The Farmhouse Chef: Recipes and Stories from My Carolina Farm

In this richly illustrated cookbook, Jamie DeMent opens a bright kitchen window onto the newest kind of North Carolina farming life. On fifty-five acres of beautiful Piedmont farmland in Hillsborough, North Carolina, DeMent and her family raise sustainably nurtured and sought-after heirloom varieties of produce and livestock. Every day on Cook Rock Farm, DeMent is in the kitchen serving robust, flavorful, satisfying meals for family, crew, and farm interns-and now you are invited to share the bounty. The Farmhouse Chef offers 150 recipes for every occasion, from down home to downright elegant, inspired by the farm’s yield through the four seasons.

From fall’s Sage- and Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash to Pear and Bacon Salad, to summer’s Sugarcane Barbecue Chicken and Watermelon Mojitos, DeMent’s cooking style highlights no-nonsense approaches using great ingredients combined with easy preparations for supercharged flavor. Accompanying the recipes are DeMent’s deliciously observant stories that illuminate what life is really like on a working farm. A native North Carolinian who decided to commit her energies to the development of sustainable farming in her state, DeMent will inspire those of us who may not have a lot of time to cook, let alone farm, but who care about seasonal, healthfully grown food.