Sara Foster - The Fosters Market Cookbook: Favorite Recipes for Morning, Noon, and Night

Copyright 2002, by Sara Foster

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Foster, Sara.
The Fosters Market cookbook/Sara Foster with Sarah Belk King.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64456-9
1. Cookery. 2. Fosters Market. I. King, Sarah Belk.
II. Title.
TX714 .F685 2002
641.5dc21 2001041909

Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

v3.1

In memory of my grandparents, for teaching me to appreciate good food and to take the time to enjoy and share it with family and friends

Walk into Fosters Market and you walk right into Saras World. Sara Foster started Fosters Market twelve years ago, after an illustrious and industrious cooking career in New York and Connecticut. A native of Tennessee, Sara is an intuitive chef, steeped in tradition, expert in the foods of the American South. Those qualities alone could have guaranteed her a place in culinary history, but Sara early on realized the value of education and illumination and moved to New York to cook at the SoHo Charcuterie, a pioneering restaurant specializing in inventive, fine, fresh food. She worked hard and long in my catering business and helped significantly with several of my books. She left to cook with Jonathan Waxman when he moved east from California to open a restaurant that brought New Yorkers a taste of the new American cuisine. When Sara told us that she wanted to open a gourmet food market, I watched with interest as she did her research, zeroing in on those few fast-growing urban centers that had great potential and little competition. When she and her husband, Peter, settled on the Raleigh-Durham area, I thought, How smart. Good food, entertaining, and interest in fresh ingredients were inherent to that area, university life and corporate expansion were prevalent, and there was nothing like the market Sara planned to open. Just a few years later, there are two busy, thriving, successful, and charming Fosters Markets, and they are popular not just as places to buy beautifully prepared, delicious foodstuffs, but also as relaxed, carefree gathering places where a cup of latte and a huge piece of crumb cake or a giant sticky bun or a bowl of steaming soup can be savored quietly with a book or a newspaper or with a group of friends.

Sara has remained true to her beliefs and conviction that good, honest food can be deliciously simple. Her recipes, though often complex in flavor, are by and large easy to prepare. Ive cooked many of the recipes collected for this book and eaten many, many more of Saras creations, and Ive never been disappointed, only elated by the taste and appearance and freshness.

Fosters Markets reflect Saras casual approach to living and eating. Organized carefully, the Markets sell packaged goodsSaras own selectionsbut also seasonally appropriate prepared foods for takeout, special order, or sit down and eat right there. The salads, the desserts, and everything else are mouth-wateringly good.

Sara has prepared this cookbook with the same care and attention that she has lavished on the rest of her work. Well written and well tested, each recipe is sure to please. And the best news is that these represent just a small number of Saras repertoire, so we can look forward to more of her collected recipes.

This book would not have happened without all of our customers, who have been there every day and have made Fosters Market possible. We thank all of them for their ongoing support.

A special thanks to my husband, Peter Sellers, for his continuous encouragement, love, and enthusiasm, mixed with a healthy appetite for tasting and critiquing all the recipes, making this a better book.

My gratitude to the team that helped put this book together; it is as much theirs as mine: Pamela Cannon at Random House, for believing in this project and supporting and guiding us through it. Sarah Belk King, my coauthor, for her dedication, wit, endless intellect, and countless hours. James Baigrie, for his wonderful eye and tireless enthusiasm. Judy Edwards, my sister and a wonderfully creative cook, for sharing, testing, and tasting recipes and endless hours of caring. Caitlin Salemi, Alison Attenborough, Karen Steadman, and Edouard Phoulire, for bringing their own style and creativity to the project. Janis Donnaud, for her persistence in getting things done the right way. Robert Malone, for being the link to making it happen and always being there.

A warm and special thanks to Martha Stewart, my friend and mentor, for sharing her knowledge, insight, and great style and encouraging me to develop my own. Also, for her continuous support and generosity.

Thanks to Bruce Claiborne, for teaching me that less is more, and to all the other great cooks I have worked with and learned from over the years.

I cannot thank enough all the cooks and managers, my friends and coworkers, at Fosters Market, past and present. They have all inspired and taught me over the years. Special thanks to Elizabeth Laine, Laura Cyr, and Wendell Wilson, for having the vision to improve and expand the Fosters style and sharing and developing recipes. To Patrick Edwards, not only for running the business, but also for enthusiastically tasting and critiquing. To Shay Charles, Meg deLuca, Jennings Brody, and Jan Vandervort, for sharing their passion and love for great food and quality and seeing it through, from start to finish, day after day, devoting endless hours of time and energy to making Fosters successful. To Eddie Zuniga, Amy Buckner, Donnie Willey, Eric Muhl, Whitney Aichner, Tim Youngblood, Kathy Edwards, and many more, each contributing to the success of Fosters Market in their own way.

To my family and friends, for sharing recipes, props, homes, and more.

Sara Foster

Thank you, Sara, for giving me the opportunity to work with you and your team on this book. Thanks, too, to my editor, Pamela Cannon, and to my agent, Janis Donnaud, for believing that I could effectively express the philosophy, the heart, and the soul of Fosters Market. This has been a dream assignment.

Sarah Belk King