Project Pick: Sharing Backyard Fruit and Community
What’s in Season: Melons, Cucumbers, and Peaches
Gardener's Notebook:
Legumes for Your Midsummer Veggie Garden
Grow Some Oyster Mushrooms
Food with a View: Good Grub on the Water’s Edge
Family, Love, and Vegetables: Edgar Castrejón and his cookbook, Provecho
Cooking at the East Bay School for Boys
Rhythms of the Land: An Interview with Filmmaker, Dr. Gail Myers
A Southern Farmer’s Summer Supper
Pomet: A Fruit Farmer’s New Restaurant
RECIPES
Minty Melon, Peach, & Cuke Salad
An Artist’s Roasted Beet Salad
Enchiladas Verdes with Jackfruit
A Dutch Baby at the East Bay School for Boys
Okra and Tomatoes with Steamed Rice
Braised Purple Hull or Black-Eyed Peas
ON THE COVER
Photographer Bart Nagel got up close with a Blackberry Oolong Pavlova at Oakland’s Pomet restaurant. A specialist in executive portraiture, Nagel says he especially enjoys capturing images of people who are passionate about their work. He had that opportunity when he and writer Bonnie Powell visited with K&J Orchard farmer Aomboon “Boonie” Deasy and her executive chef Alan Hsu at Pomet. Read Orchard Feast and try out the recipe.
On This Page
Chef Wanda Blake stands under photographer Brant Ward’s San Francisco Chronicle photo of Blake’s idol, Chef Edna Lewis, who is shown in conversation with Marion Cunningham at Beringer’s Great Women Chefs series in 1987.
The Buttermilk Roast Guinea Fowl Blake is holding is the centerpiece for A Southern Farmer's Summer Supper, a menu the chef devised to illustrate Dr. Gail Myers’s new documentary on African American farmers, Rhythms of the Land. Read our interview with Dr. Myers and try out the recipes. Also on the plate are Blake’s Southern-Style Braised Mustard Greens (featured in our Spring 2022 issue) and the chef’s famous Pepper Chowchow, a packaged condiment she perfected during the pandemic lockdowns to sell online and at her pop-ups. Her version of a traditional Southern pickled relish adds delightful crunch, color, and flavor to many dishes.
The portrait of Chef Wanda is by Dana Plucinski, an Oakland-based recipe developer and food photographer whose images have been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Food & Wine, and more. Find her on Instagram at @baydish.