by Editors & Contributors of Fine Cooking
The Taunton Press, $22.95, 316 pages
Fine Cooking in Season lists seasonal fruits and vegetables in five sections: spring, early summer, late summer, fall and winter. A total of 85 most commonly available fruits and vegetables appear in these sections with helpful paragraphs on how to buy, keep fresh and prepare and, when appropriate, preserve. With each item there is at least one, in some cases several good, well-tested recipes by Fine Cooking’s staff. In addition there is a brief Other Recipe Ideas to choose from. The recipes are good and contemporary though not recipes that you won’t find in most good cookbooks on vegetables and fruits. Most ingredients used are readily available, but some are not so, and the recipe may or may not give you an alternative. The book is beautifully laid out with many color illustrations. The layout could be improved by not placing a recipe on a subsequent page to avoid turning the page with sticky fingers. But most recipes are on a single page. The book ends with a very useful and well-illustrated 16 pages called Prepping Produce.
This is a good cookbook for the cook having no other vegetable/fruit reference book. The index is brief and rather incomplete.