Seasonal Chef: Annie Somerville, of Greens, San Francisco's acclaimed vegetarian restaurant

The San Francisco Bay area is a nirvana for vegetarians, a fact nowhere more apparent than at Greens, a restaurant founded by the Zen Center in 1979. In the decades since then, dozens of small farms and dairies catering to the city's sophisticated gourmands and bustling farmers markets have sprung up within a couple hundred miles of San Francisco, a region blessed with a phenomenal variety of growing climates. In a profile by Victoria Slind-Flor, Seasonal Chef's Bay Area correspondent, Annie Sommerville, the head chef at Greens, describes her mutually beneficial close relationship with her suppliers, who farm in areas ranging from the foggy coast to hot, dry inland valleys.

Sommerville also shares with Seasonal Chef a recipe for kabocha squash soup. Infused with Asian flavors, the recipe is from Sommerville's most recent book, Everyday Greens: Everyday Cooking from Greens, the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant.