Product Description

For more than a decade, Foster’s Markets have been cooking and baking foods made fresh each day from ingredients picked locally at the peak of flavor. Now Sara Foster shares more than two hundred delicious recipes, providing modern takes on favorite home-style classics.

The Foster’s Market Cookbook features old-fashioned ideas about how good food should taste and new-fashioned ideas about prep times and the use of high-quality prepared ingredients. Filled with eighty color photos, this is the perfect cookbook to refer to over and over again for everyday meals or for entertaining, whether it be for two or for twenty.

Before moving to Durham, North Carolina, Sara worked alongside Martha Stewart in the kitchen of Martha’s catering business. When she opened her own catering company, Sara kept her food simple yet soulful, trusting the complex flavors of seasonal ingredients. This same basic principle guides the daily offerings at Foster’s Markets in Durham and Chapel Hill. Each week the markets serve nearly a thousand customers hungrily searching out Sara’s innovative, new-style home cooking. And now food lovers everywhere will be able to prepare with ease sumptuous dishes such as Roasted Chicken, Sweet Potato, and Arugula Salad; Herb-Grilled Salmon with Fresh Tomato-Orange Chutney; and Risotto Cakes with Roasted Tomatoes and Foster’s Arugula Pesto. Also featured are a host of wonderful desserts, such as Lemon Chess Pie with Sour Cherries and Chocolate Espresso Layer Cake with Mocha Latte Frosting.

Featuring mouthwatering favorites from the market and dozens of helpful sidebars that discuss ingredients, techniques, and make-ahead tips, The Foster’s Market Cookbook provides all you need to know to make the most of every season’s finest offerings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #159901 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-30
• Released on: 2002-04-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Amazon.com
Since 1990, Sara Foster has been delighting the patrons of her two North Carolina gourmet takeout food stores with refined yet unpretentious fare that reflects her Southern upbringing and years as a professional cook on the East Coast. The Foster's Market Cookbook, penned with food writer Sarah Belk King, collects dozens of Foster's most popular recipes, beloved for their use of high-quality seasonal ingredients and rich, imaginative flavor combinations. As with Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and myriad tomes by Martha Stewart (for whom Foster worked in the 1980s), Foster's debut provides both advanced and fledgling home cooks with impeccably tasteful dinner-party menu ideas and creative weekday meals.

Starting the book as you might your morning, Foster offers tantalizing breakfast possibilities such as Sticky Orange-Coconut Pinwheels and traditional-with-a-twist brunch dishes such as Mushroom-Risotto Hash with Fried Eggs and Grilled Ham. Next come more than 15 soul-warming soups, stews, and chilies (Corn and Roasted Red Pepper Chowder is just one of many must-make entries); sandwiches and snacks; salads and sides; entrées; and desserts. Main-dish highlights include Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Prosciutto and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (they're so good and so easy to make!), Grilled Eggplant Parmesan with Fresh Mozzarella and Zesty Tomato Sauce, and Pan-Seared Sea Scallops with Tom Thumb Tomatoes and Foster's Pesto (a perfect quick spring meal). The desserts are divine, including chic confections such as Four-Layer Blueberry Gingerbread Cake with Mocha Cream, a collaboration with Durham pastry chef Kathy Edwards, as well as old-fashioned treats like strawberry shortcake and pecan pie (nicely jazzed with bourbon). Throughout, sidebars and tips on techniques give cooks additional opportunity to learn from Foster's fine food sensibility. For connoisseurs of simple yet sophisticated cuisine, The Foster's Market Cookbook truly titillates. --Rebecca Robinson

From Publishers Weekly
In the tradition of the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, Foster has put together favorite recipes featured at her two Foster's Markets (where she prepares and sells seasonal dishes) in Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C. Much of the food is simple and depends on fresh, quality ingredients enhanced by herbs and spices for its success. Starting with a wide selection of muffins and breads, such as the moist Granny Foster's Banana Walnut Bread, the book covers a range of breakfast and brunch dishes before moving on to soups, stews, chilies and the more traditional sandwiches, spreads and snacks of a gourmet market store. The Provencal White Bean Dip is given an unusual twist with sun-dried tomatoes and capers, and the Curried Chicken Salad is paired with whole-grain or pumpernickel bread for a savory combination. The salads, sides and entrees such as the Mediterranean-inflected Sauteed Chicken Breast with Artichokes, Lemons and Capers or the Roast Leg of Lamb Stuffed with Italian White Beans and Spinach show influences from other cultures from Italy to Asia. Old-fashioned desserts like Chocolate Chip Cookies and Chocolate Pound Cake round out the book. Enhanced with photos and scattered sidebar tips, the book is well designed and user-friendly, making it a welcome addition for those who plan their meals with the seasons. (On sale Apr. 23)

From Library Journal
Owner of the popular Foster's Markets in Durham and Chapel Hill, NC, Foster re-creates the recipes that have made her store a destination for shoppers looking for fresh, high-quality prepared foods. Foster, a former member of Martha Stewart's catering team, has appeared several times on the popular show, and Stewart herself offers the book's foreword. (Is this a new twist on celebrity cookbooks, with the author just one degree of separation from the real star?) Foster's recipes feature bold flavors and casual presentation; most are simple, relying on high-quality ingredients instead of complicated techniques for their savor. There are no great surprises here but no real detractions either. Most of the recipes reflect Foster's expertise with New Southern cooking, though plenty feature more exotic ingredients, such as Rack of Lamb with Jalape¤o-Honey Mustard Glaze and Balsamic Reduction. The publisher compares this work to Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, a claim supported by the recipes and promised color photographs of bountiful and beautiful foodstuffs. Smaller libraries will probably require only one of these titles; buy according to demand. Devon Thomas, Hass Assocs., Ann Arbor, MI
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Needs editing!!
I tried the recipe for Roast Pork Tenderloin with Dried Cherries and Rosemary. Step One says to preheat the oven, Step Two to mix up a marinade, and Step Three to marinate the pork tenderloin for two to three hours or overnight. So is the oven supposed to preheat "for two to three hours or overnight"? What a stupid, stupid, STUPID mistake to include in a good-looking, pricey, upscale cookbook. There is no excuse for such carelessness and lack of attention to detail. (To add injury to insult, this expensive recipe wasn't even very good.) I will try a few other recipes in an effort to get my money's worth, but my initial favorable impression of the book has been damaged. Was somebody trying to save a few bucks by not hiring an editor? Hmmm?

Gotta love this book!
I have seen Sara Foster on FoodTV many times and found her recipes to be very easy and delicious. I was excited to find the entire collection in this book. I even found a muffin recipe that I thought didn't exist!! This cookbook is a definite "must have" and would make a great gift.

A dinner-party star
I've never been to one of Sara Foster's restaurants, but if this cookbook is any evidence, they must be worthwhile.

The recipes in this book represent my idea of good southern American cooking---chicken pot pie with mashed-potato crust, black-eyed pea cakes, roasted veggies. Some are simple, others take a bit more time.

What I think is best about this book is how it puts new twists on relatively basic food..that potpie has herbed-mashed potatoes on it, the cakes get interesting ingredients.

Some of the dishes require Foster's Market basics-pesto, chive oil-that must be prepared in advance of the main recipe, but nicely enough..you get a page numer reference to lead you straight there. (As dumb as that sounds, I find SO many cookbooks don't do that....)

The only caveat: read the recipes carefully...some take longer to prepare than you'd think. And don't miss the risotto cakes..delish!