How To Pick A Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table

By Russ Parsons

Critics greeted Russ Parsons’ first book, How to Read a French Fry, with raves. The New York Times praised it for its “affable voice and intellectual clarity”; Julia Child lauded it for its “deep factual information.”

Now in How to Pick a Peach, Parsons takes on one of the hottest food topics today. Good cooking starts with the right ingredients, and nowhere is that more true than with produce. Should we refrigerate that peach? How do we cook that artichoke? And what are those different varieties of pears? Most of us aren’t sure. Parsons helps the cook sort through the produce in the market by illuminating the issues surrounding it, revealing intriguing facts about vegetables and fruits in individual profiles about them, and providing instructions on how to choose, store, and prepare these items. Whether explaining why basil, citrus, tomatoes, and potatoes should never be refrigerated, describing how Dutch farmers revolutionized the tomato business in America, exploring organic farming and its effect on flavor, or giving tips on how to recognize a ripe melon, How to Pick a Peach is Parsons at his peak.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: May 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9780547347769

Russ Parsons

RUSS PARSONS is the food and wine columnist of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of the best-selling How to Read a French Fry, a winner of multiple James Beard Awards for his journalism, and the recipient of the IACP/Bert Greene Award for distinguished writing. He lives in California, which produces more than half of the fruits and vegetables grown in this country. He has been writing about food and agriculture for more than twenty years.

Reviews for How To Pick A Peach

[klburnside · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really liked this book when I stsrted reading it. The book goes through different vegetables, gives a brief history of how it was discovered/cultivated/bred, and how to choose the best ones. Some of the facts he gave were really interesting and I am amazing by plants and people and how we interact, but by the end I was just a little bored.

[julied_425355 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"'Eat locally, eat seasonally.' A simple slogan that is backed up by science and by taste. The farther away from the market something is grown, the longer it must spend getting to us, and what eventually arrives will be less than satisfying. Although we can enjoy a bounty of produce year-round -- apples in June, tomatoes in December, peaches in January -- most of it is lacking in flavor. In order to select wisely, we need to know more. Where and how was the head of lettuce grown? When was it picked and how was it stored? How do you tell if a melon is really ripe? Which corn is sweeter, white or yellow? Russ Parsons provides the answers to these questions and many others in this indispensable guide to common fruits and vegetables, from asparagus to zucchini. He offers valuable tips on selecting, storing, and preparing produce, along with one hundred delicious recipes. Parsons delivers an entertaining and informative reading experience that is guaranteed to help put better food on the table."This description may make the book sound clinical but Parsons infuses it with details and personality that make us relate to what he writes about. The argument about whether fat or skinny asparagus are better? Been there. Argued that. To reduce the heat of a pepper remove the ... no, not the seeds ... the ribs, which is where the capsicum is stored. Aha!For each fruit and veg he provides a very basic preparation method that we might not have considered. Then he goes on to a few more interesting recipes for each. Not too many, but just enough to pique our curiosity and taste buds and make us want to come back for more.

[bexaplex · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The text is good, but this clearly not meant to be a keeper; no pictures, and the paper is so cheap it might actually be newsprint. My 4-month-old book is already starting to yellow.Parsons is in the flavor camp, as opposed to the organic camp or the local camp, and he has some good advice on picking good produce from supermarket shelves, which is handy. There are a few essays on everything from souffles to Hmong-language farm reports, which are entertaining, but not revelatory. I'll copy a few recipes (none of the ones with heavy cream), write down a few tips on picking melons, and then pass the book on.

[tigermel · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Highly recommended. The author was the food critic for the LA Times. Part cookbook, part food dictionary, Parsons talks about the local food movement and educates on things most people don't know anymore: when things are in season, where they are grown and how to tell the good and ripe from the bad. He sets up his book by the seasons, starting in spring. The recipes, for the most part, are not terrible complicated. The author wants to show off the great freshness of the food, not how talented the cook is. Seriously, I have hated brussel sprouts and cabbage since childhood, yet because of this book I want to try some fresh ones just to see how much a difference freshness will make.

[lehack · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Unfortunately there are no photos. The author describes what a fresh fruit or vegetable should like like to the buyer to get the best produce. He also explains why we have beautiful, perfect produce in the grocery stores that is pretty much tasteless. There isn't much stated about organics, but there is a lot to be said about buying farm produce locally, directly from the farmer for optimum flavor. Parsons includes a few recipes for each item described. If you don't know which fresh artichoke, peach or melon to choose, this is a great book.