Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit

Berens (Ruffage; Grist) returns with another winner, this time centered on fruit. The tone of the book is smart, engaged, and give-me-something-good. After a forceful and wide-ranging introduction about farming practices, market forces, production, and food waste, she opens with an 80-page baker’s toolkit. This collection of recipes includes cakes, cookies, breads, curds, creams, and more. A lack of abundant illustrations makes it read more like a preface than the rich collection of foundations it is. Part two brings the focus to individual fruits. Berens begins by detailing how to select and store fruit and recognize ripeness; then she offers pairs of recipes, one savory, one sweet, based on a variety of preparation methods including (depending on the fruit) raw, roasted, grilled, poached, stewed, and baked. There are also notes on preserving each fruit in a variety of ways. While not vegetarian, the book skews that way. Among the recipes are baked ricotta with black-pepper raspberries; grape custard pie; cashew cauliflower with ground-cherry glaze and toum; and pear, bacon, and onion tart.