Summerland

A cookbook that makes each month's harvest a reason to celebrate, in the refined yet relaxed style of the South. For a cook as passionate as Anne Quatrano, food marks the passage of the year. Each month inspires her to think of new ways to use the season's morsels. In this, her first and long-awaited cookbook, Quatrano draws on her twenty-eight years' experience as a chef to pull together more than 100 of her best recipes and entertaining ideas. Peppered throughout are stories of Summerland—the farm that's been in Quatrano's family for five generations and that supplies much of the produce for her restaurants. Summerland also provides the idyllic backdrop for many of the outdoor parties in the book. For a fall lunch, friends gather by an old red barn to enjoy mint juleps, roasted quail, and madeleines. For July Fourth, it's a lakeside barbecue with watermelon sangria, corn on the cob in a jar, and roasted peaches with chamomile ice milk. Christmas is a quiet setting by the fire with truffled broccoli soup, roast with Yorkshire popovers, and stump de Noël. Summerland represents a new spirit of hospitality, based on refined farmhouse cooking and an easygoing sophistication.