Cooking with the Seasons
A French Winter

"In the fall we often think of using cabbage or late spinach as the basis of a soup and forget the other greens during this time. Endive is here, along with turnips and mustard greens...I have developed this recipe [Carmalized Pear and Endive Soup] with those throwaways in mind." – Monique Jamet Hooker, from Cooking with the Seasons










Now at its 20th anniversary, Cooking with the Seasons, published in 1997, is what we could estimate as a generally under the radar classic in seasonal, farm to table cooking. Although cookbooks shelves now abound with wonderful and earthy compilations celebrating ideas of natural ingredients, all the way down to the current trend of foraging, fresh farm markets, and certainly slow food, it is very compelling to read of the authentic beginnings of Hooker who grew up on a 'seventeenth century chateau-farm in France. Our daily life and many celebrations may seem to speak with the voice of another era, but it is only the echo of joy I continue to find a table with my family and friends." Monique's masterpiece, then, is a personalized testament to not only local, familial and farm fresh recipes, but they are traditionally French made American. "They are inspired by the dishes and techniques I grew up with in Europe, but they are uniquely American because I've adapted the recipes

to the range and ingredients available to us here." The cookbook not only moves through the seasons, each month including a sort of homage to her homeland, but to the great matriarch of the family, maman, who dedicated her life to cultivation of the farm table. Pictures of family going back to her father's father are scattered throughout the recipes as well as black and white photos of her home and chateaux grounds, creating a kind of winding path of vision from her current table, to yours, the reader, down through the ages into Brittany, France last century.  If there is one thing that is missing in the surplus of farm fresh cookbooks today, it is that they virtually all lack culinary history. The contemporary cookbook showcases new, and very often, vital new workings of old cooking concepts, but rarely are those adaptations recognized fully in terms of their roots. Some make mention of significant others, many do indeed acknowledge to some degree the mother cook of the household, but it is the rare assemblage that steeps us in the nostalgia – interestingly, the very seed beginnings to often read modern cookbooks.