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Joshua McFadden cooked in New York, including at Franny's in Brooklyn, before leaving the restaurant kitchen to work at Eliot Coleman's Four Season Farm in Maine. He came back with a different idea of what seasonality means and went on to open Ava Gene's in Portland, Oregon.
He divides the growing year into six seasons rather than four. Spring, early summer, midsummer, late summer, autumn and winter. It sounds like a conceit until you realise that summer is the period when everything changes fastest, and that a tomato in July is not the same ingredient as a tomato in September. The recipes follow the actual state of the produce rather than the calendar.
It was McFadden, incidentally, who turned kale salad into restaurant food. Raw, finely shredded kale with lemon, anchovy, chilli and Parmesan came out of his kitchen at Franny's and spread from there around the world.
The food follows that principle throughout. The vegetable at the centre, properly seasoned, with acidity, salt and something that gives it a kick. Nothing is difficult and almost everything requires good produce.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 384
Language: English
First published: 2017
The Kitchen Lab Selection
This is the book chefs give one another. It has never had a television programme or any machinery behind it; it has spread over nearly ten years because people in the trade keep recommending it, and that kind of reputation cannot be bought.
It treats seasonality seriously with an approachable manner. The pantry chapter at the front is ridiculously simple, and extremely useful.
