Seasonal Fruit Desserts: From Orchard, Farm, and Market »

   Deborah Madison, founding chef of Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, is the award-winning author of nine cookbooks, including, The Greens Cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and her latest, Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen. She has received the M.F.K. Fisher Mid-Career Award, the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award, and three James Beard awards.
   In addition to writing on food and farming for such magazines as Gourmet, Saveur, Orion, and the blog Culinate.com, she has long been active in Slow Food and other groups involved in local food issues. She was a manager of her local farmers' market in Santa Fe and served as a board member of the same market for twelve years. Although she now grows a few fruits and vegetables at her home in Galisteo, New Mexico, she is still an avid farmers' market shopper and never goes anywhere without bringing home a big bag of the local bounty.

Deborah Madison, author of the bestselling Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, has enlightened millions of Americans about the joys of vegetarian cuisine. Now, after six books for the savory palate, she's finally introducing us to her spectacular fruit desserts—more than 175 easy recipes that are as delicious as they are healthful.
 
Have you ever bitten into a ripe, fragrant strawberry? Or a luscious peach, its juice dripping down your chin? Or a pear that explodes with flavor? Sometimes fruit, all by itself, just seems like the perfect end to a meal. Now, In Seasonal Fruit Desserts: From Orchard, Farm, and Market, Deborah Madison manages to improve on perfection, turning all of your favorite seasonal fruits into a cornucopia of decadent tarts, pies, puddings, and cakes.
 
Most of us find it difficult to incorporate enough fruit into our diets but with more than 175 recipes in this book, you'll find plenty of new, healthy and totally pleasurable ideas. Dessert doesn't need to be a complicated and time-consuming task after you have prepared a whole meal. These simple and flavorful recipes are easy to master and will delight your family and guests.
 
As an expert on local produce, Madison shows us the best fruit pairings for any season and where to find them all over the country. Did you know that the season for mangoes and strawberries overlap in Southern California making them a natural pair? Or that between November and April, there are plenty of citrus varieties—like Dancy mandarins, Fairchilds, Clementines, or honey tangerines—that find their way to shelves and markets? With recipes like Wild Blueberry Tart in a Brown Sugar Crust, Strawberries in Red Wine Syrup, Winter Squash Cake with Dates, Hazelnut-Stuffed Peaches and Apricot Fold-Over Pie, and even simple and beautiful combinations of fruits with the right cheeses, you will be introduced to many varieties of fruit from the exotic to the heirloom and dessert will be your new favorite meal of the day.

Publishers Weekly

Madison (Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) reinvigorates the possibilities of dessert by putting fruit center stage in this mouth-watering collection of recipes: apple crisp with cinnamon cream; berry and peach cobbler; nectarine and plum upside-down cake; and cherry tart with crushed amaretti. But it also ventures off the beaten path. The wild rice pudding with maple syrup and wine-soaked cherries is a marvelous twist on traditional dessert puddings, as is the sweet potato–coconut pudding. The various sauces and creams (sabayon, frangipane, raspberry coulis with muscat wine) are easy to make. Some of the most elegant recipes in the book are simple plates; they combine fruits with nuts and sauces (for example, figs with mascarpone and pine nuts); or pair fruits with cheeses (Teleme with dried fruit compote). Lovely sidebars and inserts offer a wonderful amount of information on fruit, fruit varieties, and cooking and baking with fruit to further enhance this book. Madison has a lovely writing style—clear, entertaining, and knowledgeable—and with her commentary it's as if she's in your kitchen discussing every recipe. (Jan.)