Wild in the Kitchen – Recipes for Wild Fruits, Weeds and Seeds by Ronna Mogelon

Wild in the Kitchen - Recipes for Wild Fruits, Weeds and Seeds by Ronna Mogelon
This book has the look and feel of the Moosewood Cookbook. The plant and food art within is stylistic – creating a down home mood more than serving to identify the plants illustrated within. Ronna Mogelon is a chef (she studied cooking at George Brown College in Toronto Canada), amateur naturalist, graphic designer and food stylist for the movie industry. She lives in a 100-year-old log home on a farm in rural Ontario Canada.

At the beginning of the book Ronna gives some brief tips on how to proceed if you are not a botanist, on preservation and canning, and has a small section on the conventional ingredients she prefers to use in her recipes. Her ‘recipe’ chapters are titled Berries; Flowers; Fruits; Greens; Mushrooms; and Roots. Recipes are offered plant by plant. So after a brief discussion and a few tips about using barberry, for instance, she’ll offer up one to four recipes.

Sometimes her tips are insightful and help you to improvise. Some of the recipes are titled: “Dandelion Flower Marmalade Jelly”, “Orange-and-Currant-Stuffed Wild Grape Leaves”, and “Charred Chicken with Fettucini and Creamed Morels”. At the end of the book she has a key to Latin names for plants she’s used in her recipes and a section for recommended readings. This book would make a sweet gift for the kind of person who would like the Moosewood cookbooks. The recipes would be fun to try for anyone who enjoys cooking with wild foods.

Order a copy from  Amazon