For the library cookbook club we tried our first hybrid meeting. We invited a special virtual guest speaker, Chef Liz Barbour of The Creative Feast to present a Cook the Book program to us from her home in New Hampshire. A small group of us gathered in the library’s auditorium to watch it on the big screen while others zoomed in from home to participate.
We were able to select from a list of Liz’s favorite cookbooks, and chose Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables by Joshua McFadden, which was a cookbook club favorite in the past. New members would be introduced to this beautiful, vegetable-forward cookbook, and the rest of us would have a chance to revisit it.
(Artisan, 2017)
Six Seasons is a big cookbook – a little heavy, even – but that’s because it’s packed with so many recipes and photographs. It’s laid out in sections by season, including shoulder seasons – Spring, Early Summer, Midsummer, Late Summer, Fall, Winter – and alphabetically within the sections by the vegetables that are at their peak in that season. It opens out flat, and is wonderfully readable.
Recognizing a reluctance to do our usual sharing table and buffet line this time, we tried our recipes at home and ate them at home – sharing only by photos and comments/conversation.
I made Spaghetti with Swiss Chard, Pine Nuts, Raisins, and Chiles from the Fall section of the cookbook, because we had Swiss chard growing in our garden – just not quite as much as the recipe called for! It was delicious, even with the ratio of chard to pasta being a little skewed.
The author’s new cookbook, focused on grains instead of vegetables, is just out this month, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!
I hope we can use Grains for Every Season: Rethinking Our Way with Grains as a cookbook club selection next year, once the new-book sheen of it is off and the holds list shorter.
Liz prepared two recipes from Six Seasons completely on screen in her amazing home kitchen. With three camera views we were able to see what she was doing at every point.
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