Abra Berens finally turns to fruit
By Ross Boissoneau
Sun contributor
Chef Abra Berens has worked in Chicago, Ann Arbor, even Ireland. But she hasn’t forgotten her time in Leelanau County. That’s reflected in her continuing visits and efforts here, such as a presentation, panel discussion and fundraiser for the Leland Township Library that took place at the Old Art Building on May 13.
It’s also part and parcel of her cookbooks, including her latest, Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit, which published last month. Like its predecessors, the book concentrates on one of the food groups. In this case, that’s fruit, complementing vegetables (Ruffage, her first cookbook) and grains (her second, Grist). All three stem in part from her experience as a cook and farmer in northern Michigan, especially that initial foray into the cookbook publishing world. “Ruffage was about my time growing vegetables in Northport,” she said.
Berens helmed Bare Knuckle Farm for nearly a decade, before decamping for the Windy City. There she returned to the kitchen full time, opening and overseeing the café at Local Foods in Chicago. In 2017, she relocated to Three Oaks in southwestern Michigan, where she is chef at Granor Farm. She combines her love of farming and role of restaurateur onsite, similar to her time at Bare Knuckle Farm.
That’s when she turned to writing Ruffage: A Practical Guide To Vegetables in earnest. More than just a compendium of recipes, it was also a love letter to vegetables and the places in which they’re grown: A cookbook for those who like to read about food and ingredients. It garnered a James Beard Award nomination.
It was followed in 2021 by Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes, though that wasn’t initially Berens’ hope: She wanted to follow veggies with fruits, but her enthusiasm for Pulp wasn’t initially shared by her publisher. She shared her idea in the wake of the success of Ruffage, but her editor was more inclined to go in another direction. “At the … time I was thinking about a fruit book. She was more excited about grains and legumes. It was a happy compromise,” Berens said of the decision to first do the grains book, then finish off the series with fruit.
Berens is enamored of the fruits grown in Michigan—apples, cherries, berries, peaches, plums and more. Pulp reflects that, as it’s based entirely around the bounty of fruits grown in the Midwest, fruits she champions.
“What it adds is irreplaceable. Fruit adds sweetness, acid, color, even texture,” Berens said. She pointed to recipes in the book for roasted chicken with rosemary-poached apples, pork loin with roasted apples and berry salsa, and baked Ricotta with black pepper raspberries. “They’re so beautiful,” she said.
She uses those and other fruits in ways that emphasize their versatility. She provides a recipe for each of the fruits she focuses on in various states: raw, roasted, baked and preserved, and within the first three she includes two recipes: one savory and one sweet.
“People had commented on how much fruit is in my savory cooking. I ascribe it to my time in Michigan,” Berens said. That includes not only her tenures in Northport and Ann Arbor, where she worked at the famed Zingerman’s Deli, but growing up on a farm outside Holland. Her cousins are now working the family farm there.
She says the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted everything, but provided insights as well. “Like everybody, we were eating at home a lot. It gave me a new window into the regularity of cooking at home, not going to the store the way we did before,” Berens said. Interruptions in the supply chains and empty shelves in stores forced people into new ways of preparing and using the ingredients they had on hand.
Berens thinks that in some ways it further spurred the farm-to-table movement. “I’m grateful the local food movement had been established. We saw people really care about where their food was coming from. It was an a-hah moment for a lot of people,” she said.
She’s pleased to have finished the trilogy and said she doesn’t have any other books in mind now. So, is she done with the whole cookbook scene? That doesn’t seem likely, but she said she’s looking for other ways to tell more stories around food.
That includes forays back here into the northland. Berens will preside over a series of 50th anniversary dinners at Mawby Vineyards July 23, Aug. 20 and Sept. 17. She will also hold a book signing at Horizon Books on July 22.
