Six California Kitchens: A Collection of Recipes, Stories, and Cooking Lessons from a Pioneer of California Cuisine

By Sally Schmitt, Troyce Hoffman, Bruce Smith and 2 more

Winner of a 2023 IACP Cookbook Award and the Golden Poppy Book Award in the Glenn Goldman Cooking category

Six California Kitchens is the quintessential California cookbook, with farm-to-table recipes and stories from Sally Schmitt, the pioneering female chef and original founder of the French Laundry.

"Schmitt, the founder of California’s famed French Laundry restaurant, reflects on the food that defined her life, in this sumptuous collection of recipes and tales from the kitchens that inspired them. [...] Fans of Alice Waters won’t want to miss this delectable page-turner."—Publishers Weekly

Sally Schmitt opened The French Laundry in Yountville in 1978 and designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients—a novel concept at the time.

In this soon-to-be-classic cookbook, Sally Schmitt takes us through the six kitchens where she learned to cook, honed her skills, and spent her working life. Six California Kitchens weaves her remarkable story with 115 recipes that distill the ethos of Northern California cooking into simple, delicious dishes, plus evocative imagery, historic ephemera, and cooking wisdom.

With gorgeous food and sense-of-place photography, this is a masterful, story-rich cookbook for home and aspiring chefs who cook locally and seasonally, food historians, fans of wine country, and anyone who wants to bring the spirit of Northern California home with them.

CALIFORNIA CONNECTION: This is a California cookbook from a native Californian chef, who founded one of the most well-known and revered restaurants in California (and in the world). The book was written, photographed, and designed by members of Sally's family.

PERSON OF NOTE: Sally Schmitt is the great unsung hero of California cuisine, a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement, and original founder of the French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. This book celebrates a respected, reputable chef and shares a collection of her best recipes from a lifetime of cooking.

COMPELLING PACKAGE: This book is full of evocative images of Napa Valley, rustic kitchens, and the rugged California coastline. With lifestyle photography that offers a peek into the history of Northern California and its food revolution, this book will appeal to readers with its lovely design and package—but they'll stay for the inspiring story and approachable recipes.

Perfect for:

• Home cooks who cook locally and seasonally, who live in California, or who enjoy California cuisine
• Foodies who collect regional cookbooks rich with history and visuals
• People who bought Twelve Recipes, Zuni, and Gjelina
• Fans of the French Laundry and Alice Waters

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chronicle Books Digital
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781797208831

Sally Schmitt

Sally Schmitt is the original founder of the French Laundry and one of California's most influential food pioneers. She was born and raised in Northern California and started cooking professionally in 1967. After 11 years spent in Yountville running a café and a restaurant, she opened the French Laundry with her husband, Don. She designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients—a novel concept at the time. This style of "locavore" cooking caught the attention of critics and inspired other local chefs, helping propagate the farm-to-table movement. After selling the restaurant in 1994, Sally taught cooking classes in a renovated farmhouse on an apple farm in Mendocino. Nowadays, she lives on the Mendocino coast.

Book preview

First: My Mother’s Kitchen

Where It Started (1932 to 1948)

Our Homestead

As I think back to my childhood days, I realize that food has always taken center stage. In 1937, when I was five, my family moved from the small California town of Roseville, in the Sacramento Valley, into the countryside. I think it was less than 5 miles [8 kilometers] from town to the 2½ acres [1 hectare] of rolling land my parents bought, right next to an old almond orchard. Doing much of the finish work themselves, they built a simple ranch house for us and planted a vegetable garden for their kitchen use.

We raised potatoes, carrots, beans of all kinds, onions, lots of corn in the summertime, parsley, and of course, tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes. We didn’t raise much lettuce because it was too hot in the valley, but we did grow cucumbers, which we pickled. My father planted his favorite roses and irises, which he was always proud to show at the country fair.

There were two old apricot trees on the property, both Royal Blenheim, which to this day I consider the king of all apricots. The trees were big enough so that we could string our Uncle Willy’s US Navy hammock between them. When our mother wasn’t stretched out in it reading a book, we would climb those trees, gorging ourselves on the ripe fruit, or try to dump each other out of the hammock. How we loved those trees!

There was also a black walnut, a guava, a persimmon, and several oak trees surrounding us. Lining our driveway was an abandoned row of muscat grapes. Getting full sunlight and little water, the vines gave us the most delicious, intensely flavored grapes, deep gold in color. Just outside our kitchen was a huge, very old weeping willow. Our father made a swing and hung it from a top branch. We could really go high, at least high enough to scare me. Then we played hide and seek in the tall grasses until the dark drove us inside.

