Helene Henderson’s new cookbook brings Malibu Farm dishes into your kitchen

Fans of the restaurants in L.A. and Orange counties will welcome “Malibu Farm Sunrise To Sunset,” a cookbook that will show how to prepare some of their favorite dishes at home.

Helene Henderson, founder of the popular eateries, with locations in Malibu, Newport Beach, Cabo, Lanai, Miami, New York and Tokyo, has brought together 100 recipes for breakfasts, dinners, drinks and snacks, all with her signature rustic flair. Flip through and find colorful photos of pumpkin pancakes, grilled salmon salad, breakfast tacos, bacon burgers and more.

Each dish celebrates the bounty of California and many are almost too beautiful to eat. She carefully considers their looks and how to bring that “just picked” farm freshness to the table. We talked about some of her secrets to success during a recent phone conversation. Here’s her take on how to create the magic of Malibu Farm at home.

Q. How did this cookbook come about?

A. This isn’t my first cookbook. That one was written the year before I opened up the cafe. So when I wrote that book, I didn’t know the restaurant was coming. Customers would say, “This book doesn’t have any of the restaurant’s recipes.” So I was like, I’m gonna have to write a new book. So that’s really where it came from.

Q. How did you decide which dishes went into the book?

A. I added almost everything that we had on the menu.

Q. Cool! Tell us about the farm part of Malibu Farm.

A. When I first opened, I had a little two-acre place where I was doing my classes and my farm dinners and I was growing everything. Then, when I opened the original cafe, I was thinking, believing, dreaming, that I would have enough. Very quickly on I realized I did not. So we still work a lot with local farmers.

Q. I recently talked to Deborah Madison and when she started Greens Restaurant, she took the emphasis off meat but she still felt she had to have something grand in the middle of the plate. She never did stews or salads as a main dish. Is California cuisine more free-form these days?

A. Absolutely. I think it’s changed a lot in the last five years since I opened. I always felt like there were different restaurants you went with different people. So there would be a restaurant I would go with my girlfriend, but I wouldn’t go there with my husband because he couldn’t find anything to eat. I think now it’s becoming way more fluid with a lot of restaurants with menus that are a little bit more inclusive.

Q. The book has a California look to it. I liked the Stoplight Taco Trio idea with red, yellow and green fillings. I made the Yellow Beet Dressing and the Summer Tomato Salad with yellow heirlooms. How important is color and visuals to you?

A. Color is everything to me. They laugh at me at the restaurant because I’m like, “How do I make this more colorful? How do I make that more sparkly?” If you met me in person, I’m wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt and black shoes. I don’t respond to color in anything, but when it’s about food, I just want to explore it in color.

Q. I liked the fika chapter about Swedish coffee breaks. You have a similar background to chef Marcus Samuelsson who is also a Swede with African-American heritage, and he too struck out for New York, like you did. He says Sweden definitely  influenced his food. How does it come into play in your cooking?

A. I do love my pastries and coffee. I’m also slightly obsessed with potatoes. Potatoes are huge in Sweden.

Q. I liked the three potato salads with fingerling potatoes, blue potatoes or sweet potatoes. You give home cooks a lot of options. The Chicken Parm from the Farm is a fresh take on a classic recipe and you said you can use sun-dried tomatoes instead of pancetta.

A. I’m like a regular person. So I buy an ingredient and I don’t want it to sit in the fridge for a year. So one thing I tried to do in the book is to tie that ingredient to multiple recipes so that they get inspired to use it for something else.

Q.  The cafe latte ice cream is delicious. Swedes love coffee, was that the inspiration?

A. Yes. I actually got to be a coffee addict really badly and I would get headaches. So, I started drinking one cup a day. I’ll always do my one cup around 11. Swedes do love coffee. They drink coffee and they talk about the weather.

Q. So, when I went to Malibu Farm on the pier I saw Gerard Butler. Do you get a lot of celebs in the restaurant?

A. We do.

Q. You’re certainly in a glamorous setting. And you’re not just a chef, you’re a successful restaurateur. Are waterfront locations tricky?

A. They are. Some restaurants try to focus in on the same customer, like the foodie who’s 25 to 45. “This is my customer. I want to be in the Top 10 on the Eater lists,” right? This is their sense of success. I always feel like our sense of success is if we’re bringing new people to the pier, people who don’t normally come to Malibu.

Q. The vibe of Malibu Farm is special. How did you recreate it in this book?

A. A lot of the times farm-to-table restaurants are fine dining and they get a little fussy and it’s not necessarily a super welcoming environment for everybody. So I’m always trying to make my menu a little bit more inclusive. So, if you’ve never been to a farm-to-table restaurant — but your daughter is 16 and she falls in love with us on Instagram and you’re reading this menu — I want to have something you feel comfortable with. So you’re, “Oh yeah. I can eat there. Let’s do it.”

Q. That comes through, and so does a spirituality and a playfulness. I liked when you wrote “taste for deliciousness” into a recipe. It gives readers permission to make sure it’s going to come out the way they like it.

A. Delicious is all in the taste buds of the eater. So if you don’t like garlic, don’t use garlic. I’m really just trying to reassure people that you can do this any which way. This is your dinner, your lunch and there’s nobody here to judge. Did you like it? Do you want to eat more of it? That’s the only opinion that matters.

‘Malibu Farms Sunrise To Sunset’

Author: Helene Henderson is a self-taught cook who grew up in Sweden. She started Lavender Farms Catering in Los Angeles in 1997 and opened the first Malibu Farm restaurant in 2014. She lives in Malibu with her husband, screenwriter/director John Stockwell, and their three children.

Publisher: Clarkson Potter, a division of Penguin Random House.

Price: $40.