In Season, Cooking with Vegetables and Fruits by Sarah Raven

Warning! This book will make you want to grow a garden, shop at farmer's markets, and cook.

This beautiful book couldn't come out at a better time. With both home and restaurant chef's growing awareness of the benefits of eating locally grown food, and therefore seasonally, this book offers a plan for how to best use the harvest at its peak. Author and gardener Sarah Raven gives personality to the ingredients covered in this cookbook. Take, for example, the following description: "Pumpkins and winter squashes are fantastically buttocky and boxomy, and generous of form. Their sheer pregnancy makes you want to gather them up like a flock of expectant mothers." Doesn't that make you want to find the nearest pumpkin patch?

The book is divided into six chapters, each covering two months of the year. Within these chapters, there are subchapters dedicated to the prominent ingredients of the season. For example, in the March/April chapter you'll find the following produce with accompanying descriptions, photos and recipes: Cauliflower; Purple sprouting broccoli, calabrese, and spring greens; Rhubarb; Spinach; Spring herbs; Watercress and wild garlic. Naturally, the most fruits and vegetables fall in the summer months. Because of the overwhelming abundance during this time period, Raven gives plenty of recipes for pickling, canning, and making preserves.

You'll find that many of the recipes are a bit unusual, such as Zucchini and ginger jam, which Raven describes as an Edwardian recipe. But this makes the book all the more interesting. You'll find many creative ways to use up your own harvest or your finds at the farmstand, while never growing tired of seasonal abundance.