Rooted Kitchen
Seasonal Recipes, Stories, and Ways to Connect with the Natural World
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Deepen your relationship with the natural world through more than 80 delightfully inventive recipes featuring seasonal ingredients, plus thoughtful essays, tips, and basic techniques for foraging, preserving, and cooking over an open fire.
At a time when we urgently need to connect with the earth, Rooted Kitchen offers a fresh way to appreciate nature and the treasures it provides. Organized seasonally, you’ll find recipes to make the most of your farmers market or neighborhood foraging haul, such as a comforting Nettle Orecchiette with Sausage and Mint in spring (and how to use nettle leaves to make a nutritious, soothing cup of tea on chilly mornings); Nectarine Salad with Cucumber, Fennel, Feta and Herbs in summer; and Fire-Roasted Pumpkin Fondue with Chanterelles in fall.
You’ll also find tips for harvesting ingredients, from mushrooms to nettles to edible flowers, along with preserving, fermenting, beginner foraging techniques, and mindfulness activities. Seasonal ingredients are spotlighted so you can make the most of nearby nature. It can be as simple as pairing salmon with the distinct flavor of spruce tips snipped from a tree or plucking lilac blossoms and making Rhubarb-Lilac Jam to dollop on a pavlova. From small urban backyards to nearby parks to forests and beyond, when we become more connected to the outdoors through our food, it sparks a deeper connection to ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
YouTuber Rodriguez (Let's Stay In) encourages readers to commune with nature in this inspirational collection. "Cooking over a fire connects to a deep ancestral relationship with Earth," she asserts in a primer on campfire cuisine. Recipes are divided into seasons, with summer featuring zucchini blossom fritters with garam masala, and autumn offering a salad of roasted delicata squash, radicchio, and apples. Seattle-based Rodriguez promotes the local gathering of ingredients, but her taste ranges internationally; included are recipes for a simplified mushroom mole from Oaxaca and a green take on North African harissa. Some entries—like a carbonara with the nontraditional inclusion of clams—come with instructions for both cooking over an open fire and preparing in an indoor kitchen. Each chapter also includes a specific technique that ties into the season, such as preserving for summer. Rodriguez finds inspiration all around: foraged maple tree blossoms perk up a vinaigrette while fig leaves infuse the cream for panna cotta. The recipes lean toward the simple with innovative touches, as in a Caesar salad with a preserved-lemon dressing and roasted lentils scattered on top. There are a few inconsistencies, as when mushroom hunting appears in the spring chapter, and then wild mushrooms are a featured fall ingredient, but that's a minor quibble. Overall, this proves a thoughtful guide for those looking to forge a deeper connection to food.
