Farmers Market Meals

Two Dishes to Try. Alice Waters, founder and chef of Berkeley’s famed Chez Panisse restaurant, where she pioneered “California Cuisine,” has dedicated herself to simple cooking style—Mediterranean in spirit—that shows off the best local produce and meats. The Chard Frittata recipe from Waters’s The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution (Clarkson Potter 2007), is an ideal everyday way to make the most of the sometimes surprising greens you'll find at your farmers' market. Presented in her easy-to-follow style, the recipe looks as simple to follow as it is to make.

Deborah Madison, who cooked at Chez Panisse early in her career, remained veggie-centric and turned into a food superstar for her own pioneering vegetarian restaurant, Greens, and award-winning cookbooks. The Zephyr Zucchini with Opal Basil, Pine Nuts, and Parmigiano-Reggiano recipe from her Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets (Broadway, 2002) shows how simple cooking with market produce can be. A drizzle of oil, a sprinkle of this, and a palm-full of that, does an easy makeover on quickly cooked summer squash.