River Cafe Green

‘A good restaurant lives and grows and so do its recipes’ Ruth Rogers

At London’s River Cafe, you can tell the seasons by the range of vegetables atop the restaurant bar: bushels of artichokes, bunches of puntarelle, crowns of romanesco and so much more. It is these ingredients that are at the heart of this new book; an ambitious, comprehensive celebration of fruits and vegetables from the Italian table that is destined to be an instant classic.

Stunning, still-life photographs by Matthew Donaldson elevate the finest produce to works of art. Each ingredient receives its own peak-season portrait, followed by 1–2 iconic recipes that capture the ingredient at its finest.

Vegetable-centric dishes bring the produce to splendour with perfect flavour pairings, which capture the essence of Italian cooking - where you walk into a restaurant in Rome in the spring, and see a table with sautéed peas, spinach, and artichokes. It says, this is our season and this is our world.

This ground-breaking work redefines what a cookbook can be by combining bold visuals with eminently cookable recipes.