We’ve all done it — gone produce crazy at the farmers market, snapping up the snap peas, perhaps, or scooping up squash in a tizzy of enthusiasm. Then you get it all home, and suddenly, what seemed perfectly reasonable — a bushel of butternut! — is downright daunting. What now?
Ann M. Evans, a co-founder of the Davis Farmers Market, has a secret solution — well, not-so-secret and considerably more than one. She has an entire cookbook of those solutions: “The Davis Farmers Market Cookbook,” with a foreword — a love letter, really, to the farmers market that helped ignite a modern movement — by Alice Waters.
Founded by a small group of farmers, college students and activists in 1975-76, Davis’ farmers market is one of California’s oldest. In the decades since its founding, it’s been given its own city-funded pavilion, won national awards and inspired other cities and towns to follow its locavore lead.
Today, there are more than 700 farmers markets in California alone, wooing shoppers with sweet strawberries, rainbow carrots and seasonal produce of every variety. And for the last decade or so, there has been a “Davis Farmers Market Cookbook” to help turn that fare into delicious dishes.
“I had looked at several other farmers markets, been to Santa Monica, San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza, and the really good ones had great cookbooks,” Evans says. “So I approached my business partner at the time, Georgeanne Brennan, and approached the farmers market to get their permission and their blessing.”
Evans published a second edition in 2016 with new recipes and headnotes, photographs of farming families and a renewed dedication to helping the Davis Farmers Market Alliance’s efforts on food programming in schools. The book’s proceeds all go to that cause, Evans says.
Inside those pages, you’ll find recipes organized by season for everything from shaved zucchini and arugula salad to white bean soup with Meyer lemons, grilled persimmon crostini with goat cheese and summer jams, fall chutneys and homemade ketchup.
And you’ll find eight go-to recipes that Evans says, “I use day in and day out throughout the year when I cook from the market.”
They’re like technique templates for risotto, savory gratins and tarts, Asian and Italian-style pastas, rustic galettes and more, each with a basic recipe and eight or nine seasonal variations. You’re not just getting a sweet rustic tart, you’re getting a pie — or a risotto — for all seasons.
