I received an e-ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.
4 Stars
Some of these recipes sound seriously delicious. Others, like the Hobbit Hollow, which features acorn and mushroom flavors sound like Radagast the Brown wrote them (as a friend commented when I read her the recipe) and I’m not entirely sure they’re flavors I’m willing to try. I’m enthusiastically waiting for the weather in the Pacific Northwest to warm up so that I may try foraging for some of the ingredients needed to make some of these tasty sounding cocktails and infusions!
I’ll be honest, foraging for some of the ingredients used in the book is more work than I’ll ever be willing to put in, but there’s a nice selection of recipes I can make from things I have easy enough access to in my own yard or friends’ yards. I haven’t yet made any of the recipes because the ones I want to try are out of season, but I’m looking forward to when they are in season and I can try them out! The recipes are easy enough to follow and I anticipate interesting tasting results!
This book was beautifully designed with lovely photographs and a fun Northwest style throughout the book, even though it’s inclusive of foraged foods from other regions of the country. My only gripe is that I wish recipes had some kind of visual cue as to what season to forage the ingredients in. So many of the foraged ingredients are seasonal, it would be nice to have an at-a-glance way to tell what recipes I can make in each season, rather than having to research every ingredient before I can decide what to make when. That aside, I appreciated the responsible foraging tips Zachos included throughout.
This review was first published to Goodreads on April 7, 2017.
Alex Can Read 