The Coastal Forager's Cookbook
Feasting Wild in the Pacific Northwest
- Publisher
- TouchWood Editions
- Initial publish date
- Jun 2023
- Category
- Natural Foods, Reference, Canadian
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781771514088
- Publish Date
- Jun 2023
- List Price
- $40.00
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Where to buy it
Description
A collection of 40 recipes that showcase foraged ingredients from the Pacific Northwest coast.
Long-time West Coast forager and the chef behind the popular Swallow Tail Supper Club, Robin Kort’s approach to cooking is a blend of simplicity and experimentation. Showcasing foraged ingredients like wild mushrooms, seaweed, fish and molluscs, flowers and evergreen tips, she brings together 40 recipes to inspire forays into tide and woods and a sense of adventure in the kitchen.
With a palate influenced by Japanese, Italian, and Spanish cuisine, and chapters organized around the four seasons, The Coastal Forager’s Cookbook offers recipes for starters, main dishes, desserts, and drinks, including
- Evergreen Ice Cream
- Halibut with Fermented Birch
- Wild Green Cannelloni
- Sea Lettuce Breadsticks
- Wild Mushroom Paté
- Braised Burdock Root Congee
- Salish Sea Dashi Hot Pot
Along the way Robin shares memories of her childhood on the West Coast and her world travels, tips on plant identification, and guidance on mindful, sustainable foraging. Illustrated with pencil sketches and lush food and landscape photography, The Coastal Forager’s Cookbook is a handsome addition to your cookbook shelf and will only increase your love for the Pacific Northwest’s edible abundance.
About the author
Robin Kort is a Pacific Northwest chef, forager, sommelier, and owner of Swallow Tail Culinary Adventures. She harvests and cooks between the mountains and the ocean near Vancouver, BC, and has been featured on the Food Network, ItteQ Japan, the CBC, the Huffington Post, Conde Nast Traveller, and in the Globe and Mail.
Excerpt: The Coastal Forager's Cookbook: Feasting Wild in the Pacific Northwest (by (author) Robin Kort)
INTRODUCTION
I’ve spent a lifetime exploring the lands and waters of the Pacific Northwest with food in mind. My home is a paradise for foragers, and I’ve harvested more than a few pockets’ worth of delicious plants, mushrooms and seafoods throughout the years. Over this time, I’ve woven these wild ingredients into myriad recipes. Old family recipes passed down from my grandmother, chef friends and mom keep me grounded and are the basis for all of my cooking. Cooking is like a form of meditation for me: repeating the same motions of cooks throughout time makes space for quiet contemplation and connection.
These recipes are a look into my life of traveling to places like Spain, Italy and Japan to eat, cook and learn from people and places with long traditions of using wild ingredients. At home, my dishes reflect the foraging expertise of Indigenous peoples who were living on the coast long before my family, and I am thankful for their help during my culinary journey through their lands and territories. This cookbook reflects my life as a coastal chef and strives to be a celebration of West Coast cuisine.
I am sharing my collected research with you in hopes that, like me, you will learn to connect the dots from wilderness to plate and begin to uncover some of the delicious secrets found everywhere in the Pacific Northwest, from the forest to the sea. My advice is to gently follow the seasons and harvest what is offered up fresh each month. In spring, we have the shoots and leaves; the flowers blossom and berries ripen in summer; we dig roots and fungi in the fall; and when winter’s frost settles in and drives the mushrooms underground, we head to the sea to pluck mussels from the rocks. This is the seasonal dance, although the exact timing of the steps may vary. A careful eye will watch for when the maple blossoms sashay in and the elderflowers take the stage. Make a mental note of these subtle changes to guide your foraging for years to come. When flowers have lost their petals at lower elevations near the sea, follow the cooler air up into the mountains and, just like magic, you’ll see that their sisters still have their blooms. Sometimes we lose touch with the natural rhythms of the seasons that are expressed by wild things. I believe it’s important to relearn these patterns, remember the steps and experience the joy in dancing with our planty partners. Nothing feels better than knowing how to move with the natural world. I hope that you enjoy learning a few of my steps.
Happy foraging.
Chef Robin
Editorial Reviews
"Naturally, the book will feature plenty of foraging insight including tips for easily identifying edible plants, as well as environmentally-minded information to help you be the best west coast forager you can be." —Eat North
"Many among us urbanites have lost the ability to find wild food or know how to cook any we forage. Chef Robin Kort seeks to remedy that lack in The Coastal Forager’s Cookbook." —BC Magazine
"Kort’s approach to cooking – a blend of ‘simplicity and experimentation’ – is an approach that teaches us to work with ingredients rather that make the ingredients work for us." —Scout Magazine
"In The Coastal Forager’s Cookbook, Chef Robin takes us on a beautiful and delicious journey in discovering Mother’s nature gift to us... Foraging is an educational foray into the wild... It is about listening to the land and sea." —Bruno Feldeisen, chef, author, and judge on The Great Canadian Baking Show, CBC and Netflix
"A chance to save some money on groceries, try new recipes or incorporate new ingredients into familiar ones. It’s an invitation, above all, to go out, explore and experience all that nature gifts to us." —Culinary Historians of Canada
"Kort’s book is as much a resource guide as it is a cookbook . . . Home cooks and outdoor enthusiasts also likely will appreciate the book’s division into seasons, highlighting the foraged goods at peak freshness." —425 Magazine
"The multitalented outdoorsperson-culinary artist isn’t just highly skilled and extremely knowledgeable . . . she also takes gorgeous photos." —Stir
"Chef Robin reminds readers of the cycles that inform us when the wild foods are best for foraging . . . Robin’s delicious recipes expand our repertoire of regenerative wild foods here on the West Coast." —Lori Snyder, Indigenous Métis Herbalist & Educator
"This book is a true delight... Robin has provided us with her own unique selection of foraged delicacies to use in her original culinary creations.... This book is a perfect fit for the Slow Food philosophy." —Nancy Turner, author of Plants of Haida Gwaii and The Earth’s Blanket
"Chef Robin’s exploration and study of the wild edibles of the Pacific Northwest has opened up a whole new grocery list of ingredients and flavors . . . Her thoughtful use of these ingredients create a modern spin on classic recipes taking very unique flavors and making them extremely approachable and delicious." —Chef Robert Belcham
"New books for gifting, or keeping, this holiday season" —EAT Magazine
