SEASONAL FOOD
FALL, WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER RECIPES

Review by

Cooking in the Moment - A Year of Seasonal Recipes
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307463890 0307463893

Eating in-season food is easy with Andrea Reusing's spring, summer, fall and winter recipes. Interspersed with seasonal recipes and appetizing photos are her personal stories about eating seasonal food, and the farmers, fishermen and gardeners who produce it.

Cooking winter meals

The 272-page cookbook is organized by season. Andrea Reusing introduces each chapter and seasonal recipe.

In the chapter on winter cooking, she explains how to make homemade dried tangerine peel for her spice cure to flavor roast pork and duck confit. In the introduction to her recipe for whole roasted sweet potatoes with butter, molasses and salt, she explains that freshly dug sweet potatoes are dry and starchy. They lose starch and become sweet after they cure for several weeks, first in a humid cellar, then in a dry basement.

Cooking in the Moment - A Year of Seasonal Recipes also includes ingredient substitutions, e.g., substitute wild striped bass or black cod (sablefish) for black drum fish.

Recipe notes explain unusual ingredients. For example, sansho, made from ground prickly ash tree berries, has the heat of Sichuan peppers, as well as lemon flavors.

John Kernick's food photos depict seasonal foods and dishes made from Cooking in the Moment - A Year of Seasonal Recipes.

Heirloom apple information

In between recipes, Andrea Reusing provides fascinating information about seasonal foods. For example, she discusses heirloom apples in the chapter on fall seasonal foods.

Did you know that China grows two-thirds of the world's apples? Or that, because there are no apple seed banks, the only way to preserve apple varieties is with living trees? Two pages of photos depict heirloom apple species like pinky, blacktwig, shortcore and striped July.

A sources chapter provides websites for North Carolina farmers' markets and online sources for unique ingredients like ume plum vinegar and shishito peppers.

Sample seasonal recipes

Homemade curry powder. Campfire bacon and eggs in a bag. Charcoal grilled asparagus. Crispy pan fried catfish with hot slaw. Crab and garlic fried rice. Pickled sour cherries. Grilled zucchini with mint, chili oil and toasted pine nuts. Eggplant salad with walnuts and garlic. Hot tomato relish. Homemade seven spice powder. Broiled ripe figs with warm ricotta and honey. Pickled pumpkin. Homemade chili oil. Red onion preserves. Hard cider braised pork shoulder. Kale panini. Whole roasted onions. Honey frozen custard with honeycomb candy. Roasted Japanese turnips with honey. Onion braised overnight brisket. Roasted spareribs with crushed fennel and red chiles.

Cooking in the Moment - A Year of Seasonal Recipes by Andrea Reusing

Contents

Introduction
  • Spring
  • Summer
  • Fall
  • Winter
Sources
Index

Author

Andrea Reusing is owner and chef at Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


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