Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food

owner of San Francisco’s popular Bi-Rite Market, guides you through the grocery store one department at a time, and explains how to identify incredible ingredients, decipher labels and terms, build a great pantry, and reconnect with the people and places that feed us.

Eat Good Food gives you a new way to look at food, not only the ingredients you buy but also how to prepare them. Featuring ninety recipes for the dishes that have made Bi-Rite Market’s in-house kitchen a destination for food lovers, combined with Sam’s favorite recipes, you’ll discover exactly how to get the best flavor from each ingredient. Dishes such as Summer Corn and Tomato Salad, Spicy String Beans with Sesame Seeds, Roasted Beet Salad with Pickled Onions and Feta, Ginger-Lemongrass Chicken Skewers with Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce, Apricot-Ginger Scones, and Chocolate Pots de Crème will delight throughout the year.

No matter where you live or shop, Sam provides new insight on ingredients familiar as well unique, including:

• Why spinach from open bins is better than prepackaged greens

• What the material used to wrap cheese can tell you about the quality of the cheese itself

• How to tell where an olive oil is really from—and why it matters

• What “never ever” programs are, and why you should look for them when buying meat

With primers on cooking techniques and anecdotes that entertain, enlighten, and inspire, Eat Good Food will revolutionize the way you shop and eat.

San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market has a following akin to a hot restaurant—its grocery goods and prepared foods have made it a destination for lovers of great food. In Eat Good Food, former chef turned market owner Sam Mogannam explains how to source and use the finest farm-fresh ingredients and artisanal food products, decipher labels and terms, and build a great pantry. More engaging than a field guide and more informative than a standard cookbook, and with primers on cooking techniques and anecdotes that will entertain, enlighten, and inspire, Eat Good Food will revolutionize the way home cooks shop and eat.

Dabney Gough is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, a former columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle, and a contributor to Fine Cooking and the Honolulu Weekly.

2. The Grocery  17

3. The Deli  69

4. The Produce Department  83

5. The Butcher Counter  167

6. The Dairy Case  221

7. The Cheese Department  237

8. The Bakery  255

9. Wine and Beer  269

Onward  283     

Recommended Reading and Resources  284

Thanks  287      

Index  289