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• by:
• Pensiero, Laura

In recent years, the Hudson Valley has become a major center for local foods and agriculture, an East Coast version of the Napa Valley. An extension of that abundance, Laura Pensiero’s bustling restaurant, Gigi Trattoria in Rhinebeck, New York, serves the best food around, and her year-round farmer’s market, Gigi Market in Red Hook, New York, attracts both locals and visitors from New York City.

A celebration of the food and people of the Hudson Valley--from artisans and farmers to local craftsmen--The Gigi Good Food Cookbook shows how seasonal eating is possible even if you live in a true four-season climate. A risotto with striped radishes, peas, garlic chives, and Hudson Valley chevre, for instance, embodies spring, while in summer a risotto with zucchini, tomatoes, and basil rules. There’s a gorgeous 8-page color insert for each season, to help emphasize this approach.

While the cookbook focuses on eating healthfully, it will guide readers to a place where pleasure and health meet with 120 recipes such as:

• Apple Butter Harvest Pork Chops
• Peanut Beer-Battered Chicken Strips with Maple Peanut Sauce
• Baked Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Cauliflower and Peas
• Lasagna for Every Season
• Mr. Mink’s Panzanella Salad with Fresh Herbs
• Strawberry-Stuffed French Toast

Pensiero shows that focusing on fresh, seasonal, cleanly cultivated food puts you on a positive--and lasting--path toward health and happiness. So whether you’re a part of the growing movement that embraces local eating and creating a sustainable lifestyle or just a lover of fine food, this cookbook will help you live the rhythm of the changing seasons and connect to the people you love over a shared meal.