Bestia: Italian Recipes Created in the Heart of L.A. [A Cookbook]

by Ori Menashe, Genevieve Gergis, Lesley Suter

Overview

This debut cookbook from L.A.'s phenomenally popular Bestia restaurant features rustic Italian food that is driven by intense flavors, including house-made charcuterie, pizza and pasta from scratch, and innovative desserts inspired by home-baked classics.

IACP AWARD FINALIST

Since opening in downtown Los Angeles in 2012, Bestia has captivated diners with its bold, satisfying, and flavor-forward food served in a festive, communal atmosphere. Now, in this accessible and immersive debut cookbook, all of the incredible dishes that have made Bestia one of the most talked-about restaurants in the country are on full display. Rooted in the flavors and techniques of Italian regional cooking, these recipes include inventive hits like fennel-crusted pork chops; meatballs with ricotta, tomato, greens, and preserved lemon; and agnolotti made with cacao pasta dough. Irresistible desserts such as apple cider donuts and a chocolate budino tart, from co-owner and pastry chef Genevieve Gergis, end the concert of flavors on a high note. With chapters on making bread, pasta, and charcuterie; sections on stocks and sauces; and new ideas for getting the most from your cooking by layering flavors, Bestia delivers a distinctively innovative approach to Italian-inspired cooking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399580918
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	770,232
File size:	233 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Ori Menashe is co-owner and executive chef of Bestia.

Genevieve Gergis is the co-owner and pastry chef of Bestia.

Lesley Suter is the former deputy editor for Los Angeles magazine and a two-time James Beard award-winner for food writing.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION 

OUR FOOD 

Ori: I can’t really explain it, but Italian food has always had a hold on me. I’m not Italian, but I’ve long identified with the festive, loud, communal style of eating that’s particular to the Italian table. And since my earliest days as a chef, I’ve somehow had an instinctual understanding of how to work with Italian flavors. They just feel familiar. Not that I haven’t wanted to try other things. During the ten years I spent working in Italian restaurants, I had many opportunities to cook with acclaimed chefs from France and Japan. But somehow, in every case, Italian food drew me back in and it has never let me go.

Bestia’s food has its roots in the flavors of Italy. Most of our dishes draw inspiration from some traditional recipe, and we share the very Italian approach of showcasing the best of what’s local, fresh, and seasonal. From there, though, the Italian influence stops. Instead, we look beyond any formal culinary style—to our own life experiences, our travels, and daily influences—to create dishes that are wholly original and wholly us.

For example, the Pineapple Mostarda alongside our Grilled Pork Porterhouse is a salute to the al pastor trucks cruising LA after midnight. Our Charred Shishito Peppers with Squid Ink Aioli derives its flavor profile from Spain, one of our favorite places to travel. If you pick up the aroma of fig leaves in our lamb ragu, look to the giant fig tree shading Bestia’s front patio to know why. And the base of creamy yogurt beneath our lamb belly confit reminds me a little of the kebabs I grew up eating in Israel. More than any geographic region or culinary canon, the foods of Bestia are a reflection of our combined life experiences and, more important, our desire to extract the most flavor we can from the highest-quality ingredients.

Everything we serve at Bestia is designed to achieve maximum “craveability.” I want you to take one bite of a dish and then feel compelled to have another one. And then another one. I think, “How can I make you to want to taste this again and again and again, no matter how full you are?” It’s the same kind of trick that MSG pulls on your brain, but I achieve it organically, through building layer upon layer of natural umami. That’s the reason behind our emphasis on dehydrated ingredients, reduced sauces, cured meats, and aged cheeses. Processes like smoking, dehydrating, aging, and fermenting all bring out an ingredient’s inherent savoriness. Put one or two—or even five—elements like that into a dish and you can create something that’s completely addictive.

Genevieve: Our pastry program has the same goal. It’s why I love to add savory ingredients like saffron and bay leaves and herbs and cheeses to my desserts. A generous use of salt and bitter elements further help to round out the flavor profile, creating something that’s balanced, delicious, and so much more than “just sweet.”

