Tassajara Dinners & Desserts

Book excerpt: Dishes made with mindfulness that reflect a “love of Asian flavors and current tastes for lighter vegetarian meals” from the legendary Buddhist monastery (Edible Monterey Bay). In Tassajara: Dinner & Desserts, readers will not only find recipes filled with the flavor of Zen practice but also stories from past guest cooks, such as Deborah Madison, Ed Brown, Gloria Lee, and many others, whose calm and peaceful minds were truly tested behind the doors of the Tassajara kitchen, whose monastic kitchen differs from a normal restaurant kitchen in that the activity of preparing the food is understood to be spiritual practice. The Tassajara Zen Mountain Center teaches that every aspect of one’s day can be lived with mindfulness—even food preparations and choices of what we eat. A few of the fifty recipes include: Frittata with Caramelized Onions, Goat Cheese, and Sage Coconut Curry with Mixed Vegetables Tofu Neatballs Sweet Tapioca Soup with Honeydew Ricotta Chevre with Ginger Berry Compote “The book includes lots of amusing parables from the kitchen and makes Kent the latest in a long lineage of cooks who’ve contributed to the Tassajara mystique.” —Edible Monterey Bay