Here’s a list of some books on seasonal cooking as we enter the winter months. Not only is the quality of in-season ingredients better, but they are also cheaper, supports local farms, and are better for the environment. Without good recipes, eating in season could get boring quickly but these books at Caledon Public Library will show you techniques and recipes to transform ingredients into something delicious!
Eating in season is by no means something that you should feel like you must do, it’s also important to make food that makes you happy or something that simply gets in your stomach with minimal effort and dishes. But seasonal cooking can be an opportunity to learn to cook from ingredients instead of strictly using recipes. Experimenting will mean you fail a lot, but failures are great learning opportunities. By not trying new techniques or ingredients you won’t stumble on the occasional idea that turns out to be one of your classic meals.
Eating with the seasons sometimes means buying in bulk, which presents a challenge of how to use everything before it goes bad. Preservation techniques can stop spoilage so you can take advantage of those sales! One of the easiest preservation methods is freezing which can also add contrast to your meals and save you from the one-pot-wonder-week-long-boredom. Modern freezer Meals will show you how to get the most out of your freezer.
Eating in season also means that sometimes you let the ingredients dictate what to make instead of a recipe. This means you have to be more comfortable taking chances. An understanding of flavour and substitutions can give you skills to play around with recipes you love by using them as a template. The Flavor Matrix is one of those books which has a couple pages for every common ingredients with a visual display of what pairs well with it. Additionally, the Flavor Bible is a useful reference for pairing flavours. It would be more accurate to call is the Flavor Dictionary because it is pretty much just an alphabetical index of ingredients with a list of what they pair well with. The electronic copy of this book is especially useful because you can search ingredients by keyword.
Another preservation method is fermentation. The reason fermentation is so useful is because in the fall a cabbage is 99 cents / pound which is incredible value, but using the whole cabbage before it goes bad can be difficult. By fermenting it in something like sauerkraut, you extend its life in time to finish it before it rots with the added benefit of adding some sourness to your meals. You just have to remember to add less salt in the dishes you use it in. Batch is an excellent guide of all kinds of fermentation methods to stock your pantry. The benefits for drying are not only practical it also gives you more flavours to play around with. If you have ever had a dried green bean before, you’ll know that it is radically different from a fresh green bean.
From the author of Six Seasons, Joshua McFadden’s new book is called Grains for Every Season which shows that most people’s pantries could be far more diverse with regards to what grains they have. Buckwheat, millet, and rye are all featured but also different wheat varieties like farro, bulger, and spelt are included. He also covers different techniques like toasting and sprouting to provide even more variety. I would recommend this book for the fantastic “Pilaf for all seasons” fold out chart. Like Six Seasons, this book is organized by seasonal sections.
Acorn by Shira Blustein and Brian Luptak has a few early chapters on preserving technique, but the rest of the book is organized with a chapter for each season. This book is restaurant level cooking including plating instructions for the recipes so it’s not one you would use aside from special occasions, but you can still see how the techniques are working. Peak Season by Deirdre Buryk is more approachable than Acorn where the chapters are broken down to about ten recipes per month. These are just some books from the Caledon Public Library’s cookbook collection, you can search our online catalogue or browse in person to chart your own path through seasonal cooking!
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