Preserving Wild Foods: A Modern Forager's Recipes for Curing, Canning, Smoking, and Pickling
*Starred Review* This fascinating book doesn’t update Euell Gibbon’s Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1970); New York City chef Weingarten and his sidekick-editor Pelzel have channeled the furious attention lavished on Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant and its foraging owner, Rene Redzepi, into a book that even a confirmed urbanite would embrace. It’s all about the generations of Redzepi’s family, who were devoted to the techniques of preserving. Weingarten and Pelzel are careful in documenting folklore and fact as they pertain to food preservation. (My friend Lubor, who is from Eastern Europe, where stinging nettles are widely used in cooking and home remedies, swears by the nettles’ ability to, as he puts it, ‘awaken’ his spirit.) Of the 60 recipes, many are streamlined to suit modern conveniences, while others are lovingly presented in page after page of elegant prose. From more well-known ingredients, such as salt cod and goose, to items not readily available in sidewalk cracks, such as rose hips, samphire, and Irish moss, the authors can and preserve and smoke up some unusual yet tasty recipes: farmer cheese, dandelion jelly, and gooseneck and whiskey sausage. They even go so far as to ensure that many ingredients, together, meet kosher standards. Spend time lingering over the photographs, by Stephanie de Rouge, and other illustrations, which lend an art-book-like quality to the volume. Weingarten and Pelzel lead the way to making do with the earth’s bounty in the manner it deserves. --Barbara Jacobs