Pita pork, baked kale chips and honey rice custard — those are just a few recipes from the new cookbook called "Nevada Grown: A Year in Local Food." Its recipes feature ingredients grown in the Silver State throughout the year. Reno Public Radio's Julia Ritchey sat down with the book's co-editor, Ann Louhela, to get more details.
"NevadaGrown was started 10 years by a farmer who wanted basically to market Nevada agriculture," says Louhela. "We're 10 years old now, [and] we're pretty much the go to place for people looking for agricultural information."
About two years ago the idea for a cookbook featuring local ingredients came up through a collaboration with the Reno-Gazette Journal. From there, local bookstore Sundance Book offered to publish it through their imprint, Baobab Press.
"It's just a beautiful, beautiful book," she says. "[There's] 150 recipes, 70 or 80 full color pictures, all Nevada stuff."
Since all the recipes were compiled, many have the name of the recipe author and the farm or restaurant they're associated with.
"Part of the fun of the book is every one of those recipes has a story to it. Sometimes it's a farm, a lot of them are home cooks, some of them will have a restaurant with it," she says.
Louhela says one of her favorite recipes is the chocolate zucchini cake.
"Simply because summer comes, and you're so in it, you feel like you're drowning in zucchini," she says. "That's kind of my treat for eating all that zucchini, is throwing it in the chocolate zucchini cake."
Louhela says supporting local food systems is important because it also supports the state's economy.
"When you support the farmer and rancher, you're helping build Nevada," she says. "And everybody wants good food."
You can attend the launch party for the "Nevada Grown" cookbook tomorrow, Saturday, Dec. 12, at Reno Provisions downtown from 10 till 4 p.m. There will be free local food, raffles and giveaways.
