I generally like to play in the kitchen. I use recipe and cookbooks simply as guides.
And although I create recipes and post them on this site. I really try and encourage people to NOT slavishly follow my recipes or any recipes they find in books.
Cooking is about creatively interacting with your imagination. Your senses.
In bygone days, cookbooks often only listed ingredients. Not a quantity or measurement in sight.
How I wish cookbooks would return to this way of being produced.
I nearly did it with my own book, but then bottled-out.
In a nutshell, when it comes to following recipes. Don’t. Adapt. Play.
Here are my top recommended foraging and wild food cookbooks.
Use them for inspiration!
Note: Commissions may be earned from the links below.
The Eatweeds Cookbook
Daily forager Robin Harford covers over 35 plants with simple, easy to prepare recipes you can create in your kitchen in this delightful wild food cookbook. Each plant is beautifully illustrated with a Victorian botanical woodblock print.
Having foraged for his daily supper for over ten years, these recipes come directly from his kitchen. They have been field-tested by hundreds of people on his foraging courses making this wild food recipe book perfect for foraging enthusiasts everywhere. Read more.
The New Wildcrafted Cuisine
Pascal Baudar is a wild food experimentalist extraordinaire. This book is beautifully designed, with awesome, lip-smacking photos to die for.
If there’s one book to inspire. This is it. Nothing I have come across in the past few years even comes close.
Pascal is someone who truly plays with their wild imagination. Be inspired. If there was one book to get. This would be it. Read more.
The Irish Seaweed Kitchen
Prannie Rhatigan is pretty awesome. A lovely human being. And this is the best seaweed recipe book I’ve found.
The photographs and recipes are absolutely superb, and the Irish Seaweed Kitchen needs to grace the shelves of any self-respecting seaweed forager. Read more.
The Art of Fermentation
Sandor Katz is the god of fermentation. A close buddy of my plant mentor Frank Cook. Frank sadly died in 2009.
Sandor went on to become one of the world’s foremost authorities on the art of fermentation. Hence the title.
Whether you are just starting out exploring fermentation, or already pretty experienced, this book has to be on your shelf. Read more.
Edible Wild Plants & Herbs
In the early days, I used this book all the time. A bit of an unknown classic.
Delightfully illustrated, Pamela Michael has given us her own recipes. The ones she has obviously actually made.
So many cookbooks these days are “plucked out of thin air”. Meaning the author has simply cobbled the recipes together. Try and make them and they don’t work. This book delivers. Read more.
Foraging & Feasting
Another beautifully crafted book. I love people who take care of their creations and put real soul into their work. The illustrations are gorgeous. The recipes different.
I was one of the crowdfunding sponsors for the publication of this book. And it didn’t fail to impress. Read more.