Cookbooks

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

by Christopher Hirsheimer and Peggy Knickerbocker

Chronicle Books, 288 pp., $22.95. (paper)

Simple Soirées: Seasonal Menus for Sensational Dinner Parties

by Peggy Knickerbocker

Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 224 pp., $35

The Farmers' Market at Ferry Plaza in San Francisco is by no means the oldest farmers' market around, but I'd bet money that it's one of the largest in the country. Since its reopening in 2003 at the restored Ferry Building on the San Francisco Bay, this food-centric hot spot has become one of the top three visitor destinations in the city. In a region of world-famous tourist attractions, there are several reasons for that, including the ever-expanding role of local, fresh produce in the public consciousness and how effective the placement of a produce market in a beautiful, historic, commercially vibrant setting can be.

Christopher Hirsheimer (a founder of Saveur magazine and food photographer extraordinaire) and Peggy Knickerbocker (longtime San Francisco-based food writer) have collaborated to create The Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market Cookbook as a handy guide that celebrates local food products of Northern California and provides preparation suggestions and recipes from well-known Bay area chefs and critics. Organized first by season and then by individual product, this little book is an answer to those times when you see a beautiful vegetable at the market but have no idea what to do with it.

Of course, many of the items so lovingly photographed and described (cherries, artichokes, almonds, stinging nettles) will never be seen on a Central Texas farm stand, but a significant number of them will be, and the information about choosing, storing, preparing, freezing, and cooking everything from tomatoes and corn to beets and dandelions certainly apply to our regional produce, too. If you visit the Ferry Plaza Market, this book is a great memento, and if you haven't, it'll inspire you to make the trip. Meanwhile, use this book as a reference when you visit Austin's own terrific farm stands and farmers' markets.

And once you've shopped local markets for seasonal bounty, of course you'll want to share it with friends. Knickerbocker (with lush Hirsheimer photos) to the rescue once more with Simple Soirées, a dinner-party menu cookbook based on seasonal ingredients, unfussy recipes, simple hospitality, and graceful entertaining. Knickerbocker is a well-known hostess, as well as writer, and she shares her philosophy and strategies for planning and executing small, relaxed dinner parties to maximum effect with minimum anxiety and with emphasis on recipes that use local, seasonal ingredients. Again, what is local and seasonal in San Francisco isn't the same as in Austin, but there is plenty of common ground, along with the common sense and common courtesy that help make entertaining rewarding, no matter where you live.