"Do you really need a recipe for a platter of figs?" David Tanis asks in the frontispiece to his new cookbook.

"No."

"Is that the point?"

"Yes."

"The platter of figs," he continues, "perfectly illustrates the idea of eating with the seasons. ... Above all, the platter of figs is a metaphor for the food I like. Fresh ripe figs are voluptuous and generous, luxurious and fleeting. And beautiful."

"There is a communal aspect to a platter as well: It must be passed from diner to diner. It must be shared," he continues in another segment of the book.

These are the key ideas behind Tanis' book — A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes — which is, itself, a beautiful thing, elegantly designed, printed on heavyweight paper that's a pleasure to handle and illustrated with 125 luscious still-lifes and color images taken by accomplished food photographer Christopher Hirsheimer — a personal friend of Tanis.

To support Tanis' seasonal approach to cooking, the book is made up of 24 three-course menus, six for each of the four seasons. To underline his belief that cooking — and eating — is most enjoyable in the company of others, each menu is designed to serve 8 to 10 people. "A party," he says, "can be any gathering of eaters at a table. A fine meal doesn't have to be elaborate."

One spring menu combines a warm asparagus vinaigrette with shoulder of lamb with flageolet beans and olive relish, topped off with a rum baba (a small cake) with cardamom. In summer, we find sliced tomatoes with sea salt, grilled chicken breasts, corn, squash and beans with jalapeño butter and a blueberry-blackberry crumble.

But, lest you think this cookbook is overly simple, there's also a pig's ear salad with herb vinaigrette, part of a winter menu entitled "Peasant fare from a Parisian Kitchen" that also includes duck hams with French lentils and celery root rémoulade, a bistro classic. Chilled prunes in Beaujolais completes the meal.

For six months of the year, Tanis is a head chef at Berkeley's Chez Panisse restaurant, where he has worked with the restaurant's legendary founder, Alice Waters, for 25 years.

The remainder of the year Tanis lives in Paris, where he hosts a private dining club out of his apartment. In the 1990s, he was chef at Café Escalera in Santa Fe, a downtown restaurant whose passing is still lamented by longtime local foodies.

"Cooking in New Mexico," Tanis writes in the introduction to menu #21 in the winter quarter, "I learned about caribe, which are nothing more than semihot dried red chile crushed coarsely and used as a table condiment or added to cooked dishes."

He credits his time cooking here as the source of his habit of always traveling with a handful of fresh chiles in his pocket —much as Toulouse-Lautrec never left home without a nutmeg grater. It's his "culinary insurance for perking up the bland," he says.

Tanis goes on to describe New Mexican cuisine: "Its base of austere Spanish peasant fare, influenced by Mexican and Native American cultures, is anything but subtle," he writes. "Chiles, both red green, fresh and dried, are the crucial ingredient. In the harsh high-desert climate, chile plants somehow survive drought, hail, and summer monsoons, just as the early settlers did, and their flavor is all the better for their suffering."

The chef's prose is as finely wrought as his menus, offering even non-cooks the opportunity to taste his sensual approach to food with his words, if not their hands.




SANTA FE
WHAT: Talk and booksigning by David Tanis, author of A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes (Artisan, 2008)

WHEN: 1 to 2 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia St., Santa Fe

PRICE: Free to public

FOR MORE INFORMATION: 505-986-0151


ALBUQUERQUE
WHAT: Talk and booksigning by David Tanis, and samples of recipes in his book, A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes

WHEN: 1 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, Albuquerque

PRICE: Free to public

FOR MORE INFORMATION: 505-344-8139




"It's amazing how a little saffron and garlic can transform ordinary carrots into something sublime," Tanis writes in A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes. The two recipes that follow are good examples of his minimalist approach to cooking — and to recipe-writing.
Peel 3 pounds carrots and slice into thin coins. Cook in 2 tablespoons butter with a little crushed saffron and a couple chopped garlic cloves. Season well with salt and pepper and a scant teaspoon of freshly grated lemon zest. Add a cup of water and simmer, covered, for 5 minutes — longer at Santa Fe's altitude! — or until carrots are tender.


Boil 2 pounds potatoes and 2 pounds carrots in salted water until tender.

Drain and add a little crumbled saffron, butter and grated lemon zest.

Mash the potatoes and carrots and thin with a little milk or crème fraîche.


"The first cold weather wants bean soup," Tanis writes in a fall menu that also includes thinly sliced cured meats and olives, garlic toast, pears and Parmigiano and almond biscotti. We couldn't agree more. This more conventionally structured recipe is Tanis' take a classic Italian combination of white beans and smoked ham, scented with garlic, fennel and rosemary.

Make the soup the day before you plan to serve it so the flavors will have time to develop. Stir in some cooked, small pasta (like small shells or tubetti) and wilted greens (like spinach or chard) just before serving if you like — and offer some freshly toasted garlic bread on the side.

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 large onions, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, sliced
2 bay leaves
4 cups (2 pounds) dried white beans, picked over and rinsed
2 pounds smoked ham hocks
12 cups water
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, ground fine in mortar or spice mill
1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
Salt and pepper
1 teaspoon Rosemary Oil (recipe follows) per serving
Garlic toast, for serving

Warm the 3 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium heat. Add the diced onions and cook gently until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and bay leaves and cook for a minute more.

