The Eight Cookbooks We Actually Cook From

We're starting with what's in season.

There's a moment every week, right after your Rootstock box lands on the counter, when you have to decide what's for dinner. Here's our bookshelf — books to cook from on a weeknight, and to flip through on a slow weekend morning when you're deciding what to order for the week ahead.

Eight titles, mostly California, all farm-to-table, all built around the same idea we are: start with what's in season. Approachable, simple, and happy to let the ingredients do the talking.

The Art of Simple Food 

Alice Waters

We're starting at the source. Waters and Chez Panisse are much of the reason "farm to table" is a phrase anyone uses, and this is the book that teaches the philosophy underneath it: taste as you go, season with care, trust good ingredients to do the work. Less a collection of showstoppers than a cook's education.

Our favorite recipe: Cranberry Bean Gratin

Six Seasons 

Joshua McFadden

The only book we unanimously put on the list. McFadden splits the year into six seasons instead of four — spring, early summer, midsummer, late summer, fall, winter — which sounds fussy until you notice it's how produce actually behaves. Relentlessly vegetable-forward without ever being precious about it, and the book we cook from most. McFadden’s Grains for Every Season and Six Seasons of Pasta are also excellent.

Our favorite recipe: Roasted Cabbage with Walnuts, Parmigiano, and Saba

The Vegetable Butcher 

Cara Mangini

This is a reference, not a Saturday project. Mangini, who was the first vegetable butcher at Eataly, goes vegetable by vegetable — more than fifty of them — teaching you how to break down, prep, and cook each thing that turns up in a share. It lives open on the counter, not up on the shelf. The pick for anyone who opens the box, finds a vegetable staring back, and has no idea where to begin.

Our favorite recipe: Fall Farmers’ Market Tacos

Vegetable Kingdom 

Bryant Terry · picked by Chef Terry Braggs

Bryant Terry cooks with real soul and real technique (and yes, our Terry endorses the name as well as the book). The book makes the case for eating more vegetables without ever nagging you into it — fully vegan, organized by ingredient, so you can walk in holding whatever the box gave you. Rooted in the cooking of the African diaspora, gorgeously photographed, and every recipe comes with a song to play while you make it.

Our favorite recipe: Oven-Roasted Carrots with Carrot Top-Walnut Pesto

Plum Gorgeous 

Romney Steele

Steele is the granddaughter of the family who built Nepenthe, perched above the water in Big Sur, and the book carries that same light. It's built entirely around fruit and the orchard, moving from citrus through berries and stone fruit into the windfall of autumn — which makes right now a good time to be in the back half of it. Jammy, sun-warmed, and a little romantic about the whole business of fruit, in the best possible way.

Our favorite recipe: Persimmon and Chanterelle Tartines

Coastal 

Scott Clark

From the chef behind Dad's Luncheonette, the converted rail car parked in Half Moon Bay. Clark's book runs the coast from there down to Ventura County, and it brings the ocean into a lineup that's otherwise all soil and orchard. Cook from it when you want the coast on the plate, whether that's what came off the boat or what grows in the fog just behind the beach.

Our favorite recipe: Fig, Feta, and Radicchio Hand Salad

Tanya Holland's California Soul and Brown Sugar Kitchen 

Tanya Holland · picked by Chef Terry Braggs

Two books from the chef behind Brown Sugar Kitchen, the West Oakland restaurant that spent nearly fifteen years as an institution. Holland cooks where African American tradition meets California produce — cornmeal waffles and buttermilk fried chicken in one book, a season-by-season tour of the state's Great Migration cooking in the other. About as on-theme as a list like ours gets. Cook from either when you want dinner with a story behind it.

Our favorite recipe: Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Want to support local? All eight cookbooks are worth buying in person. Try Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco, Fireside Books & More in Redwood City, Kepler's in Menlo Park, or any Books Inc.

Are we missing any of your favorites? Email hello@rootstock.earth to let us know your favorite books and favorite seasonal recipes.