Book review: The Wild Table

The Wild Table: Seasonal Foraged Food and Recipes

I came across this book about a week ago, and I was extremely excited about finding it. I was not disappointed. This book is an amalgamation of many of my favorite things: food, wild harvesting, cooking, and sustainability. While this book is targeting a North American audience, many of the foods outlined in this book are found where I am currently living in the Azores, and they also can also be found where I was previously living in Turkey.

I should note that this is not an identification guide.Great hints are given for proper identification, but a good guidebook or two, and if you are lucky, a local wild food gatherer as well, should join you on your harvesting trips.

Overall, I found this an entertaining read, and I was very inspired to get out and search my local area even more for wild foods.

From the publisher:
A captivating cookbook by a renowned forager of wild edibles-with more than one hundred sumptuous recipes and full-color photographs. In the last decade, the celebration of organic foods, farmer's markets, and artisanal producers has dovetailed with a renewed passion for wild delicacies. On the forefront of this movement is longtime "huntress" Connie Green, who sells her gathered goods across the country and to Napa Valley's finest chefs including Thomas Keller and Michael Mina.

Taking readers into the woods and on the roadside, The Wild Table features more than forty wild mushrooms, plants, and berries- from prize morels and chanterelles to fennel, ramps, winter greens, huckleberries, and more. Grouped by season (including Indian Summer), the delectable recipes-from Hedgehog Mushroom and Carmelized Onion Tart and Bacon-Wrapped Duck Stuffed Morels, to homemade Mulberry Ice Cream- provide step-by-step cooking techniques, explain how to find and prepare each ingredient, and feature several signature dishes from noted chefs. Each section also features enchanting essays capturing the essence of each ingredient, along with stories of foraging in the natural world.

The Wild Table is an invitation to the romantic, mysterious, and delicious world of exotic foraged food. With gorgeous photography throughout, this book will appeal to any serious gatherer, but it will also transport the armchair forager and bring to life the abundant flavors around us.

Wild and Not-So-Wild Food Plants Near My House

The figs (likely Ficus carica) growing in my garden.

I wanted to quickly share some photos of the food plants I have found in my yard and within a block of my house. I will be using these in my kitchen for sure. Seeing what grows naturally around me gives me a good idea what "crops" will likely succeed in this area. 

A variety of mint (Mentha species) grows all over the place around here.

Wild Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) which doesn't form a bulb is a"weed" in my garden.

These Azorean Blackberries (Rubus hochstetterorum) are welcome in my garden.

There are little tufts of parsley (Petroselinum hortense) growing in any crevice it can find.

There are many walls and fields overrun by Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum species) which have edible, almost spicy flowers.

I thought this was corn from a distance, but it is not. I still think it is in the corn/maize (Zea) family. I'll keep an eye on it and see how it develops.

Tidepooling with my son!

Elijah and me on the Azorean coastline.

I take about 100 steps from my front gate and I am here on the rocky southern coast of the island on which we live. Most days of the week, I will go with one or both of my boys (or even the whole family) to "climb on the rocks" and visit the tide pools. This place is truly good for my soul. There is such an amazing diversity of life on this rugged jumble of rocks. Fish of all sizes, shrimp, crabs, starfish, sea snails, seaweeds and other sea plants, tiny things crawling all over the place, seagulls and terns and sparrows high overhead or fluttering close by... this black outcropping, called Ponta Negra (Black Point) by the locals, is so alive.

There is so much life here!

This Sunday, Father's Day in the U.S. and celebrated by us living overseas, I took Elijah with me to the tide pools. I took Isaac out shopping with me later in the day...that is another article coming soon. Walking along the rocks before the tide really started coming in, we saw a number of local Azorean men in wetsuits scooting along the water's edge carrying buckets. This is a pretty common scene. There is a large variety of foods to be gathered here. I have seen shrimp, large crabs, limpets (aquatic snails), and seaweeds already. I am planning to get some local insight on the types and cooking methods of these wild foods just as soon as my Portuguese gets a bit better. I am also barely able to wait for my snorkeling gear to get here as spearfishing is a very popular local activity. I am enamored with harvesting foods from the wild. I love that the locals have been doing this for hundreds of years in such a sustainable way. The sustainability I have already seen on the island is amazing, but this is also an article for another day.

Elijah pointing out is favorite limpet shell.

Here is Elijah in front of the tide pools at the beginning of our "adventure". The tide was just beginning to come in. As the waves were starting to splash a bit higher, we quickly climbed to higher ground. About twenty minutes after this photo of Elijah was taken, we were on the ledge behind Elijah in the far distance. I took the photo below which shows the same spot Elijah was standing now covered in water. How better to explain tides and how they change then to actually show it to your kids? To let them see it and feel it. What fun!