdowns, in the firmament of California cooking. Her influence is chronicled in the new cookbook 'Seasons of Greens,' in which she showcases the restaurant's philosophy of providing nourishing, creative food closely tied to local ingredients and seasonality. Reicher has brought more global influences onto plates and into the book, where chanterelle siu mai, Creole pumpkin and collard greens soup, and masala-roasted winter squash take their place alongside grilled peppers with herby corn salsa. Best of all for the home cook: These are not cheffy recipes. Some might be more appropriate for a leisurely weekend afternoon — I'm thinking of the luscious spinach and ricotta dumplings with cherry tomato sauce — but others are clearly aimed at that busy post-work evening rush, when the question 'What's for dinner?' can feel like more of a burden than a challenge. When I asked Reicher in a Zoom interview how she balances the kinds of cooking she does for the restaurant with the sorts of things she wants readers to make for themselves and their friends and family, she didn't hesitate: 'I didn't change anything in the restaurant recipes except scaling them down.' Her 'chef side,' she said, comes down to her insistence that the recipes 'put in enough fat, put in enough acid, put in enough salt.' In other words, you, too, can make Greens-worthy dishes at home. Reicher, 31, has spent her entire professional career at Greens, starting on an internship during her Culinary Institute of America training and culminating in her promotion to executive chef in 2020, when she redesigned the menu and committed to changing it more frequently. Given that Greens is such a bastion of plant-focused cooking, I asked her what she thinks makes great vegetarian cuisine, and her answer speaks directly to the restaurant's mission. 'It's the same thing that defines any good cooking, honestly,' she said. 'Using the freshest ingredients, as local as possible, in season as best as possible. And just treating the food with love and respect.' She comes to her global approach personally: Her mother is Ukrainian American and her father is Italian American, meaning she's just as comfortable with making pierogi as fresh pasta. She brings a little bit of California to everything she touches: Those pierogi are filled with peas and feta in the springtime, and that pasta is tossed with caramelized mushrooms and onions in the fall. The recipe I'm sharing here, for Pasta With Cauliflower and Chard, was 'inspired by a classic Sicilian dish but reimagined for the California springtime,' she writes. Proportionally, the biggest components are the pasta (she prefers a long noodle, but really anything can work) and cauliflower, a vegetarian cook's best friend for its mild, buttery, nutty flavors, especially when it's roasted. Little things bring the punch: golden raisins, Castelvetrano olives, white wine, lemon and toasted breadcrumbs. Reicher calls for a separate lemon butter, featured among the simple recipes in her Kitchen Larder chapter, but as I discovered, if you're pressed for time, it's just as easy to incorporate some lemon zest and butter right into the sauce. One of my favorite aspects of the recipe is Reicher's use of Swiss chard, a green whose charms are too often overlooked in favor of trendier ones. ('I think it must be because chard is next to kale in the supermarket,' she told me.) Like me, she's a fan of incorporating the stems rather than wasting them: You slice them thinly and cook them with the other aromatic vegetables the way you would celery, with the quick-cooking leaves coming into play later. Reicher's approach to seasonality is refreshingly relaxed. Even though she conceived of the pasta as a springtime dish, she decided to list it in the book as a four-season option. And why not? 'These ingredients are able to be found year-round — something I find most comforting,' she writes, 'since I can and do want to eat this pasta all the time.' Now that I've made it myself, I know just what she means. Get the recipe: Pasta With Cauliflower and Chard
San Francisco Chronicle
26-04-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
A green hummus from one of S.F.'s most famous restaurants