But as much as we’re about enhancing flavors, we don’t want to amplify every ingredient or dish; that can become too much. Instead, we pick one or two key elements to highlight—just enough to intrigue the palate but not exhaust it. In the end, it’s all about extracting the very best flavor from the very best ingredients. If you want something that’s chocolatey, it should be the creamiest chocolatey flavor. Strawberry ice cream should taste like real strawberries.

Ori: People always ask us, “What kind of food is Bestia?” But it’s so much more about our philosophy and our approach to flavor than any particular style of cooking. We think our recipes included here reflect that.

Editorial Reviews

11/15/2018

Despite its hard-to-find location in Los Angeles, Bestia restaurant was a hit from the start and continues to be a coveted reservation. Husband-wife owners Menashe and Genevieve Gergis; he is the head chef, she is the pastry chef, together with food journalist Lesley Suter, have a produced an attractive book highlighting their full-flavored, Italian-based food. Like many restaurant books, this one assumes a fair bit of culinary knowledge, with large sections on charcuterie and pickling, as well as recipes that call for a dehydrator as well as access to specialized ingredients. But the dedicated cook looking to replicate the Bestia experience will be rewarded with recipes such as scallop crudo with citrus and dried olives, pici with saffron lamb ragu, and slow-roasted suckling pig. Among the most intriguing recipes are starters; several of the main dishes utilize a grill, which may be of limited use to some readers, but the pizza recipes instruct on using a home oven and a large section on desserts offers many tips for success. VERDICT A beautiful Bestia souvenir and a workable title for ambitious home cooks.—Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI

Library Journal

08/06/2018
In this excellent debut, the husband-and-wife chefs/owners of L.A. restaurant Bestia share their personal story and provide recipes for many of their menu dishes. The opening chapter of pantry items runs over 40 pages and is a treasury of pickles, preserves, vinaigrettes, sauces and stocks. These “unromantic fundamentals,” prove their worth in starters like sunchoke soup with pickled fresno chiles, and entrees like grilled rib eye with apple balsamic-black butter sauce, and blood orange honey syrup in a crème fraiche panna cotta. Embracing a nose to tail philosophy, the restaurant staff works through 440 pounds of pig every week, and pork turns up in a spicy Calabrian sausage called ’nduja, in pasta options like tortellini di mortadella, and even in a cocktail (pork fat is the key to the chef’s old fashioned, which twists the traditional recipe by using a smoked pork–infused bourbon). With support from Suter, a James Beard Award–winning food journalist, and photos by lifestyle and food photographer Nicole Franzen, the restaurant’s rustic charms come to life in this sweet and savory collection. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Best Cookbooks of Fall 2018
—New York Times

"The recipes are uncompromising, calling for smoking, then dehydrating and finally grinding anchovies, and smoking pork fat to infuse bourbon to make an Old Fashioned. Those who push forward, however, are rewarded with dishes that smartly layer flavor like stinging nettle pappardelle with mushrooms and a fried egg, and a butterscotch-coconut tart."
—Food & Wine

"L.A.'s insanely beloved restaurant, Bestia, has put together a cookbook full of the same flavorful regional Italian cooking served at the beautiful restaurant. There are chapters on making bread, pasta, and charcuterie, as well as sections about building flavor with stocks and sauces. The accessible instructions just might make it possible to recreate the flavors you loved so much on your last trip to Los Angeles."
—Epicurious

"Now, after nearly a decade in business, what is arguably the city’s best Italian restaurant can enter our kitchens. ... The Bestia staples are all there, including the cavatelli alla Norcina, the agnolotti alla Vaccinara with oxtail, the ’nduja, and the branzino with herb confetti, as are a few cocktails, for good measure. Much like the agnolotti, this cookbook is a must-have."
—Time Out Los Angeles

Praise for the Bestia restaurant:

"A soaring indoor-outdoor fantasy of a modern Italian restaurant."
—Bon Appétit

"Bestia exemplifies the modern Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, but at this point, Bestia may be best known as the downtown restaurant you can't get into."
—Jonathan Gold, Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher