*Editor’s Choice on Best Products List of 35 Gardening Gifts for the Person in Your Life with the Greenest Thumb
One intrepid cook’s exploration of her urban terrain, with over 500 recipes for every season!
“Marie Viljoen is the real deal. . . Forage, Harvest, Feast is a joy to read, an inspiration, and a culinary adventure.”―Amy Stewart, author of
New York Times bestseller
Wicked Plants In this groundbreaking collection, celebrated New York City forager, cook, kitchen gardener, and writer Marie Viljoen incorporates wild ingredients into everyday menus and special occasion fare. Motivated by a hunger for new flavors and working with thirty-six versatile wild plants―some increasingly found in farmers markets―she offers
deliciously compelling recipes, including variations on:
- Cocktails
- Snacks & Appetizers
- Entrées
- Desserts
- Breads
- Preserves, Sauces and Syrups
- Ferments, spices, and salts
From underexplored native flavors like bayberry and spicebush to accessible ecological threats like Japanese knotweed and mugwort, Viljoen presents hundreds of recipes unprecedented in scope.
They range from simple quickweed griddle cakes with American burnweed butter to sophisticated dishes like a souffléed tomato roulade stuffed with garlic mustard, or scallops seared with sweet white clover, cattail pollen, and sweetfern butter. Viljoen makes unfamiliar ingredients familiar by treating each to a thorough culinary examination, allowing readers to grasp every plant’s character and inflection.
Forage, Harvest, Feast―featuring hundreds of color photographs as well as cultivation tips for plants easily grown at home―is destined to become a standard reference for any cook wanting to transform wildcrafted ingredients into exceptional dishes, spices, and drinks.
Eating wild food, Viljoen reminds us, is a radical act of remembering and honoring our shared heritage. Led by a quest for exceptional flavor and ecologically sound harvesting, she tames the feral kitchen, making it recognizable and welcoming to regular cooks.
“The photos are beautiful, and most of the recipes are simple enough that you don’t need a culinary degree to follow them, but at the same time they ooze creativity. . . . It’s not just a book of recipes, it’s a celebration of local flavors. You can feel the love on every page. There are no other books like it―an amazing source of inspiration and a must-have for anyone remotely interested in wild edibles.”―Pascal Baudar, author of
The New Wildcrafted Cuisine
Nearly five-hundred recipes incorporating combinations of thirty-six wild plants within reach to many. Highlights include the Shrimp and Avocado Aspic with Spicebush, and the Rolled Tomato Souffle stuffed with Garlic Mustard.
