Simple recipes and fresh ingredients

Tamara Murphy’s TENDER: famers, cooks, eaters makes me want to drop what I’m doing and run out to the farmer’s market and snatch up on everything in sight.

Filled with beautiful, yet unpretentious, photographs throughout, I feel like I just invited Tamara into my kitchen, and we’re just having a casual conversation about food. 

More than giving us a book of just recipes, Tamara offers simple, straightforward instructions on how to select produce (including some gems like: Yellow wax beans should have “enough fuzz to cling to one’s shirt”) and simple techniques and tips for preparing vegetables (including more esoteric ones like fava beans, leeks, and jerusalem artichokes).

As with all great cooks, she focuses on simple recipes, emphasizing above all the freshest possible ingredients. I particularly love her directive first to “learn how to cook a given vegetable, fruit, grain, meat, or fish in the simplest and most straightforward way.”

Although at times the recipes are too meat-centric for my taste, ultimately most of the recipes are centered on fruits and vegetables.  She mentions on more than one occasion that “food that grows together goes together,” and I love this simple admonishment to pay attention to the seasons.

It is my hope that TENDER will be an inspiration to others, helping them learn how to choose, prepare, and enjoy more fresh, real food.

                     - Andrew Wilder

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