Product Description

In his first book, Steve Brill demonstrated how to forage safely for these edible wild plants. Now, he breaks new ground by presenting more than 500 comprehensive recipes for transforming these natural foods into delicious vegetarian meals.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #393146 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Brill follows his Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (And Not So Wild) Places with this specialist volume aimed at cooking found and gathered produce. Stressing the need to forage safely and not eat any plant unless completely certain of its identification and that it's free of pesticides and herbicides, the author explains "what makes wild food special" before describing methods of preparation and food types, winemaking and the wild food seasons. Main courses and desserts are intermingled so much so that it becomes hard to tell whether the ingredient is a main component or an enhancer. Filled with humorous anecdotes and small descriptions, almost every recipe relies on at least one foraged ingredient, though where possible Brill offers health store alternatives (while Monsieur Wildman's French Dressing calls for wild spearmint, he does suggest cultivated mint; unsweetened apple juice can be substituted for wild apples in Spiced Wild Apple Cider). In the end, the book will appeal to those who enjoy foraging in the wild as well as the vegetarian who is not only health- but also environmentally conscious.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Brill, the author of an earlier field guide to wild plants, has been conducting "foraging tours" in Manhattan (including Central Park) and throughout greater New York since the mid-1980s. His new book includes dozens of recipes using wild foods, from sassafras and daylily shoots to blue violets and cow parsnips; each entry includes a brief description of the plant as well. Strict vegetarians will be delighted by Brill's recipes; nonvegetarians looking for dishes made with these unusual foods will be disappointed to find so many that call for ingredients like kudzu, lecithin, granules, liquid aminos, and the like (although there are alternatives suggested when possible). For vegetarian and other special collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The most seriously committed vegans forage for their own foods, taking advantage of some of nature's lesser-known but often intensely flavorful wild bounty. As "Wildman" Steve Brill points out in The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook, it takes a lot of education and plenty of experience to identify and make use of the bounty of the earth's forests and seas. Foragers must learn to distinguish not only between the toxic and the edible but also must discern which among the edible plants are actually tasty and worth harvesting and cooking. Brill offers an encyclopedia of lore and plenty of identifying botanical data for wild foods, but more pictures would help sort out these thousands of plants from one another, especially in the perilous world of fungi identification. Recipes abound, and they follow vegan principles, using everyday oils, vinegars, and other basic ingredients. Given contemporary culinary popularity of some wild foods--for instance, morels and ramps--Brill's book may well hold within its pages the first sightings of the restaurant world's next cutting-edge foods. Mark Knoblauch
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