The Forager Chef's Book of Flora: Recipes and Techniques for Edible Plants from Garden, Field, and Forest: Bergo, Alan (Author)

The Forager Chef's Guide to Flora explores some of the most exciting ingredients available today-but more importantly, it gives home cooks and chefs alike a whole new way of seeing and thinking about all vegetable ingredients-by looking at them through a trained forager's eyes. Over the past fifteen years, Minnesota chef Alan Bergo has become one of the nation's most exciting and resourceful chefs. Watching wild plants grow and searching for new edible parts of familiar plants transformed his culinary style, similar to how the nose-to-tail movement affected the way chefs consider animals. Now when Bergo sees squash in the garden, instead of waiting for them to ripen, he harvests some while they are still green, and the shoots, flowers, and young greens too. In The Forager Chef's Guide to Flora, Bergo shows how understanding the properties of leaves, stems, roots, and flowers can inform how you prepare something exotic-like the head of an immature sunflower-as well as more common vegetables like broccoli stems or eggplant. As a society, we've forgotten this type of old-school knowledge, including many brilliant culinary techniques that were borne of thrift and necessity. For our own sake, and that of our planet, it's time we remembered. Featuring over 200 recipes, from Seared Hosta Shoots to Raw Turnips with Acorn Oil, Friulian Sautâeed Wild Greens to Crisp Fiddlehead Pickles, The Forager Chef's Guide to Flora will unlock new flavors from familiar favorites, and make familiar favorites out of the abundant landscape around you"--

Review Quotes:

"You see a sunny meadow. Alan Bergo sees a salad: all blue violet leaves and wild carrot tops. This accomplished chef cooks the wilderness. As he grinds flour from tree nuts, makes black walnut honey, braises sunflower heads like artichokes, and invents 'green electricity, ' a magical lovage sauce, Bergo turns nature into food. With such stylish recipes and extraordinary photographs (Bergo's own), The Forager Chef's Book of Flora encourages a whole new world of cooks to explore the wild."--Dorothy Kalins, founding editor, Saveur; author of The Kitchen Whisperers

"You haven't tasted most of the vegetables your ancestors ate. Today, everything is disdained that is too small or too green or doesn't keep for long on the produce shelf. We've been beguiled through generations into The Great Food Forgetting. But big, cheap, and easy have a profound cost: boring food, bad teeth, diabetes, and loss of the primal pleasure of interacting with the green world like a biologically normal human. How do we recover the birthright of perfect eating? By making forgotten food unforgettable. That's the dream that makes Alan Bergo's eyes sparkle, and sets his hands to work. As you'll see in these pages, his eyes and hands work very well together. Follow his guidance from the rediscovered culinary amusement park that surrounds you all the way to your kitchen, and your mouth will confirm everything that your heart suspected. This real, good food is worth remembering."--Sam Thayer, author of The Forager's Harvest, Nature's Garden, and Incredible Wild Edibles

"This is so much more than a cookbook. Of course there are tantalizing recipes, but there are also walks in the woods, explorations of plant families, revelations of unusual flavors, well-crafted plant profiles, and explanations of why things work the way they do. In The Forager Chef's Book of Flora, Alan shares his philosophical and practical approach to making wonderful food, with exquisitely detailed flavor combinations and useful tips that could only come from a consummate pro. His passion for these wild and cultivated flavors is inspiring and will undoubtedly change the way you cook."--Ellen Zachos, author of Backyard Foraging

"The joy and delight in Alan's writing are contagious. After reading just the introduction, I wanted to escape to the countryside to start foraging so I could cook his inspiring recipes. This book has so many layers. Not only does it contain an abundance of recipes and information about the plants, it provides us with a history from all over the world where people commonly cooked with these ingredients. His passion and enthusiasm are endless. I was instantly engrossed and keep going back for more. I feel like this book will continue to educate me every time I pick it up! I can't wait to start cooking from it."--Laura Jackson, chef; coauthor of Towpath

"There's magic afoot! Edible green growing things we'd mistaken for weeds; everyday vegetables capable of far more than we'd give them credit for; and a most companionable, knowledgeable, and encouraging guide to help us see, cook, taste, and delight in it all."--Lori De Mori, coauthor of Towpath