When I hear about a cook book or gardening book, I feed the title into my local library search page and reserve the book. Last week, I had three books that all came in on the same day. They were, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte, In The Green Kitchen by Alice Waters, and Edible A Celebration of Local Foods by Tracey Rider and Carole Topalian Interestingly there was a showing of the movie Fresh on the same day the books came in and I meet my gardening girl friends at the library.
Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening is a great little book that every back yard gardener needs to check out. Because of space constraints, I need to know what plants go better than others. A lot of the information was stuff that I already knew, but there was some new information. Like Spinach and Strawberries grow well together. Which I find interesting since I've seen on a lot of menus spring salads with spinach and strawberries. Could there be a possibility that flavor profiles can follow what is in season at the time.
Alice Water did a very nice, well explained cook book. It's a collection of lots of different chefs, farmers, writers' recipes and how to cook them. I had heard about the Thomas Keller Roast Chicken which is included in In The Green Kitchen and is just a good basic recipe. However I like to keep the wishbones and pull them out after roasting the bird. Call it morbid, but I have a collect of wishbones hanging in my kitchen.
Edible is a guide book to good local food providers with beautiful pictures. The recipes listed in the book were good. There is a nice mention of the Chicago Green Market. Even though this is a newer book, there are so many more providers which I think could be mentioned.
My local library sent me a nice email reminder to get In The Green Kitchen and Edible back since they are newer books. Check out books at your local library. If you want to buy the book, after checking them out, hit your local book store.