Issues > March/April 2007 (#119) > Earth Day Reading

Earth Day Reading

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How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table by Russ Parsons (Houghton Mifflin, 2007, $27). To purchase this book, visit our online book store.

When he wrote that April is the cruelest month, I can't help but wonder if T.S. Eliot was into cooking. It's about this time of year that, despite my inclination for eating seasonally and locally, my favorite farmer's market begins to bore me. After months of eating potatoes and parsnips, carrots and apples, my enthusiasm for cooking ebbs like a low tide, and I abandon it in silent protest over the lack of color and variety in my produce bin. Most nights in April, I find myself in line at the Chinese take-out down the street, carrying out sacks of artery-clogging sweet-and-sour chicken or over-sauced noodles and berating myself for indirectly funneling profits into the Styrofoam-container industry.

For that very reason, I was happily plucked from the Chinese take-out line and plopped back into my kitchen after reading How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table by Russ Parsons. Full of creative recipes from a laundry list of notable chefs (Parsons himself is an career food writer and a columnist at the Los Angeles Times), the book had me back in the markets—in April!—seeking out those same crops that had me so bored and whipping up new dishes like roasted beet and orange salad with goat cheese and walnuts and turnip and potato gratin.

Surging interest in locally grown foods has led to a coinciding surge in literature on farm-fresh produce, so a book like Parsons could easily get lost in the shuffle. But How to Pick a Peach is thoughtfully organized and carefully researched, with each chapter focusing on an individual crop or group of crops and detailing its (or their) social and historical background. Particularly helpful for the amateur and professional alike are the chapter conclusions that explain how to choose, store and prepare produce and offer "One Simple Dish" that impatient, bored cooks like myself can tackle with ease. Chapters also contain a subsection on where the featured crop is grown, which segues nicely into regional recipes from across the country, perhaps the book's most appealing feature. With all the focus on local foods, it's easy to forget that they aren't restricted to local recipes. Parson's recipe for Southern Comfort Soup, one of my favorites, tasted just as good with collard greens hailing from upstate New York as it would have with greens from Georgia, where, he informs us, most collards in American grocery stores are grown.

We don't all have to buy into Eliot's lament. Take a page from Parson's book and inject a little creativity into the cruelest culinary month of your locale. You might just find a way to re-use all those take-out bags.

—Emily Main

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