The Farm Market Cookbook

In this ``love song to farmers' markets,'' Olney ( The Joy of Chocolate ) recreates their ``life, vitality, health, abundance, grit, prime produce and color'' through entertaining interviews and 125 recipes from markets across America. Her grand tour features standard-bearers like Seattle's Pike Place Market and New York City's Union Square Market, as well as lesser-knowns like the Santa Rosa, Calif., Thursday Night Market and Lynchburg, Va.'s Bateau Landing. Recipes are diverse and representative of their regions: old-fashioned shoofly cake from Pennsylvania Dutch country, and ``salt'' side salmon with egg sauce and boiled new potatoes from the Pacific Northwest. The farmers Olney meets along the way are a varied lot, too--in all aspects, that is, except their tenacity and agricultural wisdom (lessons in why wormy corn is more flavorful and why bees deserve respect are examples). There is little not to like in Olney's America, except that it can be a bit too richly adjectival (e.g., farmers talk about ``state-of-the-art and state-of-the-heart'' farming). Some readers, too, may feel momentarily restless with yet another cookbook, however good, that celebrates simplicity. Line drawings not seen by PW. (May)