Vegetables star in local chef’s new cookbook, “Ruffage”

Is there room in your picnic basket for change?

Instead of the usual sandwiches, chips and dip, picnic fare is being revitalized with colorful, local and seasonal dishes that celebrate the bounty of Michiana summers.

Keep your options open and experiment with some of the following ideas, fresh from Abra Berens’ new cookbook, Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables.

“I love vegetables because there is so much character to them,” says Berens, a chef at Granor Farm in Three Oaks, MI. “There is so much difference there and so much beauty, and they end up being little characters in your kitchen.”

Don’t worry, carnivores: Berens is also a meat lover, as reflected in many of her recipes.

So, grab your blanket and a few friends, pack your basket, and spread out in the park, at the beach or your own backyard for a fun and flavorful al fresco meal.

Ruffage

Chronicle Books, 2019

Released in the spring of 2019, Abra Berens’ Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables is a gathering of more than 100 recipes, alphabetically highlighting 29 vegetables with 230 variations. Berens says this is the cookbook she was always looking for during her own cooking journey.

She wants every home cook to know how to use the vegetables and other products available from a farm market or their local grocery store. The cookbook has an easygoing style, with clear and concise instructions on basic techniques, plus an accessible and handy guide to a strong pantry.

Sprinkled within the chapters are the musings of a person who has experienced many types of cooking, farming, shopping and eating. For more information on the cookbook, visit abraberens.com.

A Michigan native, Berens partnered with a friend in 2009 to found Bare Knuckle Farm in the northern Lower Peninsula, where she farmed and cooked for eight years. Meanwhile, her passion for the kitchen grew, with stints at Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, MI, and as executive chef at Local Foods Café in Chicago, before returning to Three Oaks, MI, in 2017 to helm the kitchen as chef at Granor Farm.

Berens prepares all the food for Granor’s farm dinners and serves them family style, right in the farmhouse kitchen. Reservations are available at granorfarm.com.

Recipes from Ruffage