Add the white beans and smoked ham hocks. Cover with the water and bring to a boil. Skim off any surface foam and turn the heat to low. Simmer gently for an hour, stirring occasionally.

Add the ground fennel, red-pepper flakes and a good spoonful of salt. Continue cooking for 1 hour more, or until the beans are quite tender and the smoked pork has begun to fall apart. (Unless the beans are from a fresh new crop — and even then — this will take much longer at Santa Fe's altitude.)

Taste the soup and season with salt and pepper. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate, uncovered, overnight.

To serve, reheat the soup over a medium flame, stirring frequently. Thin with water if it has thickened too much overnight. Check the seasoning and adjust.

Drizzle 1 teaspoon of Rosemary Oil on top of each bowl of soup. Serve with garlic toast.


Tanis suggests making this simple, flavorful oil just before you use it.

ROSEMARY OIL

1/2 cup olive oil
A few fresh rosemary sprigs

While the soup is reheating, warm the olive oil in a small saucepan. Chop about 1 tablespoon of rosemary and stir it into the oil. Turn off the heat.


Menu 21, "Nuevo Mexico," features avocado quesadillas sided with spicy home-pickled vegetables, green chile-chicken stew and bizcochitos.

"In Northern New Mexico," Tanis writes, "green chile stew is legendary. Everybody makes it, everybody eats it, and everybody loves it, even if everybody makes a different version ..." This is Tanis' version:

GREEN CHILE STEW
(Serves 8-10)

5 pounds well-marbled boneless pork butt, cut into 2-inch cubes
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil or lard
2 large onions, finely diced
4 to 6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 teaspoons cumin seeds, toasted and finely ground
1/2 cup chopped tomatoes, fresh or canned
6 large carrots, peeled and chunked
1 cup chopped roasted green chiles
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
8 cups water or chicken broth
3 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into large dice
Chopped cilantro
Hot corn or flour tortillas, for serving

Season the meat with salt and pepper. Heat the oil or lard in a large Dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot. Add the meat, in several batches, without crowding, and brown it lightly. Transfer to a platter or tray.

Add the onions to the pot and brown them. Add the garlic, cumin, tomatoes, carrots and green chiles, then sprinkle the flour over and stir. Salt the mixture, then return the browned meat to the pot and stir well. Cover with the water or broth and bring it to a boil.

Cover the pot, turn the flame to low, and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Taste the broth, then fiddle with it, adding salt or more green chile as necessary. The broth should be well-seasoned and fairly spicy. Add the potatoes and continue cooking for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft and the meat is quite tender. Skim any fat from the surface of the broth.

Let the stew rest for an hour or more. Refrigerate overnight if desired.

To serve, reheat the stew and ladled into warmed bowls. Sprinkle with the chopped cilantro and served with hot tortillas.


Bistecca with Fried Artichokes and Potatoes is the main course of an Italian-themed fall menu — one of three in the book inspired by that Mediterranean country — and it gives you the opportunity to use those community-building platters so dear to Tanis.

Baby artichokes, the author notes, are about the size of an egg and have no choke. After you remove a few of the outer leaves, you can eat the whole artichoke. To substitute larger artichokes in this recipe, you would need to do a great deal more prep work to remove all the tough outer leaves, clear the choke out of the heart and cut them in half before proceeding with the recipe.

BISTECCA WITH FRIED ARTICHOKES AND POTATOES
(Serves 8-10)

4 pounds flank steak
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
4 pounds medium potatoes, such as Yellow Finn
2 pounds baby artichokes
1 lemon
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves roughly chopped
1/2 pound arugula, washed and dried
Lemon wedges

Season flank steak generously with salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Drizzle with a little olive oil and massage in the seasoning. Cover and refrigerate for at least several hours, or overnight. Bring to room temperature before cooking.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into small chunks or wedges. Boil the potatoes in salted water until just done (soft when pierced with the tip of a knife). Drain the potatoes and spread them on a baking sheet to cool.

To prepare the baby artichokes, cut of the tops and remove a few outer leaves from each to reveal the pale green centers. Trim the stem ends with a paring knife. Slice the artichoke lengthwise 1/4-inch thick. Put the slices in a bowl of cool water. Squeeze in the juice of the lemon.

Prepare a fire in a charcoal grill. While you wait for the grill to heat, pan-fry the artichokes and potatoes: Drain the artichoke slices and blot with a kitchen towel. Put a large skillet over a high flame. Add 1/2-inch of olive oil and let it heat. Add the artichokes and stir them around in the oil for a minute or so. Add the potatoes and let them sizzle with the artichokes.

Turn flame to medium, shaking the pan and stirring the vegetables, until they brown and crisp, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the garlic and let it sizzle without browning. Stir in the parsley and turn off the heat.

Grill the flank steak over hot coals. For a rare steak, cook about 5 minutes per side, just until juices begin to appear on the surface. Transfer to a platter and let the steak rest for 10 to 15 minutes before carving.

Carve the flank steak in thin slices against the grain. Arrange the meat on a huge warmed platter. Reheat the fried artichokes and potatoes if necessary and spoon around the steak. Garnish the platter with arugula leaves and lemon wedges.

All recipes from A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes by David Tanis, Artisan, 2008, $35.