My Favorite Ingredients

At London s acclaimed Petersham Nurseries Cafe, head chef Skye Gyngell creates dishes that follow the ebb and flow of nature. The restaurant composes its menus daily, after the fresh fruits and vegetables arrive and the kitchen staff chooses the most tempting of the bunch. This produce-driven ethos is the basis for My Favorite Ingredients, which highlights sixteen of Skye s most-loved foods. Each chapter stars one delicious ingredient--from asparagus to fish to cheese to honey--and offers diverse recipes based on a wide range of natural pairings, such as Crab Cakes with Corn Puree and Chili Oil, Goat Cheese Souffle with Lemon Thyme, and Chicken with Figs and Honey. In this very personal collection of more than one hundred recipes, Skye shares her simple ways of combining foods to coax out their purest flavors. These dishes draw on Skye s long-standing relationships with local suppliers and farmers (the restaurant works with forty-seven different providers) to highlight unusual varieties of familiar staples like tomatoes, leafy greens, and vinegar that are well worth discovering. This charming cookbook showcases the beauty and bounty that we find in nature--and helps us incorporate a bit of that natural abundance in our own kitchens.