Joanne Neft is known as the “farmers market lady” in Placer County, and for good reason. Neft has been involved with farmers markets since childhood, when her father sold produce in the St. Paul, Minn., farmers market.

Joanne learned that a lot of people did not know how to make use of the bounty of fresh and sometimes unfamiliar food items they would find in the farmers markets. In conversations with a friend, Neft hit on an idea that would come to the aid of those who wanted to make use of the wonderful resource of farmers markets.

She teamed up with Placer County chef Laura Kenny. Every Saturday for one year, they would shop the Auburn farmers market. On the following Monday evening, they would serve dinner for eight made completely from what they had purchased Saturday. They served friends and friends of friends found through an extensive e-mail list.

The result is the book, “Placer County Real Food From Farmers Markets: Recipes & Menus for Every Week of the Year.” “Real Food” is a beautiful book with 52 chapters, the title of each being the date of the day they went shopping.

Thursday evening, Neft and Kenny prepared the menu for Oct. 19 for an enthusiastic audience at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op. cooking school.

The menu: salmon and brussels sprouts, arugula and grape salad with grape vinaigrette; pan-seared salmon with celery root rémoulade; rice with garlic and parsley; shaved brussels sprouts with bacon; Asian pear and apple pie and “persimmon tea.”

They demonstrated preparing everything except the rice and tea. As with most Co-op cooking classes, the students learned a lot about cooking in general along with the instructions for the specific menu items. One of Neft and Kenny’s goals with “Real Food” was to keep the recipes as simple as possible. This included usually using five or less ingredients in each recipe.

Neft started out making the pie. She gave hints on how to make a great pie dough and to how to select the fruit. All the motions involved were easy to watch on the mirror and monitors above the cooking surface. The pie went off to bake while the rest of the meal was prepared.

Kenny then started working on the salad. In answer to a question about the seasons of the ingredients, the class was told that somethings like the red flame grapes in the salad and the Asian pears in the pie were coming to the end of their season. The arugula was coming back into season.

Kenny emphasized that if you don’t like the taste of arugula or it isn’t in season, you can use another leafy green that you do like that is in season. The important thing is that it is very fresh coming from the farmers market.

The taste test: The salad was excellent. The peppery taste of the arugula was perfectly balanced by the cool sweetness of the grapes and vinaigrette.

Next came the Brussels sprouts. Many think of the ugly, bad-tasting green vegetable your mother forced you to eat. These were not that. Kenny started by using a mandolin to shave the leaves off the sprout. She then taught the class about blanching the shaved sprouts. In the end, the sprouts were sautéed with the cooked bacon and other ingredients

Celery root is not a common ingredient for most cooks. Kenny talked about uses for it and how to work with it. It was peeled and julienned and mixed with a combination of crème fraîche, mustard and chopped parsley to create the rémoulade.

For the salmon, the class first received tips on how to debone and remove the skin. The salmon was prepared in the most simple way: seasoned with salt and pepper and seared in a very hot frying pan with grape seed oil.

The result was delicious. The Brussels sprouts were tasty, with the bacon giving them a slightly salty nutty flavor. The salmon was perfect – a thin crispy outside without the flesh being overcooked. The rémoulade, while a pleasant flavor, did not overpower the fish.

The meal was accompanied by a nice Amador Foothill Winery 2007 Shenandoah Valley sauvignon blanc.

The Asian pear and apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream from the Co-op was a great finish to the meal.

This class was again made up of folks who have attended several of the Co-op’s cooking classes. Most of the attendees were avid shoppers at farmers markets. One of the students was Kevin Howard, a lawyer by trade, who said attending the cooking classes and cooking in general was a great way to unwind from working stress. His favorite so far has been a hands-on pizza-making class.

Neft and Kenny ended the class talking about something happening with the book. Friends are getting together on a particular date and recreating the meal of that week as a group. They go to the farmers market and purchase the ingredients for their part of the meal. Then everyone meets at someone’s home and they prepare the meal together. The authors suggested that this might be a good way for those attending the class to have a enjoyable evening with friends, introducing them to the joys of shopping at the farmers market. 

Here is information on future Sacramento Naural Foods Co-op cooking classes.  Here is information on purchasing “Placer County Real Food From Farmers Markets: Recipes & Menus for Every Week of the Year.”  Community Alliance with Family Farmers is a resource for learning more about farmers markets.

Photos: Bill Burgua  Image 1 Joanne Neft with “Placer County Real Food From Farmers Markets: Recipes & Menus for Every Week of the Year.”  Image 2 Laura Kenny sighning books