When I embarked on my journey of cooking through three cookbooks in 6 weeks, I was looking forward to this one the most. Jodi Liano has done a marvelous job incorporating education with delicious recipes. To add to this, Cooking from the Farmers Market is also a beautiful pictorial representation of seasonal food from the Farmers Market. Most recipes are pretty simple, flavorful, and healthy, but will also impress a wide variety of dinner guests.
The first part of the book lays out what the rest of the book will look like, as well as several pages of very well organized charts indicating when specific fruits and vegetables are in season. I found this particularly helpful, as I am often lost as to when fruits and veggies are at their peak.
After all of the initial information, the book delves into specific foods. Organization wise, it could not have been done better—like foods grouped together in chapters with helpful tips in buying, storing, and cooking. For example, citrus is together, and within the chapter oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and limes are all discussed. Each specific food has 3 recipes to get you started, typically pretty simple, but accentuating the ingredient you are using.
I made many, though not nearly all, of the recipes and want to highlight 4 of my favorites. My favorite vegetable sides were Broccoli with Red Pepper Flakes and Green Beans with Walnuts. Each was incredibly simple and fast, easily made in a few minutes on a weeknight, but a delicious addition to any dinner. For a fancier side or appetizer, try the Tomato Tart. I used store bought puff pastry, making this a pretty simple recipe, yet impressive to anyone who tries it!
Saving the best for last, her berry cobbler recipe was fantastic. I was a little more rustic with the dough, just dropping pieces haphazardly on individual ramekins full of the delicious blackberries. The whole dessert took maybe 20 minutes to prepare, baked while we had dinner, and finished off our dinner marvelously. I can imagine with a little bit of ice cream or fresh whipped cream it can only get better.
Overall, I highly recommend this cookbook, even if just for a better understanding of what is in season and how to pick the best produce. If you leave it out as a coffee table book, I can almost guarantee your guests will pick it up and enjoy looking through the book as much as you will.
I was given a digital copy of this cookbook to review, but was not required to write a positive review. All opinions in this review are mine.
