Description

By (author) Bergo, Alan Description:

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

The book will serve the professional chef and home cook in equal measure. It is mind expanding, experimental and utilizes a magnificent diversity of plants. Ben MacKinnon, founder and co-director, E5 Bakehouse

From root to flower – and featuring 180 recipes and over 230 of the author’s own beautiful photographs – explore the edible plants we find all around us with the Forager Chef Alan Bergo as he breaks new culinary ground!

In The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora you’ll find the exotic to the familiar—from Stinging Nettle Soup to Spruce Tip Panna Cotta to Heirloom Tomato and Purslane Panzanella – with Chef Bergo’s unique blend of easy-to-follow instruction and out-of-this-world inspiration.

Over the past fifteen years, chef Alan Bergo has become one of the most exciting and resourceful culinary voices, with millions seeking his guidance through his wildly popular website and video tutorials. Bergo’s inventive culinary style is defined by his encyclopedic curiosity and his abiding, root-to-flower passion for both wild and cultivated plants. 

The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora demonstrates how understanding the different properties and growing phases of roots, stems, leaves and seeds can inform your preparation of something like the head of an immature sunflower – as well as the lesser-used parts of common vegetables, like broccoli or aubergine. As a society, we’ve forgotten this type of old-school knowledge, including many brilliant culinary techniques that were born of thrift and necessity. For our own sake and that of our planet, it’s time we remembered. And in the process, we can unlock new flavors from the abundant landscape around us.

The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora invites wild food to the table with creative, low-stress recipes using plants that can be found outside one’s front door. Foreword Reviews

Review quote:

“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

Review quote:

“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 Ha