Customer Reviews

The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market Cookbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Impeccable Produce Plus 130 Seasonal Recipes

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"The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market Cookbook" is filled with fabulous photographs, appetizing recipes and excellent tips about seasonal fruits, vegetables, herbs, meats, cheese, eggs and fish!

Peggy Knickerbocker has done an excellent job at researching seasonal foods and the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market! She is a food and travel writer that has written for Gourmet, Food & Wine, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and Saveur.

Christopher Hirsheimer is a photographer whose work has appeared in Saveur, as well as cookbooks written by Lidia Bastianich, Rick Bayless, Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.

California is a state bursting with flavor. In such a large state, virtually anything can grow there. Kiwifruits, rice, wine, olives, tomatoes, corn, strawberries and much more! The influx of other cultures help infuse their produce and culinary contributions.

Excellent recipes in this book are: Avocado and Grapefruit Salad with Frisee, Fried Zucchini Blossoms, Shaved Raw Asparagus with Lemon Vinaigrette and Roasted Halibut with Braised Artichokes and Potatoes.

This entire book reminds me of my previous life in California where food never tasted fresher. Where ingredients are fresh, recipes are simple, yet the result was sophisticated and intoxicating.

Great book!

This is a spectalarly colorful cookbook with innovative tasty recipes for items found at a Farmer's Market. I use it all the time. Excellent.

The subtitle's "A Comprehensive Guide to Impeccable Produce Plus Seasonal Recipes", but it's oh-so-much more than that. Filled with recipes culled from dozens of cookbooks, plus personal interviews with favorite farmers and purveyors... a must-have for Bay Area residents and a fantastic gift for anyone who loves San Francisco.

This is a great reference for storing and preparing and the treasures that can be purchased from the farmers Markets.

I live in the Bay Area, so I was really excited to buy a book that would help me make the most of the embarrassment of local food riches. This book is OK, but I don't use it often, since the majority of the recipes are for sides, soups, or desserts--none of which I generally prepare from a recipe. Also, lots of the recipes are more time-consuming than I can manage on a regular basis. And, though this book does tell you what to do with your armload of kale, it doesn't even mention most of the AMAZING plethora of "ethnic" ingredients that you can get around here, many of them also locally grown or caught, nor does it have many recipes beyond the European/yuppie wholesome farmers' market palette.

What I do like about the book is that it is divided into seasons, and then organized by key ingredient. For each ingredient, there are tips for selecting and storing. Nice photos throughout. I would just like more actual recipes, especially for main dishes.

Bottom line: you might find a few gems in here, but you have to make a point of using this book and making the time for it if you want to get much mileage from it. As for taking advantage of local produce, I've found that the America's Test Kitchen books and magazines, plus a few great cookbooks (Louise Pickford's "Fast & Fresh," a healthy Indian cookbook, etc.) get me into the farmer's market or produce aisle a lot more often than this one does.

Our family loves recipes from this cookbook. Everyone can find at least one "favorite". The book includes fresh ideas for items that can be found in our local farmer's market as well as a few items that we had to seek out. We use recipes from this book at least once a week. If you are a vegetarian family like us, it is nice to find alternative side dishes. All the recipes are good as is....however, they also lend themselves easily to substitutions.

"The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market Cookbook" was written by folks that frequent the farmer's market at San Francisco's Ferry Building.

It's divided into 4 sections, one section per season. Within each section are recipes using the fruits and veggies that are in season. Most recipes have wonderful color photos - honestly, you get hungry just looking at this book!

Examples of some of the recipes: How about Roasted Halibut with Braised Artichokes and Potatoes? Or Blackberry and Nectarine Crisp? Are you hungry yet?

What a great resource. I had to read this book for work and I now cook from it all the time.