Three New Cookbooks Celebrate Foraging

If by now you haven’t gone foraging, eaten foraged foods at a restaurant, or at least seen a headline about foraging somewhere in your newsfeed, you might be living under a rock — though if you live under an actual rock, there’s a good chance you’ve been disturbed by foragers in search of the rich, damp soil that is an ideal habitat for fungi. The primary source of sustenance for most of human history, foraging began to fall out of fashion with the invention of agriculture about 12,000 years ago, and its decline continued somewhat steadily until 2020.

A surge in curiosity about foraging is, in many ways, an obvious reaction to being in a pandemic, heavily linked to an intense desire to be outside in a safe and spacious environment. It is also a natural offshoot of a long-growing interest in knowing where our food comes from and (for those of us who have the means to do so) a preference for sourcing ingredients that are locally and sustainably produced. On top of this, the trend carries an element of “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone,” a sense of urgency and appreciation for species and ecosystems endangered by the climate crisis.

Whatever the causes behind public interest in roots, shoots, and mycelium, foraging is no longer only for survivalists and suppliers to fine dining establishments — it is the subject of social media tutorials and weekend workshops for the masses. And yet, between the guarding of secret gathering grounds and the lethal risk of making a rookie mistake, it can be intimidating to begin, especially for women and members of marginalized communities who may not feel comfortable alone in isolated areas.

Just in time for the abundance of spring and its ramps, morels, and other wild delicacies, three new cookbooks from women who forage celebrate a more inclusive and accessible approach to finding one’s food. They invite each of us to join in the joy of nature’s game of hide-and-seek as a long-term practice, rather than a temporary hobby, with the help of practical guides and creative recipes to make use of whatever is growing in this moment.

Rooted Kitchen: Seasonal Recipes, Stories, and Ways to Connect to the Natural World

Ashley Rodriguez
Clarkson Potter, out now

“This book is a love letter to nature,” Ashley Rodriguez declares in the introduction of Rooted Kitchen. Every page that follows is evidence not only of her profound relationship to the natural world, but also her sincere wish for others to step outside and fall in love, too. Readers feel her presence in the foraging anecdotes she weaves throughout the cookbook — starting with one from her childhood plucking huckleberries from the bushes that thrive in her native Pacific Northwest region — but she always pays deference to the earth as the provider of our sustenance, and to the Indigenous communities that have long cared for the land and carried the knowledge of how to safely and sustainably forage.

Organized by season into four main sections, the book begins with the sunlit sensory overload of spring. From there, Rodriguez expertly navigates the energetic ebbs and flows of the year through her recipes, encouraging us not just to eat what’s in season, but to pace ourselves and adjust our means of food preparation according to natural cycles. Summer dishes, for example, “are more about assembling than cooking,” and Rodriguez reminds us that “everything tastes better outdoors” with ample recipes suited to picnics, camping, and cooking over an open fire. Her passion for foraging is the clear combination of her interests in the culinary and botanical worlds; she displays equal affection for observing lilac leaves unfurling outside her window and layers of puff pastry rising in her oven. “Pay attention,” Rodriguez urges, and this advice is as well-applied in the kitchen as it is in the wilderness.

Rodriguez accompanies each season’s section with an ingredient spotlight and a technique to help readers enjoy their foraged foods. Rooted Kitchen includes creative recipes and useful identification information for more familiar wild edible plants, like dandelion leaves and nettles, as well as some that we may know without ever having tasted them, like maple blossoms and spruce tips.

Into the Weeds: How to Garden Like a Forager

Tama Matsuoka Wong
Hardie Grant, out now

Tama Matsuoka Wong is the forager for some of New York City’s top restaurants, supplying Michelin-starred institutions like Restaurant Daniel and Dirt Candy. Her Into the Weeds is not a traditional cookbook, but a reminder that these dining establishments and our own daily dinners would not exist were it not for foragers, growers, and all the people who facilitate the journey of an ingredient from the earth to our tables. “We bring nature next to us,” Matsuoka Wong says of working with the land, “hold it within our hands, embrace curiosity and humbleness, and in doing so, glimpse some of the secrets of the universe.” Her reverent tone is a refreshing divergence from the ego-driven narratives of chef cookbooks, indicating a deeper understanding of food — the taste of which often has little to do with the person manipulating it just before a meal.

Whereas most recipes begin in the kitchen, Matsuoka Wong’s bring us outside, giving new meaning to the common initial instruction to “gather the ingredients” and encouraging us to find or grow as many as we can in our nearby natural surroundings. The book, which is organized into sections called Recipes, Projects, Activities, and Top Foraging Plants to Savor, is highly practical and deeply philosophical at the same time. “What is truly wild?” Matsuoka Wong asks. “When did we leave the wild behind and start cultivating? The answer is that we never did and despite our best efforts, we’ve never really extinguished the ways of the wild.” Her detailed observations of natural spaces and plants have a spellbinding effect, drawing us into the slow, sensorial experience of her work. Her recipes for Clammy Goosefoot Forager’s Salad Dressing, Fig Leaf Gimlet, Feral Apple Spread, and Honeysuckle Tea read like an ethereal menu for elves, but they are rooted in the rich traditions of her Japanese heritage, as well as the land where she lives in New Jersey.

Forage & Feast: Recipes for Bringing Mushrooms & Wild Plants to Your Table

Chrissy Tracey
Ten Speed Press, April 9

The pages of Forage & Feast burst with color like a springtime field of flowers, matching Chrissy Tracey’s vibrant energy and earnest enthusiasm for foraging. Her aesthetic sense is apparent in her recipes and even in her approach to gathering wild foods. Beyond the necessary sustainability precautions related to the future of a given plant and its role in an ecosystem, Tracey — in speaking of harvesting magnolia for a simple syrup — advises, “pluck one or two leaves from each flower, so you don’t detract from the beauty of the tree.” It is a rare acknowledgement of the important role of beauty, a reason in itself to protect the natural world from our destructive and extractive tendencies as humans.

Tracey formed her connection with foraging early in life. She partially inherited it from her Jamaican ancestry and was partially inspired by two experiences with wild garlic that eventually called her to pursue foraging in a professional capacity, creating plant-based menus as a chef in Connecticut. Her vegan recipes delight in what is available, rather than what is missing; such resourcefulness adds layers of earthy complexity to dishes like Strawberry Knotweed Toaster Tarts and Delicata Squash Donuts with Black Trumpet Caramel.

The chapters are arranged by season. Each highlights a handful of ingredients at the season’s peak, along with helpful identification cues, including appearance, smell, and taste, as well as details about habit, harvest season, and dangerous lookalikes. Forage & Feast begins with Foraging 101, providing advice for beginners on a number of key topics pertaining to this practice, including safety, tools, etiquette, and finding your foraging community.

Elena Valeriote is a writer of stories about food, farming, culture, and travel that explore the connection between people and place. Her work has appeared in publications including Gastro Obscura, Modern Farmer, and Life & Thyme.