The Art of Simple Food II: Recipes, Flavor, and Inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden: A Cookbook Hardcover – October 29, 2013

Growing food for your kitchen is an inspirational experience with this wonderful new book. The author/chef shows what flavorful foods can be easily grown in your garden or on the deck or patio. She then adds recipes for the kitchen. Part II she specifically encourages readers to try growing their own herbs, lettuce, garlic, onions, beans squash, etc. giving them the gardening tips. She shows the art of growing simple food.Part I: Flavor as Inspiration.She follows the seasons and has lovely line illustrations showing the crops: for example different kinds of cabbage, then the recipes. In her tomato section, her favorites were the tired and true tomato varieties: Amish Paste, Golden Jubilee, Brandywine, Juliette, Early Girl, and Sun Gold. The recipes follow each growing suggestion. All the recipes are simple and delicious. She highly recommends growing your own and/or buying locally.Part II: Seed to Seed, Growing the New Kitchen Garden.She starts with soil, preparing the beds, seeds, seedlings, extending the growing season, water, peak harvest, curing and storing, as well as saving seeds.At the back of the book Tools and Resources are listed: Books; Seed and Garden Supply Catalogs (websites included;) Forums and Newsletters; Seed Saving; Urban Foraging and Fruit Exchange; and Cooperative Extension Offices. Glossary and extensive index are included.This is a wonderful new book for the home gardener and cook as well as the professional chef. Growing your own food is encouraged, but buying locally is also suggested as an option. Great addition to your cookbook and gardening library.

I love the SIMPLICITY of these recipes. I had a friend, who is a chef, who loved her first book and shared it with me, so I purchased this second one. He said, and I agree, that he learned from her that keeping things simple often produces really delicious results. You don't need to make things so complicated as some books do. The recipes are new with added drawings and conversations about gardening and the quality of the produce you use. I have yet to read it all and I am savoring all the ones I have tried. Right now looking forward to making her Fermented Pickles and Green Beans! And added delight to the other more normal recipes!

Here's a cookbook that will have you planning your spring garden, even if that means filling pots with mint, basil and chives. Alice Waters' new cookbook had me longing for spring and the chance to plant lettuce and greens by the back door, something that I haven't done in fifteen years but may do next April, thanks to this book. Alice Waters may be a "legendary" cook, but she hasn't lost her enthusiasm for the way fresh food smells and tastes when you pull it from the ground in your own back yard.The Art of Simple Food II is filled with elegant simple ways to use greens and other relatively easy to grow vegetables and fruits. The book follows the seasons starting with the tender greens of early spring through the fruits and nuts of fall, right up to preserving and home canning. While there are some meat, fish and poultry dishes, the emphasis is on vegetables. If you have thought of starting a kitchen garden, or even just growing some rosemary on a windowsill, you will probably enjoy this book.First the sell. This book doesn't pressure you to eat more vegetables, it makes them sound so delicious you find yourself longing for salad or a plate of Sweet and Hot Green Cabbage, Parsley and Anchovy Sauce or Tokyo Turnip Pickles.Next comes the push. Waters would like you to grow your own vegetables . Fortunately, she knows that not everybody is up for a plowing up the backyard. Start small, she advises. Plant herbs, plant some greens. She gives advice on things that confuse most novices such as the soil to use in pots. Then she gets serious and explains composting, plant food. She goes from the very simple to subjects that few home gardeners touch such as cover crops.Personally, I'm on the lazy end of the scale but I have to admit that I know she's right. Lettuce really is a breeze to grow, at least in the Southeast U.S. before the hot weather hits. On the other hand, Waters' cheery optimism when describing growing seasons' outside of California seemed a bit pat to me but maybe I'm not committed enough.This is an interesting book to buy if you want a kitchen garden or even if you don't. I may plant that lettuce next spring, but I'll be glad I have the recipes even when my garden vegetables come from the farmers market.

My mother asks me for a different cookbook every year. Then she never likes what she gets. This year I picked out the cookbook myself.This is perfect for my mother who likes to garden and likes everything about natural food. I'll guess that she has never heard of Alice Waters, even though the two are kindred spirits. (all she'd have to hear is Chez Panisse and she'd decide it was too fancy for her. I browsed through the book and I'm content that my mother will really enjoy this read. It is straight forward. Covering the gardening to the eating aspects of mostly vegetables. Very practical and informative. But it's a nice looking book too. A good gift.