most often pass by without partaking?
It is the bounty of delicious fresh foods that are available throughout the
state all summer long.
I have been spoiled by the year-round availability and wide selection of
fruits and vegetables at our grocery stores. So I sometimes forget how much
better foods are when they are fresh from the field, tree, or vine.
Then somebody shares a fresh-picked ripe strawberry or peach or tomato.
And I remember joyously the pleasures of in-season eating.
This year I have help. It comes from four new books from food experts who
celebrate the value of farm fresh eating. Each author takes a little bit
different approach to getting the food from farm to table.
James Beard award winning chef Andrea Reusing organizes her recipes and
advice by seasons of the year. Sara Foster catalogues her favorite recipes
and stories by types of dishes, from hors d'oeuvres to sweets. Watauga
County native Sheri Castle puts her collection of recipes in separate
chapters for about 40 vegetables and fruits. They are in A to Z order from
apples to zucchini. Finally, travel writer Diane Daniel organizes by
geographical location the farms, markets, restaurants and other places where
we can find and buy in-season fresh vegetables and fruit.
We will take up the Reusing's and Foster's books in this column and follow
up next week with a discussion of those by Castle and Daniel.
Andrea Reusing owns of the acclaimed Chapel Hill restaurant Lantern, one of
the former Gourmet Magazine's top fifty restaurants. Her "Cooking In The
Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes" takes its readers through every season,
showing how to shop for and prepare the variety of local foods that are
available in North Carolina during different times of the year. Reusing's
restaurant is known for its complex Asian inspired flavors. There is some of
that influence in the recipes in her book.
But, for the most part, the foods and the directions are simple and designed
to take advantage of what is fresh and available. I loved her great advice
about my favorite food, the tomato: "The secret to eating great tomatoes all
summer long lies not in which variety., but in watching them-making space
for them to lie flat someplace cool near the kitchen, checking them daily,
eating the ones that need eating and continuously making plans for the ones
that are getting there. Even tomatoes that are picked ripe need a little
time out at room temperature to reach their peak flavor. It is shocking how
long it can take even a just slightly firm tomato to get there . and how
fast a perfect one rots."
Many folks in the Research Triangle area know Sara Foster for the wonderful
food and fellowship at Foster's Market in Durham and Chapel Hill. Fans
throughout the country admire her as a communicator about southern foods,
wonderful teacher, and author of lovely and understandable cooking books.
She grew up in Tennessee in the country surrounded by family and other rural
and small town characters and family. Her recipes reflect southern cooking
traditions familiar to North Carolinians.
Foster also worked for and with Martha Stewart. The elegant photography to
illustrate the recipes, the photos and stories about old time home cooking
restaurants throughout the South, and the overall presentation of the book
show that Foster knows how to produce a product Martha Stewart-style. As a
result, when you have finished looking through her book, you will want to
stand up and give an ovation for the production.
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