We've had various CSA members ask for recommendations of cookbooks that focus on cooking in season. Here are a few titles to get you started.
Most of these books are available at your local library, Wordsworth Books, or the Working Centre's reading library (back of 43 Queen cafe). Note: Book reviews are taken from Acres USA website.
1) Simply in Season - by Mary Beth Lind & Cathleen Hockman-Wert (available at Ten Thousand Villages)
From the creators of "More-With-Less" and "Extending the Table" comes a new World Community Cookbook that provides recipes and reasons to eat seasonal foods grown locally. Eating in season is a great way to improve your health, support local farmers and help the environment. This is a great cookbook organized by seasons and emphasizes recipes that use ingredients of that season.
2) The 100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating - by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon.
This book describes one couples' journey of eating only food grown within a 100 mile radius of their home for an entire year. It is both thought provoking and entertaining.
3)The Sustainable Kitchen - by Stu Stein
Designed for people who want to make food choices that promote the economic, environmental and social health of their communities, this book gives seasonal cuisine new flair using recipes adapted for exciting home cooking!
The Sustainable Kitchen focuses strongly on ingredients, offering a chef's insights into how and why to combine several together into a sauce, soup or ragoût for optimum flavor. The sumptuous recipes are offered as guidelines -- the basis for inspiration, but not as absolutes, to allow for local market variations and a dash of spontaneity. Additional sections cover the basic tastes, tips for pairing food and wine, preserving the harvest, and "Notes to the Cook" -- collecting useful recipes for basic vinaigrette, vegetable stock, crème fraîche, pasta dough, and much more.
4) Mrs. Restino's Country Kitchen - by Susan Restino
Practical and pleasantly chatty, Susan Restino's cookbook started out as cooking notes from her family's transition away from using mass-market consumer goods. It quickly became an ever-evolving, ever-expanding compendium of the kitchen wisdom that comes with the experience of growing and producing your own food. As she learned about canning, freezing and drying, built a root cellar and got a wood stove, made cheese from goat's milk, and discovered organic gardening and nutrition, her book grew and changed. "A recipe is a static thing, only a suggestion," she says. "Food is alive. It grows and changes, like a child, like a piece of land." Restino covers all of these topics and more, presenting hundreds of recipes, illustrated with hundreds of line drawings.
5) Local Flavors - Cooking & Eating from America's Farmers Markets - by Deborah Madison
"Many people still think that the farmers' market is the place you go to for cheap food," says Madison. More to the point, farmer's markets are a source for "truly local and therefore truly seasonal [food], quite likely raised by sound sustainable methods and by someone who might become your friend." It's a message most readers will embrace.
6) Fresh from the Farmers Market – Year-Round Recipes for the Pick of the Crop – by Janet Fletcher & Alice Waters
If you took the summer off from cooking, you're probably ready now to return to the kitchen and stir up some great dishes from the bounty you find at your local farmers' market. This book will certainly get you cooking after first seeking out the best of the fall crop and yes, there are recipes for the other seasons, as well. The author, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and at Chez Panisse restaurant, convinces anyone who values quality and freshness to shop at farmers' markets; guides you in selection and storage of vegetables and fruits; then provides a wealth of recipes for every season. How about Yellow Split Pea Soup with Autumn Squash and Kale? Or Sweet Potato and Chestnut Soup? Or Pear Sorbet with Pear Eau-de-Vie?
Did you know that really fresh green beans will stick to your clothes? Or that perfect artichokes squeak when they're squeezed? You'll find plenty of other expert tips on selecting and storing field-fresh produce in Janet Fletcher's Fresh From the Farmer's Market. Included also are dozens of simple yet intriguing recipes like Braised Red Cabbage and Pears and Warm Apricot Tart. Sensuously photographed by Victoria Pearson, and organized by the season, this lovely book will delight all gardeners and cooks.
7) The Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food - by Janet Chadwick
With this indispensable guide readers will discover the fastest, easiest way to stockpile and preserve the season's best fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Included are step-by-step instructions for storing today's most popular produce quickly and easily. Food-by-food suggestions for the best preservation methods (including microwave) save the reader lots of time.
The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food includes:
* Step-by-step instructions and how-to illustrations for preserving today's most popular fruits and vegetables quickly and easily
* Quick tips and shortcuts for saving time while canning
* Instructions for alternative preserving methods including freezer bags, easy-to-make ice packs, and root cellaring
* Practical charts for determining yield and blanching time
* A review of equipment and appliances essential to fast home preservation
* Recipes for harvest dinners, salsas, herbal vinegars, pestos, jellies, and teas
Plus, you get simple explanations and solutions for the most common "what-went-wrong" questions. A must-have guide for today's busy cook and gardener.
8) The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest: 150 Recipes for Freezing, Canning, Drying and Pickling Fruits and Vegetables
Remember how grandmother's cellar shelves were packed with jars of tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes, pickled beets and cauliflower, and pickles both sweet and dill? Learn how to save a summer day - in batches - from the classic primer, now updated and rejacketed. Use the latest inexpensive, timesaving techniques for drying, freezing, canning, and pickling. Anyone can capture the delicate flavors of fresh foods for year-round enjoyment and create a well-stocked pantry of fruits, vegetables, herbs, meats, flavored vinegars, and seasonings.
The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest introduces the basic technique for all preserving methods, with step-by-step illustration, informative charts and tips throughout, and more than 150 recipes for the new or experienced home preserver. Among the step-by-step tested recipes: Green Chile Salsa, Tomato Leather, Spiced Pear Butter, Eggplant Caviar, Blueberry Marmalade, Yellow Tomato Jam, Cranberry-Lime Curd, Preserved Lemons, Chicken Liver Pate, and more.
9) Slow Food Nation - Why our Food Should be Good, Clean and Fair – by Carlo Petrini
By now most of us are aware of the threats looming in the food world. The best-selling Fast Food Nation and other recent books have alerted us to such dangers as genetically modified organisms, food-borne diseases, and industrial farming. Now it is time for answers, and Slow Food Nation steps up to the challenge. Here the charismatic leader of the Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini, outlines many different routes by which we may take back control of our food. The three central principles of the Slow Food plan are these: food must be sustainably produced in ways that are sensitive to the environment, those who produce the food must be fairly treated, and the food must be healthful and delicious. In his travels around the world as ambassador for Slow Food, Petrini has witnessed firsthand the many ways that native peoples are feeding themselves without making use of the harmful methods of the industrial complex. He relates the wisdom to be gleaned from local cultures in such varied places as Mongolia, Chiapas, Sri Lanka, and Puglia. Amidst our crisis, it is critical that Americans look for insight from other cultures around the world and begin to build a new and better way of eating in our communities here.
