Gourmet's Fresh: From the Farmers Market to Your Kitchen

`Gourmet's Fresh, From the Farmer's Market to your Kitchen' by the writing and editing staff of `Gourmet' magazine, with an introduction by none other than Ms. Editor in Chief, Ruthie Reichl. On the one hand, I'm strongly tempted to consider this just another volume from a recipe factory which is oriented towards one of the many buzzword driven faves in modern American foodie culture. I maybe have to be just a bit circumspect in thinking of `Gourmet' as doing a me-too act, as this volume was put out in 1999, while the most famous of the `shop locally at farmers' markets' books, Deborah Madison's `Local Flavors' volume came out in 2002. So, I guess `Gourmet' may be setting a trend rather than following it. While I applaud this trend, I can't get too excited about it, as there is much fools gold in the `farmers market' world. As I said in my review of Madison's book, part of my modest reaction to these book is based on the fact that I live within 10 to 40 minutes drive of seven different permanent or semi-permanent `farmer's market' organizations, and I believe but three of those seven sites' produce comes primarily from things grown by the chap behind the table, or a close family member of the chap behind the table. And, it is precisely this direct contact with the farmer that Madison believes is so valuable to the Farmer's Market experience. Even with these seven locations, the only produce from all these sites together which is truly local is the corn, the apples, the strawberries, some peaches, and some of the tomatoes. Almost all the other produce comes from Florida, California, or South America, with some summer stone fruits from the Carolinas and Georgia. So, almost everything Madison (or Ms. Reichl) explains about getting the most out of your Farmer's Market experience is wasted on me. But `Gourmet' has something else going for it which Madison did not. That is, all their recipes in this and almost all their other books are organized by menu and type of occasion. So, If you happen to be the sort of person who does a lot of entertaining, concentrating on acquiring the `Gourmet' volumes is really a very good thing (Sorry, Martha). On top of this, the volume under consideration is also organized by season. So, if you happen to be especially sensitive to buying produce in season, this is among those books which does this well. If you are not big on entertaining, and find yourself doing nothing more than cooking for one or two, this book may be of less value to you; however, I do believe that overall, `Gourmet's books of this sort are actually better than the magazine if what you really want are the recipes, and just the recipes. In spite of Ms. Reichl's generally excellent influence on the magazine, the travel stuff and criticism tend to leave me pretty cold. But they do give good recipes, so here's all the good stuff!