Cooking with the Seasons

All about : Cooking With The Seasons : A Year In My Kitchen By Monique Jamet Hooker and Tracie Richardson This very personal culinary narrative cookbook is meant to help you learn to prepare meals using fresh, seasonal ingredients grown in your geographical area, whatever your level of expertise in the kitchen. It is also meant to entertain the casual reader with the experiences I shared with nine brothers and sisters while growing up on my family's 17th century chateau farm in France. Over 200 recipes are included in the book, all inspired by the dishes and techniques I grew up with in Europe. At the same time the recipes are uniquely American because they call for a wide range of ingredients easily available to us here in the United States. The recipes are seasonally based month by month to encourage cooks to learn about and use foods grown regionally. A convenient, easy to read harvest chart individually detailing the peak times for fresh produce in five growing regions of the United States is included. Following this chart makes understanding local growing seasons easy, and helps you understand when foods shipped from different parts of the country to their neighborhood market are at their flavorful best. The recipes I've created are beautiful to look at and simple to prepare, using basic cooking techniques. They play on seasonal characteristics of taste, texture and color, and are meant to spark the imagination and encourage your own creativity in the kitchen. Cooking With The Seasons: A Year In My Kitchen is also the story of how families can enjoy the seasonal market by celebrations at the table. Taking that little extra moment to share, whether it's during a large holiday dinner or at a picnic enjoying the best of summer's bounty, is what binds us together. There are many ways of gathering around food. Let me show you how by telling of my childhood in Brittany through stories and recipes that celebrate the best food America has to offer each season. My family's daily life may seem to speak with the voice of another era, but it is only the echo of the joy I continue to find through sharing meals today. By bringing the seasons into the kitchen I know you, too, will soon find your own joy inviting family and friends to the table. à bientôt and Bon Appétit Monique