The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by the Extraordinary Produce of California’s Most Iconic Market

Celebrating the unfamiliar yet extraordinary produce from California’s most iconic market, Berkeley Bowl, this cookbook offers recipes for a panoply of fruits and vegetables that have been largely overlooked or forgotten in popular cuisine.

Registered dietician Laura McLively, an avid home cook and creator of the popular blog MyBerkeleyBowl, created a recipe for every unfamiliar or exotic fruit and vegetable she found at Berkeley Bowl. Here is a collection of her favorite discoveries, and a tribute to the remarkable, 40-year-old family-run market that inspired them.

Shining a spotlight on the versatile and unique qualities of the astonishingly beautiful, plant-based bounty that’s available to vegetarians and meat eaters alike, these recipes and photographs will help you embrace hundreds of exciting fruits and vegetables you may never have tasted or thought of cooking, including crunchy sea bean spindles, tubers bigger than a toddler, wiry haired rambutans, and wrinkly skinned Indian bitter melon. Eating more types and colors of plants exposes us to a wider variety of nutrients, antioxidants, and beneficial bacteria.

Berkeley Bowl is a mecca for great chefs, and with the recipes in this cookbook, you’ll see why. Even if you don’t live near Berkeley Bowl, getting your hands on these ingredients can be a fun and rewarding experience in its own right, and cooking with them will make your meals explode with flavors, textures, and new culinary adventures for all your senses.

Partial list of recipes-

Green Garlic Soup with Lemon Cardamom Yogurt

Sweet & Sour Tofu with Gooseberry

Charred Nopal and Black-eyed Pea Chili

Corn and Chive Stuffed Squash Blossoms

Pepino Melon Poke

Stuffed Indian Eggplant

Morel Pot Pie

Starfruit Almond Torte