We soon acquired chickens, a pig, and a Guernsey cow. Sometimes we raised rabbits, too, which we dined on for special occasions. The rabbits were my little brother’s pets, so when we ate one, we made sure to call it chicken and hoped he wouldn’t ask for a wing, which he never did. I longed for a horse, but my father believed in raising only animals for meat, and he ruled with a rather heavy hand.

My father felt lucky to have survived the Depression with a steady job at the railroad, and he was determined to support his growing family. When my brother and I were old enough to help, he sent us out to the vegetable garden to pull weeds, reminding us to Be sure to get the roots. I also learned how to pick the beans, deadhead the roses, and change the sprinklers, while my father was at work in town. He would come home after a hard day, deposit his lunch pail on the porch, and go right into the vegetable garden, where he remained until he was called in for dinner. If we hadn’t done our chores, that was the time of reckoning.

A family dinner at our homestead. Front and center, Aunt Polly, moving left around the table, me, mom, Aunt Saidie, sister Kay, brother Tag, nephew Terry, Uncle Bob, and Uncle Name (that’s really what we called him).

Our family eventually grew to six in all, I being the second in the lineup. My older brother, Bob, was born in 1929, and I was born in 1932. John, whom we always called Tag, followed in 1936, and Kay, the last of the brood, was born in 1941.

It seems strange that my mother did such a good job of cooking some vegetables, but not others. Her green beans, which we called string beans, were always cooked to death. There was a running battle between my parents over those beans. My father planted way too many, which we had to harvest and also get rid of the surplus. We would take the extras to town for credit on our grocery bill, or deliver them to old friends in town who didn’t have gardens. Meanwhile, my father insisted that we eat the old green beans first, so they wouldn’t be wasted, while the young, tender ones grew old on the vine! My mother mixed them with a little onion and sometimes tomato and cooked them long and slow. They turned army green but were still tasty.

Years later, at our family table in Yountville, I served my father some tender, bright green beans, which I had blanched and then quickly sautéed in butter. He turned to my mother and said, Why don’t you ever cook beans this way? We all held back our howls of laughter until he was out of hearing.

We loved mushrooms. I recall one excursion after a rain when we went mushroom gathering with my grandmother out to the last of the unfenced fields right outside the town. We gathered buckets of field mushrooms. It must have been an extraordinary crop, because it was so hard not to step on them! Back home, my mother sautéed them in butter and served them in large soup bowls, filled to the brim. That was our dinner and clearly a wonderful one, as I still can picture those big slices and black juices to this day.

Whenever we had fish, my mother cooked mustard potatoes, small red potatoes from our garden when we had them, or russets from the store when we didn’t. Since my father was an avid fisherman, we had them often, and I never tired of them. My mother boiled them, rolled them in bacon fat and French’s mustard (the only mustard we knew) and roasted them until the skins were crisp and the interiors creamy.

This, the tastes and the attitudes, the love of food and cooking, are what sent me forth into the world.

Mustard Potatoes

Cooking these brings back a flood of good memories from my childhood. Any potato will work well here. If I have russets on hand, I cut them into chunks. Small red potatoes, like the ones I dug up out of our garden as a child, l keep whole. Yukon golds of any size are wonderful. And yes, these are wonderful served with fish, as my mother did.

SERVES 6 / PREP TIME: 10 MIN / COOK TIME: 30 TO 45 MIN

Preheat the oven to 400°F [200°C].

Place over medium heat, cover, and cook until tender, about 15 minutes.

Cover the pot and shake it briskly to distribute the seasoning. Transfer the potatoes to a gratin dish and roast in the oven until they are browned and crispy around the edges and tender inside, 15 to 30 minutes. They will hold nicely, if you aren’t quite ready to serve them.

Lazy Housewife Pickles

This has always been my favorite pickle. Growing up, my mother would gather the cucumbers over several days from our garden, just as they were reaching the perfect size. As she picked them, she would add them to the pickling brine in the big brown crock we kept in a cooler. When the crock was full, it was carried down to our basement for storage.

MAKES ENOUGH TO FILLA 1 GAL [3.8 L] CONTAINER / TOTAL TIME: 15 MIN EXCLUDING CURING TIME

And then we waited; my mother would never allow any of our summer preserves to be opened until Thanksgiving. This made sense for a frugal household, since by then we were more than ready for a change in our daily fare, and the garden was sparse.

