Ruffage book cover

Ruffage: A Practical Guide to Vegetables

—is truly that, practical. It demystifies thirty different vegetables with shopping and storing notes, different preparation techniques, and variations for each recipe to show how one vegetable and technique can unlock several different meals.

I wrote this book because I couldn’t find it when I needed it as a young chef cooking exclusively from my farm’s garden. Over the years I read and practiced and cooked some more, honing a style of cooking that is tied to the land and the best produce it produces but is also flexible enough to make a tantalizing meal of what is already on hand in the kitchen.

I regularly hear friends bemoan that they know they need to eat more vegetables, but feel intimidated or uninspired at the prospect of actually working veg into their daily meals. Hopefully the tools and techniques that I’ve developed over the years from garden to restaurants to cooking in my own home will help make vegetables the easiest and most exciting stars on your table.

Join the conversation on Instagram: #ruffagecookbook



Praise for this series

  • “Things in my kitchen have changed since Ruffage arrived. This organized, easygoing guide to 29 vegetables offers a few cooking methods for each one, supplemented by several variations.”
    • Kim Severson, The New York Times (named one of the 12 Best Cookbooks of Spring 2019)
  • “[Ruffage is] A total classic in the making”
    • Christina Chaey, associate editor, Bon Appetit
  • “[In Grist,] Berens encourages readers to start with ingredients they’re excited about. . . . Interspersed features highlight working farmers and their areas of specialty, serving to illustrate issues that inform Berens’s ethics and worldview.”
    • Booklist
  • “[In Grist,] Berens strolls through each category with representative methods (such as boiled, fried, and sprouted) with an eye toward variety and versatility over 125 recipes.”
    • Chicago Reader
  • Grist shortlisted for 2022 Art of Eating Prize
    • Art of Eating
  • Ruffage nominated for James Beard Award for “Vegetable-Focused Cooking”
    • James Beard Foundation, 2020
  • Ruffage is Silver Medal Winner for “Cookbooks – General”
    • Independent Publishers Book Awards, 2021


Contact

  • For media inquiries, please contact Tia Rotolo at Mona Creative:
    • tia [at] monacreative [dot] co
  • For everything else, please contact Keely Thomas-Menter at Chronicle Books:
    • Keely_ThomasMenter [at] chroniclebooks [dot] com

Thanks

Thank you to all the farmers doing the hard, often thankless work of feeding our world. Special thank you to Granor Farm for growing some of the best tasting produce, grains, and eggs. It is a dream to get to cook with such wonderful ingredients.


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