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Root to Leaf: A Southern Chef Cooks Through the Seasons
Finalist for the 2016 IACP Julia Child First BookEat More Vegetables.Chef of the award-winning Atlanta restaurant Miller Union, Steven Satterfield—dubbed the “Vegetable Shaman” by the New York Times’ Sam Sifton—has enchanted diners with his vegetable dishes, capturing the essence of fresh produce through a simple, elegant cooking style. Like his contemporaries April Bloomfield and Fergus Henderson, who use the whole animal from nose to tail in their dishes, Satterfield believes in making the most out of the edible parts of the plant, from root to leaf. Satterfield embodies an authentic approach to farmstead-inspired cooking, incorporating seasonal fresh produce into everyday cuisine. His trademark is simple food and in his creative hands he continually updates the region’s legendary dishes—easy yet sublime fare that can be made in the home kitchen.Root to Leaf is not a vegetarian cookbook, it’s a cookbook that celebrates the world of fresh produce. Everyone, from the omnivore to the vegan, will find something here. Organized by seasons, and with a decidedly Southern flair, Satterfield's collection mouthwatering recipes make the most of available produce from local markets, foraging, and the home garden. A must-have for the home cook, this beautifully designed cookbook, with its stunning color photographs, elevates the bounty of the fruit and vegetable kingdom as never before.
496 pages, Unknown Binding
First published March 3, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 5, 2015
I have a very specific list of things I want from a cookbook:
• I want interesting flavors: combinations I wouldn’t come up with on my own that work well together.
• I want recipes that feature fresh produce I can find at my local farmers’ market.
• I want recipes that use a minimum of refined carbs.
• I want recipes that minimize the use of meat—I like to think of meat as a type of seasoning, rather than the bulk of any dish.
• I want recipes that I can put together in a reasonable amount of time, so I can make a delicious dinner when I’ve finished work and still have time for some reading or knitting in the evening.
I can easily find cookbooks that meet a few of my criteria, but I rarely find a book that meets them all. Steven Satterfield’s Root to Leaf is one of those rare books that gives me everything I want.
Root to Leaf focuses on seasonal produce and is divided into four sections: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each section features a dozen or so types of produce, the varieties they come in, and their various uses—and the description of each type of produce is followed by several recipes. “Fall,” for example, includes cauliflower, chicories, green tomatoes, mushrooms, and nuts, along with other fruits and vegetables.
A few of the recipes here are familiar enough that I don’t really need them—the blueberry coffee cake with streusel is one of these, as is the cucumber, tomato, and onion salad—but most differ in some key way from recipes available in other cookbooks I use.
For example, there are roasted carrots with red onion and thyme. Roasted carrots aren’t anything new, but the pairing with red onions is (at least for me). There’s a snow pea salad, which might sound pretty standard, but Satterfield has us julienne the snow peas and adds in a bit of Myer lemon sauce and a mix of fresh herbs. Creamed corn is familiar—but how about using corn cob broth to balance the richness of the milk and cream and adding in some mushrooms for extra flavor?
Some of the recipes are completely new: cold brine-pickled blackberries, for example. There’s Brussels sprouts leaves with pear, bacon, and pecans. I might have thought to pair two of these, but I wouldn’t have come up with a mix of all four on my own.
I particularly appreciate the sections on different lettuces and greens. Satterfield describes their various tastes in detail and explains the optimal way for handling each. In the section on lettuces, he follows the descriptions with several recipes for dressings, letting readers experiment with their own combinations of lettuce varietals.
Root to Leaf is also a beautiful book, full of pictures of individual ingredients and finished dishes. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to cook. Just flipping through a few pages can bring you to a recipe that needs to be tried now or can get you thinking about the wonderful flavors you can create with a few fresh ingredients. This is the kind of cookbook one keeps, because of both its practicality and its inspiration.
• I want interesting flavors: combinations I wouldn’t come up with on my own that work well together.
• I want recipes that feature fresh produce I can find at my local farmers’ market.