For decades at Greens, hummus was hummus. But the chickpea spread has seen new energy within the last few years, changing with the seasons like the rest of the menu at San Francisco's pioneering vegetarian restaurant. In the spring, the restaurant serves hummus inspired by green goddess dressing — a San Francisco original — with creamy avocado, fresh herbs and green garlic coins. In the fall, roasted carrots stain the dip a vibrant orange. The shift reflects the vision of executive chef Katie Reicher, who rose from line cook to sous chef to the top kitchen job in 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic. She made Greens even more seasonal, with menu items leaving after two months. And she widened the restaurant's worldview, creating dishes inspired by countries such as Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea and Ukraine. She writes about this evolution in her new cookbook, 'Seasons of Greens: A Collection of New Recipes from the Iconic San Francisco Restaurant' (Weldon Owen). And, of course, she shares some recipes: a pot pie brimming with Indian-spiced potatoes and greens; lemongrass tofu stir-fried with crisp asparagus; pierogi stuffed with briny feta and sweet English peas. At one point, Reicher reflects on what it means for the 45-year-old restaurant to get inducted into the Legacy Business Registry of San Francisco. How do you preserve a legacy, especially at a time when the restaurant business can feel so fragile? How do you build on it? The pandemic forced some less popular changes at Greens: the end of free bread at every table; the closure of the Greens to Go lunchtime counter. 'Preserving our legacy often feels like we're holding on to a big bunch of balloons. We hold on to the bunch and care for it so it doesn't float away,' Reicher writes. 'We add new balloons to the bunch along the way, add air to the older balloons that need new life, and gently retire those that just can't float anymore. Some hands let go of the bunch while new hands grab on.' Green Goddess Hummus Makes 3 cups In the new 'Greens' cookbook, Katie Reicher shares the recipe for the restaurant's most popular hummus. Creamy and herbaceous, this Green Goddess Hummus is inspired by the spring bounty at the restaurant's farm, Green Gulch. It's flavored with new spring herbs, green garlic and avocados from farmers market favorite Brokaw Ranch. While freshly cooked chickpeas are recommended, this recipe also works well with canned, rinsed beans. 1 medium avocado 2 cups chickpeas, cooked and cooled ¼ cup packed fresh parsley leaves ¼ cup packed fresh mint leaves 2 tablespoons fresh dill, stems removed 2 tablespoons fresh Italian basil leaves, packed 2 tablespoons thinly sliced green garlic coins 1 clove garlic ¼ cup good-quality extra-virgin olive oil (such as Sciabica) ¼ cup tahini ¼ cup fresh lemon juice 2 teaspoons salt Cut the avocado in half and remove the pit. Using a spoon, cut the avocado into chunks and then scoop out from the skin into the bowl of a food processor. Add the remaining ingredients and process for 2 to 3 minutes, until the hummus comes together, and a little texture remains. The herbs will have broken down into small flecks, and the mixture should have the consistency of a thick paste. We prefer hummus with a bit of texture. But, if you prefer a completely smooth hummus, start by mixing the herbs, olive oil, tahini and lemon juice in the pitcher of a blender and blend until smooth. Then add the remaining ingredients and blend again until the hummus comes together. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Note: Green garlic is an essential ingredient in the spring! This immature garlic plant adds a nice bit of springy funky-fresh flavor without too much of a garlic bite. Look for green garlic with small bulbs and bright green tips. Just like scallions, you can use the entire plant — just trim the very tips of the grassy leaves as well as the root. Green garlic is widely available at farmers markets throughout the spring, but if you can't find any, just substitute a couple extra cloves of garlic and it will be just as delicious. Excerpted from Seasons of Greens: A Collection of New Recipes from the Iconic San Francisco Restaurant by Katie Reicher, © 2025. Published by Weldon Owen. Photographs © Erin Scott.
Wall Street Journal
03-04-2025
- Lifestyle
- Wall Street Journal
Are You a Cabbage Skeptic? This Smart Springtime Recipe Shows Off Its Sexy Side
Her restaurant: Greens in San Francisco What she's known for: Adding her imprint to an iconic Bay Area vegetarian restaurant's history. Leaving behind an Ivy League program in nutrition to focus on learning to cook healthy, wholesome food. Writing a cookbook dedicated to seasonal recipes. Cabbage is 'the ultimate transition ingredient,' said Katie Reicher. For her first Slow Food Fast recipe the chef pairs the seemingly humble staple with grains, tender peas, fresh herbs and lots of lemon, crafting a comforting dish that anticipates spring. Earthy, substantial and sweet, it's the sort of smart, seasonal cooking that's become Reicher's calling card at Greens in San Francisco. Five years ago, she took over the kitchen at the iconic vegetarian restaurant; this month, the world will welcome her first cookbook. What's the key to perfectly caramelized cabbage? Get the pan blazing hot, and give each wedge a good char. 'It brings out the sugars and adds complexity,' advises Reicher. 'It just works.'