These days, I cheat. I put the pickles in our refrigerator and start using them after 2 weeks, when they are still crisp. For a container, be sure to use something that won’t corrode: stoneware crocks and large glass jars work well. If your lid is metal, you can cut a square of wax paper or parchment paper to cover the top of the jar before screwing on the lid.

This is embarrassingly simple—thus the name! I love to pair these pickles with our Duck Liver Pâté (page 180), but more often than not, I simply make a pickle and cheese sandwich with mayonnaise on sourdough or any good, sliced whole-grain bread.

Dry them and wedge into a 1 gal [3.8 L] container.

Pour the vinegar mix over the cucumbers. It should cover them completely. If it falls short, simply add a little more vinegar. The cucumbers must be completely submerged. If necessary, weight them down with a plate or a small plastic bag filled with some of the brine and sealed tightly. Cover and refrigerate.

After 2 weeks, pull out a pickle, slice it, and give it a try. If, like me, you like yours a little crisp, it’s time to start using them. They’ll last as long as your jar does.

My First Kitchen

My first recollection of hands-on cooking is standing on a stool at my mother’s stove, patiently stirring the chocolate pudding, and watching it carefully as it came to a full boil and turned into a deliciously thick dessert. The smell was intoxicating, as was my awareness that I was responsible for it. After that, I recall churning butter, grinding beef with our old hand-cranked machine, setting the table, and, of course, doing dishes. That sometimes required sitting outside in our sandbox, and scouring with sand a pan that my mother had managed to burn, leaving it with a thick, brownish-black crust of food. To give her credit, she didn’t own any of the beautiful pans we have today. I recall a lot of thin aluminum pots, which got thinner with each disaster.

When I grew tall enough so that I did not need the stool, I was allowed to start the chocolate pudding from scratch, to brown the beef for the stew, and to put together the cookie dough. Since my father loved desserts, there was always a pie, cake, or cookies to finish off a dinner.

My first cake was a thrill, but it took a while before Mom thought I was ready for piecrust. Of course, I had been given the trimmings long before to roll, cut out with a cookie cutter, and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Remarkably, even though the dough was over handled, after baking, the cookies were never tough. Later, I kept up this tradition with our children and grandchildren, who loved to shape them into animals.

As soon as I was ready, my mother put a paring knife in my hand, and I peeled potatoes. And when she thought I was ready for a larger knife, I was cutting vegetables by her side. She was always in the kitchen with me.

I learned first by helping her. She would stay there in the kitchen to instruct me as we went along. She was a teacher by training, and she was a good one. She was patient and knew how to present things. She always said that she wanted me to learn the right way to cook; I could make my own shortcuts only after I had learned it well.

I don’t remember her cooking from cookbooks. She did have a Better Homes and Gardens loose-leaf binder, to which she would add recipes from friends and family. And there was a drawerful of notes and recipes, which she had cut out of newspapers and magazines. But she only used the baking and dessert recipes. She knew the basics by heart, and this is what she taught me.

The kitchen wasn’t large, like old-fashioned farmhouse kitchens, where there was enough space for several people to work at one time. This was a modern kitchen from the mid-1930s, geared towards the housewife who did her own cooking without servants. It was, like the whole house, modest. We had one smallish refrigerator, an electric stove, and a drop-down ironing board in the kitchen wall next to the cooler. We also had a basement, where we stored all of our summer produce, packed in jars and ready for the winter table.

A cooler, also known as a California cooler, was the West Coast’s alternative to a cellar as a place to store perishable foods such as fruits, vegetables, milk, butter, and cheese. Dating to the turn-of-the-last-century bungalows, it was a kitchen cabinet vented at the top and bottom with slatted shelves. This allowed warmer air to escape, making it a few degrees cooler than the rest of the kitchen, especially in the temperate climate of California.

I remember the day I was given, for the first time, full responsibility for dinner. My mother sat in her rocker in the living room, reading her latest Ladies Home Journal. She was available to answer questions, but would not come into the kitchen to stand and look over my shoulder. She was such a good teacher!

My younger sister later pointed out that she really never learned to do the canning and pickling and slow cooking that I did, since when I left for college, my mother went back to teaching, and their lifestyle changed. Looking back on it now from some eighty-odd years’ distance, I am so grateful that I had that time in the kitchen with my mother, learning early to cook simple, basic foods in such a gentle, caring way.

Recipes evolve over time. Here is a good example of a page from my mother’s recipe book, complete with personal notes and substitutions.