• I want recipes that use a minimum of refined carbs.
• I want recipes that minimize the use of meat—I like to think of meat as a type of seasoning, rather than the bulk of any dish.
• I want recipes that I can put together in a reasonable amount of time, so I can make a delicious dinner when I’ve finished work and still have time for some reading or knitting in the evening.
I can easily find cookbooks that meet a few of my criteria, but I rarely find a book that meets them all. Steven Satterfield’s Root to Leaf is one of those rare books that gives me everything I want.
Root to Leaf focuses on seasonal produce and is divided into four sections: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each section features a dozen or so types of produce, the varieties they come in, and their various uses—and the description of each type of produce is followed by several recipes. “Fall,” for example, includes cauliflower, chicories, green tomatoes, mushrooms, and nuts, along with other fruits and vegetables.
A few of the recipes here are familiar enough that I don’t really need them—the blueberry coffee cake with streusel is one of these, as is the cucumber, tomato, and onion salad—but most differ in some key way from recipes available in other cookbooks I use.
For example, there are roasted carrots with red onion and thyme. Roasted carrots aren’t anything new, but the pairing with red onions is (at least for me). There’s a snow pea salad, which might sound pretty standard, but Satterfield has us julienne the snow peas and adds in a bit of Myer lemon sauce and a mix of fresh herbs. Creamed corn is familiar—but how about using corn cob broth to balance the richness of the milk and cream and adding in some mushrooms for extra flavor?
Some of the recipes are completely new: cold brine-pickled blackberries, for example. There’s Brussels sprouts leaves with pear, bacon, and pecans. I might have thought to pair two of these, but I wouldn’t have come up with a mix of all four on my own.
I particularly appreciate the sections on different lettuces and greens. Satterfield describes their various tastes in detail and explains the optimal way for handling each. In the section on lettuces, he follows the descriptions with several recipes for dressings, letting readers experiment with their own combinations of lettuce varietals.
Root to Leaf is also a beautiful book, full of pictures of individual ingredients and finished dishes. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to cook. Just flipping through a few pages can bring you to a recipe that needs to be tried now or can get you thinking about the wonderful flavors you can create with a few fresh ingredients. This is the kind of cookbook one keeps, because of both its practicality and its inspiration.
March 8, 2018
Living in Atlanta, I've had the good fortune to enjoy Steven's cooking firsthand! Root to Leaf is one of those cookbooks I keep going back to anytime I'm stuck. The cookbook is organized by season and by ingredient. It's primarily vegetarian, but the recipes are easily adaptable for carnivores. What I like most about this cookbook is it's simplicity. The recipes really show off the flavors of the fruits and vegetables. For the most part, the recipes don't have a lot of ingredients, and I've never had a hard time finding any of the ingredients at the neighborhood grocery store. Some of my favorites have been the corncob broth, the kale and white bean stew, the apple cider braised cabbage, and the succotash. Perfect for people who have a CSA or a good farmers' market nearby!
April 26, 2019
Unpleasant read
I can't recommend this book to anyone. A pretty cover and reduced price enticed me to try but left me disappointed in the tone and pretentious view of the author. Writing requires personality and writing a cookbook a sense of hospitality and willingness to share more than ingredients and recipe suggestions. Nothing new to bring into my own kitchens.
I can't recommend this book to anyone. A pretty cover and reduced price enticed me to try but left me disappointed in the tone and pretentious view of the author. Writing requires personality and writing a cookbook a sense of hospitality and willingness to share more than ingredients and recipe suggestions. Nothing new to bring into my own kitchens.
June 23, 2021
I didn't like this book at first. I got it, read through it, found myself disengaged and uninspired, and left it on my shelf untouched and uncooked from for a solid year.
This spring with a garden full of produce and the promise of okra I flipped through it and found it much more to my liking. I think my problem is the editing, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It needs far fewer pictures, to be honest. I want less of a pretentious coffee table book, which is how it feels, than a celebration of culture and dirt, which is how the text feels.
