"When I wrote [The Cook and the Gardener], I was a green 22-year-old who lived at the Château du Feÿ in France and cooked for its owner, the cookbook writer and École de Cuisine La Varenne founder Anne Willan. I had written a few newspaper and magazine articles, but this book was my first work of any length. It allowed me to call myself a writer. . . .

My life now is the converse of the way I lived in France-from soil to concrete, birdsong to sirens, a two-acre walled garden to herb planters on an apartment terrace. Yet the lesson I learned from Monsieur Milbert, the château's 79-year-old gardener, and from cooking from the garden he tended, endures: I will shop locally and cook seasonally for the rest of my life. . . .

The Cook and the Gardener benefitted from, even as it was part of, a movement that has shifted the way Americans think about the food they eat. . . . The other reason this book has lasted, I believe, is that its recipes weren't trendy: not a blackened tuna or avocado toast in the bunch. The Herb Salad-a fragrant tumble of soft and peppery lettuces with tarragon, mint, and parsley-is a recipe you might find on the menu of a popular New York restaurant now. Horseradish Mashed Potatoes isn't going anywhere, nor is the Double-Crusted Peach Pie. I'd happily make any of the book's recipes for dinner this week."

-from Amanda Hesser's new preface to The Cook and the Gardener