BERKELEY — For Samin Nosrat, the journey to becoming a chef in one of the world’s most celebrated restaurant kitchens began with a single extraordinary meal.

The tale in which the English major and aspiring poet and her boyfriend saved $220 in cash to eat dinner at Berkeley’s famed Chez Panisse restaurant is vividly recounted in Nosrat’s first cookbook, the recently released “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.”

But hearing her describe the experience of eating the raspberry sauce-filled chocolate souffle that followed the frisée aux lardons salad, fish in broth and guinea hen that Nosrat and her companion feasted on, it’s clear the dinner proved to be more than a culinary revelation.

Coupled with the gentle attention the servers lavished on their teenage guests, the experience, Nosrat relates, was life-changing.

“What I really remember was the feeling — it was amazing,” Nosrat said one recent afternoon strolling through the Edible Schoolyard, the garden her former boss, Alice Waters, established at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. “I had never felt so cared for.”

Nearly 20 years after that transformative meal, Nosrat is continuing to spread the word about the power of delicious, lovingly prepared food, which she eventually learned to make while working her way up from busing tables to cooking at Chez Panisse.

She’s definitely not the first of the restaurant’s many alumni to branch out and write a cookbook. But the 37-year old Berkeley resident is being singled out by her peers, fellow authors and food world luminaries for creating a unique guide for home cooks that details the elemental, intuitive cooking system Nosrat formulated while observing and working beside Chez Panisse’s creative chefs.

The book is already finding an audience. Just a few weeks after its April release, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” landed on a New York Times bestseller list.

The BBC recently filmed a cooking show inside Nosrat’s kitchen, and the book is being turned into a documentary miniseries just like “Cooked,” penned by Nosrat’s former writing teacher and cooking student, food journalist Michael Pollan.

Alice Waters has also joined the chorus, declaring Nosrat “one of the great teachers I know.”

Chez Panisse chef and fellow cookbook author Cal Peternell is another fan. Overseeing Nosrat’s work as a prep cook and cooking with her outside of the restaurant’s kitchen, Peternell witnessed firsthand what he called her “delirious enthusiasm” for everything she approached.

As soon as he saw an early version of the cookbook, he knew it would become “a classic.”

For someone who never aspired to be a cook, Nosrat is embracing the flurry of attention with humble, open arms. Growing up the daughter of Iranian immigrants in San Diego, Nosrat dreamed of writing books despite feeling some pressure that it might be more acceptable to become a doctor or lawyer.

Cooking professionally was never on her radar, but Nosrat relished the time spent with her mother roaming Southern California for the right bunch of cilantro or lamb for an exquisite home-cooked Persian dish.

Even then, food made a deep impression, especially the way it connected people to culture, memory and tradition. “This is the thing we’re always in search of,” Nosrat said. “Everyone wants a taste of home.”

In 1997, Nosrat enrolled at Cal, and was a student when she had that momentous dinner. Months later, she sent a letter to restaurant founder and executive chef Waters, relating her thoughts about the meal and asking for a job. She started working there the day after her interview.

In between clearing tables and vacuuming the dining room, Nosrat found herself on the restaurant’s back porch with other staffers getting her first taste of wild strawberries, wild salmon and goat cheese. A self-professed overachiever, she found herself at ease with multi-talented architects, artists, musicians and even techies who doubled as cooks, busers and bartenders.

“It was a machine,” Nosrat said of Chez Panisse’s demanding kitchen. “Everyone was a perfectionist, an overachiever. Suddenly, I was at home.”

Sitting in menu meetings, Nosrat began noticing the way her colleagues seemed to work as if guided by pure instinct. Chefs would draw a picture of a dish, and cooks somehow knew how to execute it. There were no directions, no recipes. Only very rarely were temperatures, times or amounts of ingredients discussed.

But Nosrat kept watching and asking questions. She ruined a barbecue sauce that was part of a meal being served to Hillary Clinton. Making fresh mozzarella was another learning experience.

Soon, she began to understand the wisdom in salting meat the night before cooking; how to use butter to achieve a crisp or flaky texture; how a squeeze of acidic lime or shaving of sharp cheese could expand a dish; and how heat could transform even the toughest cut of meat.

She presented her findings to Christopher Lee, the chef who would become a mentor and later her employer. “He was very unimpressed,” Nosrat recalled with a laugh.

Undaunted, Nosrat vowed to write down her insights to share with home cooks. Today, Lee says the book — with illustrations, diagrams and drawings by San Francisco-based artist Wendy McNaughton — “explains, educates and teaches how to become an informed, sensitive, aware cook with good techniques and skills.”

“It explains a wide, whole view of the kitchen,” Lee wrote in an email.

For Nosrat, who has been testing her theories at the Edible Schoolyard, senior centers and culinary schools, satisfaction comes from helping people learn how to cook delicious food and empowering them to “take care of themselves and the people around them.”

Her talent for being able to relate her learning experiences at Chez Panisse also helps.

“There’s a beautiful value in being an amateur,” she said.