Either way, the recipes are better than the book is, and I do recommend it, even if it's more of a grudging fondness than a friendlessness I feel for this book.
This spring with a garden full of produce and the promise of okra I flipped through it and found it much more to my liking. I think my problem is the editing, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It needs far fewer pictures, to be honest. I want less of a pretentious coffee table book, which is how it feels, than a celebration of culture and dirt, which is how the text feels.
Either way, the recipes are better than the book is, and I do recommend it, even if it's more of a grudging fondness than a friendlessness I feel for this book.
November 25, 2024
This book was beautiful, the recipes are unique and enticing, I especially loved the layout which is organized by season. There is an abundance of beautiful photos and recipes that will have you itching to get in the garden and then to the kitchen. I picked this up from my local library and I loved it so much and had it so long I maxed out the number of times I could renew it. Will definitely be purchasing when I can afford to do so. I was blown away by the quality of the recipes, some cookbooks are pretty, some are tasty, some are nostalgic, and some are innovative. I would say that this book is all of the above. You will not regret picking this one up!
December 23, 2020
I like the "What's in Season" format. When the appropriate seasons come around again, I will be attempting three of the recipes listed under "Spring" and "Summer": Roasted Asparagus with Green Garlic and Radishes; Sea Salt, Cayenne and Lime Honeydew; and Gumbo Z'herbs.
May 23, 2019
There are some really good recipes in this collection and some unusual approaches which are intriguing. Recommend it!
December 2, 2024
What a great book! Some excellent ideas for veggies I know & perfect introduction to some I know less well. Especially love the section on green tomatoes, very helpful.
March 2, 2017
Root to Leaf is a vegetable cookbook, but not a vegetarian one. It features fresh produce, but is not without occasional meat.
This is a gorgeous book to display. It is printed on quality paper that is dreamy to flip through and the photographs make vegetables look amazing. The title refers to using the whole plant, including finding ways to use both root and leaf when possible. In this vein, there are recipes for beets, as well as beet greens, etc. I made the red-velvet beet cake and it got high marks with my co-workers.
There is definitely a southern style to the cooking (the afore-mentioned red velvet cake, not to mention a section on okra) but as a person who is not from the south and who doesn't have any special inclinations towards that style of cooking, I still found plenty of things that looked delicious to me.
This is a gorgeous book to display. It is printed on quality paper that is dreamy to flip through and the photographs make vegetables look amazing. The title refers to using the whole plant, including finding ways to use both root and leaf when possible. In this vein, there are recipes for beets, as well as beet greens, etc. I made the red-velvet beet cake and it got high marks with my co-workers.
There is definitely a southern style to the cooking (the afore-mentioned red velvet cake, not to mention a section on okra) but as a person who is not from the south and who doesn't have any special inclinations towards that style of cooking, I still found plenty of things that looked delicious to me.
July 11, 2015
As a vegetarian I tend to check out new vegetable cookbooks as soon as they come out, Root to Leaf being no exception. Gorgeous photos and nice introductions to each vegetables of fruit set a nice tone. Still, most of the recipes are similar in structure to what I already do, so it was not new news to me. Still, if you are not familiar with cooking veggies in all their forms this might be a decent primer.
July 17, 2015
This cookbook makes seasonal fruits and vegetables approachable, even if not all are quite so common in the West as the South. Recipes are listed on dedicated pages, which makes the directions easy to follow. My only challenge is that the nutritional serving breakdowns are not included, which means some long-hand calculations for carbohydrate counting. Otherwise, this hefty volume offers lots of options with beautiful photography.
October 12, 2015
I love looking through cookbooks and this one did not disappoint. The photos were beautiful, the recipes simple and full of many ingredients I get from my local CSA. I picked this one up from the library, but would love to have it on my shelves eventually.
August 4, 2015
I love this cook book as I tend to veer southern in my food interests these days and it really gets to seasonality. Focuses on seasonal vegetables but not strictly a vegetarian cookbook...
October 10, 2015
Just didn't see anything that sparked my interest.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews