Celebrating the unfamiliar yet extraordinary produce from California's most iconic market, Berkeley Bowl, this cookbook offers recipes for a panoply of fruits and vegetables that have been largely overlooked or forgotten in popular cuisine.
Registered dietitian Laura McLively, an avid home cook and creator of the popular blog MyBerkeleyBowl, created a recipe for every unfamiliar or "exotic" fruit and vegetable she found at Berkeley Bowl. Here is a collection of her favorite discoveries, and a tribute to the remarkable, 40-year-old family-run market that inspired them.
Shining a spotlight on the versatile and unique qualities of the astonishingly beautiful, plant-based bounty that's available to vegetarians and meat eaters alike, these recipes and photographs will help you embrace hundreds of exciting fruits and vegetables you may never have tasted or thought of cooking, including crunchy sea bean spindles, tubers bigger than a toddler, wiry haired rambutans, and wrinkly skinned Indian bitter melon. Eating more types and colors of plants exposes us to a wider variety of nutrients, antioxidants, and beneficial bacteria.
Berkeley Bowl is a mecca for great chefs, and with the recipes in this cookbook, you'll see why. Even if you don't live near Berkeley Bowl, getting your hands on these ingredients can be a fun and rewarding experience in its own right, and cooking with them will make your meals explode with flavors, textures, and new culinary adventures for all your senses.
Partial list of recipes:
Green Garlic Soup with Lemon Cardamom Yogurt
Sweet & Sour Tofu with Gooseberry
Charred Nopal and Black-eyed Pea Chili
Corn and Chive Stuffed Squash Blossoms
Pepino Melon Poke
Stuffed Indian Eggplant
Morel Pot Pie
Starfruit Almond Torte