Farm Market Cookbook, The - Hardcover

Not, as the title might suggest, a collection of vegetable recipes, this goes well beyond vegetables and, in fact, well beyond recipes. Downright Aquarian about the ``revolutionary changes'' and ``better and healthier world'' she expects to arise from the recent revival of farmers' markets, Olney celebrates the local markets she has visited across the country and the folks she has met there peddling their fish, fowl, goat cheese, home-baked sweets, and, yes, produce. And so we meet a state-of-the-art astro-organic garlic farmer holding forth at Oakland's annual height-of-summer tasting; a teen-ager at Bateau Landing, in Virginia, who turned down the homecoming prom that cut into market time (``After my grandmother's passing I want to carry on the tradition''); a butcher at Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market (``When you buy a leg of lamb, buy the left one. They scratch with their right and that makes it tougher meat''); and a market detective on pickpocket patrol at N.Y.C.'s Union Square Greenmarket. The recipes, reflecting the variety of products, are heavy on sweet baked goods and include some local items such as wild rice and sugar cane. They can be as down-homey as watermelon pickles but tend to the novel or upscale touch (rhubarb in rose), or, as Olney says of one, the ``witty'' creation. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this "love song to farmers' markets," Olney ( The Joy of Chocolate ) recreates their "life, vitality, health, abundance, grit, prime produce and color" through entertaining interviews and 125 recipes from markets across America. Her grand tour features standard-bearers like Seattle's Pike Place Market and New York City's Union Square Market, as well as lesser-knowns like the Santa Rosa, Calif., Thursday Night Market and Lynchburg, Va.'s Bateau Landing. Recipes are diverse and representative of their regions: old-fashioned shoofly cake from Pennsylvania Dutch country, and "salt" side salmon with egg sauce and boiled new potatoes from the Pacific Northwest. The farmers Olney meets along the way are a varied lot, too--in all aspects, that is, except their tenacity and agricultural wisdom (lessons in why wormy corn is more flavorful and why bees deserve respect are examples). There is little not to like in Olney's America, except that it can be a bit too richly adjectival (e.g., farmers talk about "state-of-the-art and state-of-the-heart" farming). Some readers, too, may feel momentarily restless with yet another cookbook, however good, that celebrates simplicity. Line drawings not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.