cover image The Forager’s Pantry: Cooking with Wild Edibles

The Forager’s Pantry: Cooking with Wild Edibles

Ellen Zachos. Gibbs Smith, $24.99 (240p) ISBN 978-1-42365-674-6

In this delightful outing, food writer Zachos (The Wildcrafted Cocktail) suggests ways to mix up meals using foraged plants. “Combining wild foods with familiar kitchen staples brings new life and excitement to your cooking,” she writes. Recipes are grouped by ingredient type (flowers, greens, spices, and herbs), and chapters are full of tips on how to store surplus ingredients for later use, such as by dehydrating (“If you don’t have a dehydrator yet, put it on your wishlist!”), freezing, and bundle-hanging. Home cooks will enjoy savory mains such as flower fritters, curried foraged greens, and a cretan chestnut stew. Drink options include a sparkling flower soda and a chai masala that calls for dried juniper berries, while desserts offer a foraged nut ice cream, a crab apple cake with spicebush berries, wild gingersnaps with juniper berry frosting, and knotweed cupcakes. Since foraging is a seasonal practice, Zachos provides a guide to using store-bought ingredients to substitute when foraged items aren’t available, such as replacing sassafras leaves (which add lemon flavor) with lemons, or using store-bought garlic instead of field garlic. This is perfect for spirited home cooks with a taste for wild, fresh flavors. (May)