Basic White Sauce

Since my inventive and frugal mother used her white sauce as a base for all sorts of concoctions, this was one of the very first things she taught me to make at a young age.

MAKES 2 CUPS [480 ML] / TOTAL TIME: 20 MIN

I learned later in life that this is one of the five classic French mother sauces, as codified by the great French chef and cookbook author Auguste Escoffier. Though known as béchamel, I still call it my white sauce.

Often you will read that you should heat the cream or milk before adding it to the butter and flour. My mother taught me, though, that adding it cold prevents lumps, because the flour gets incorporated before it starts the thickening process. It also saves you from having to wash another pan!

Cook, stirring, until the mixture foams up and gets a tinge of brown.

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring, until the sauce thickens. The whole process should take 5 to 10 minutes.

This is where white pepper really shines, but don’t toast it before grinding, as that gives it an unpleasant flavor.

Now you have a good white sauce ready for anything. You can thin it, if necessary. I sometimes make it with half chicken stock and half milk or cream, and add a little good mustard.

I always make this sauce first, and set it, covered, on the back of the stove to let the flavors meld. It keeps just fine at room temperature until you’re ready for it.

VARIATION: I rarely make my white sauce without adding a touch of lemon in some form. The zest and juice of ½ lemon; or finely chopped preserved lemons, homemade (page 251) or store bought, are wonderful here. At the French Laundry, we called this variation Lemon Cream Sauce, as we always made it with half-and-half.

Mom’s Potato Salad

This is the salad I learned to make from my mother. I grew up with it, and we made it often, always in large batches. This is best served while still warm, but if you have any left over, it will taste delicious the next day, cold from the fridge.

SERVES 8 TO 10 / TOTAL TIME: 1 HOUR

After Don and I were married, there was always a bit of a competition between my mother’s and my mother-in-law’s recipes for potato salad. Don’s mother was famous for her version, which she always had ready for us when we made the long drive down the Central Valley to Visalia to visit her. We would arrive, sit in her kitchen nook, and feast on it with a couple of cold beers to dampen the travel dust. Hers was similar to my mom’s, but she thinned the mayonnaise with condensed milk, which she kept on hand for her coffee. It was very good, but not as good as my mother’s.

So, here is my mother’s recipe, with no condensed milk.

Transfer to a large pot and cover with water. Salt generously and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the potatoes are fork-tender, about 15 minutes. It’s rather tricky to get them just right. You want them tender, but not falling apart. Drain and spread out on a large baking sheet to cool.

Cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat. Cover and let sit for 15 minutes. Drain, and fill the saucepan with cold water. One at a time, take out each egg, gently crack the eggshell, and return to the cold water. Let sit for 15 minutes. Cracking the shells lets a little water seep in, which makes them much easier to peel.

Peel and dice the cooled eggs and add to the dressing. Pour over the potatoes. With your hands, gently toss everything together.

Cheese Biscuit Dough Gods

This recipe for drop biscuits was passed down by my grandmother, who began making them before the turn of the last century. At the Apple Farm, they have become breakfast staples for our guests. Cruz Alvarado, through years of working with us, has become an expert at making these, her biscuits always turning out golden brown, plump, and crispy. She even discovered a shortcut: Grating the butter, cold from the refrigerator or freezer, with a box grater speeds up the process. No wonder she has become known as the Cheese Biscuit Queen.

MAKES 12 BISCUITS / PREP TIME: 10 MIN / COOK TIME: 25 MIN

For some odd reason, my grandfather referred to his mule’s droppings as dough gods. Since their shape reminded him of these biscuits, the family name for them was also dough gods. My grandfather loved his mules, as well as the biscuits, so no one took the name as an insult. I believe my mother first added the cheese to the drop biscuits. But even with the cheese added, I used the original name until I started offering them in the 1970s to brunch customers at the Chutney Kitchen. I thought the explanation would be a little too cumbersome, so they became simply cheese biscuits.

Preheat the oven to 400°F [200°C]. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease it with butter.

Using a fork, gently stir the dry ingredients into the cream until just incorporated and you have a nice stiff dough. Avoid overmixing, which toughens the biscuits. They should be very tender. Drop the dough by the forkful onto the prepared baking sheet, about ½ in [12 mm] apart.

Bake until they are nicely browned and crispy, about 25 minutes.

If they flatten out too much while baking, you have put in too much liquid or your mixture got too warm. Try holding back a little of the cream, only adding it if it is needed, or chilling the dry mixture.

Leftovers can be stored in a plastic bag for 2 or 3 days at room temperature. Reheat in a hot oven for 10