Abra Berens

Blueberry Spelt Muffins
Blueberry Spelt Muffins

Blueberry Spelt Muffins excerpted from Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit by Abra Berens. Photography by EE Berger.

Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit Hardcover by Abra Berens

Pulp is a hardworking book of recipes that focuses on all the ways fruit can enhance simple, delicious mains—for example, by elevating roasted vegetables, garnishing soup, or adding perfume to a roasted pork or brisket. Unlike Ruffage and Grist, Pulp is about regularly incorporating fruit to add variety and seasonality to main dishes.

Home cooks and bakers alike will rejoice in the alternately sweet and savoury recipes such as Roast Chicken over Blueberries, Cornbread + Lemon; Melon, Cucumber + Chickpea Salad; and Rum-Plum Clafoutis. The book also features helpful reference material, a Baker’s Toolkit, and more than 100 atmospheric photos, delivered with the can-do attitude and accessibility of the Midwestern United States. This next generous offering from beloved, trusted author Abra Berens is a necessary addition to any kitchen shelf alongside its predecessors and other mainstays like Plenty, Six Seasons, and Small Victories. (more…)

Stewed Freekeh + Chicken with Asparagus + Lemon Oil
Stewed Freekeh + Chicken with Asparagus + Lemon Oil

Stewed Freekeh + Chicken with Asparagus + Lemon Oil, Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes by Abra Berens. Photography by EE Berger.

Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes

Make grains the easiest, healthiest, and most exciting stars on your table.

Grist is the only grain and legume cookbook you need. Abra Berens, a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Chef: Great Lakes and the author of Ruffage, shares more than 300 recipes and variations, plus substantial reference information to help you discover the next great grain.

Grist includes more than 125 recipes for 29 different types of grains, legumes, and seeds that, in combination with vegetables and lean proteins, are the stars of the healthiest, most variable, and most satisfying meals—many of them gluten-free.

New and seasoned home cooks will want to reference this guide to start building a repertoire of approachable, big-on-flavour recipes. Home cooks will be attracted to the reference quality of the book, its beauty (more than 100 photos and 30 illustrations) and heft (125 recipes + 300 variations = 448 pages), as well as the great writing, relatable voice, author authority, unique recipe style, extensive variations, and gorgeous photography and illustrations. (more…)

Tomato panzanella with corn, cucumbers, and herb salad

Tomato PanzanellaPhotography by EE Berger

Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables is not your typical cookbook—it is a how-to-cookbook of a variety of vegetables. Author Abra Berens—chef, farmer, Midwesterner—shares a collection of techniques that result in new flavours, textures, and ways to enjoy all the vegetables you want to eat. From confit to caramelized and everything in between—braised, blistered, roasted and raw—the cooking methods covered here make this cookbook a go-to reference.

Spanning 29 types of vegetables—from asparagus to zucchini—each chapter opens with an homage to the ingredients and variations on how to prepare them. Over 140 photographs show off not only the finished dishes, but also the vegetables and farms behind them.

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