The Barter System

Tonight's dinner was the result of ways old and new: the barter system and social networking. Last fall a friend of mine on Twitter, Corky Luster, back-channeled me with a request: might I have some wild mushrooms to trade? As a matter of fact, I did. I set aside vacuum-sealed freezer bags of porcini and chanterelles. In return, he would give me a package of wild duck breast fillets.

Corky, besides being a duck hunter, is also a bee keeper and the proprietor of Ballard Bee Company. In the small-world-that-is-Seattle, his bee's wax was an ingredient in a medicinal balm made from cottonwood bud that my friend Melissa Poe gave to me in exchange for a jar of my Oregon grape preserves. For his part, Corky got some of the cottonwood bud in addition to the mushrooms.

And so it goes. We're physically connected by our diverse appreciation and use of nature's  bounty, and those connections spread out through society and loop back to us with the help of technological connections and associations. Is that too much for some believers in the American mythology of go-it-alone rugged individualism?

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Dylan was thinking about close-mindedness and the social change of the sixties when he wrote those lines to "Ballad of a Thin Man," but we might as well flash-forward to today and consider all the Joneses who scoff at any idea that doesn't fit into their narrow box. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, unknown and unheralded, there are committed folks trying to make their own small repairs to broken institutions such as our food system (corn subsidies, anyone?).

As the world continues to spin off into increased turmoil, I believe it's instructive to examine old ways and make them new again. The barter economy is just one example—and if such a seeming anachronism is nudged back into vogue with a little help from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other gizmos of the New New Age, so be it.

Back to those wild duck fillets. They got lost in the freezer for a while, but I found them the other day while inventorying my stash of frozen razor clams and immediately thawed them out. I took Corky's advice and did a quick grilling over high heat. First, I made a teriyaki marinade and sauce.

Teriyaki Marinade

1/3 cup aji-mirin
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp hot oil
1 tsp black vinegar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tbsp garlic, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced

Bring aji-mirin to boil, then reduce heat to low simmer for 5 minutes. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, hot oil, vinegar, sugar, garlic, and ginger. Simmer for another 5 minutes.

I used about half the teriyaki to marinate the duck fillets, along with 2 chopped scallions and heaping teaspoons of minced garlic and ginger. Next I added a couple teaspoons of corn starch to the remaining teriyaki to thicken it into sauce. This got poured over the grilled duck fillets along with a quick sauté of chopped scallions, chanterelles, and more garlic and ginger.

It was nice to see my boy, with his inherited trait of thalassemia beta minor, devour his iron-rich duck and ask for more. His world will hopefully do a better job of reconciling new ways with old.

Mountain Huckleberries

I ate a bowl of blueberries the other morning, and while a bowl of blueberries is always welcome, it also reminded me why I take the trouble to head up into the mountains and spend a day picking huckleberries. The domesticated blue ain't got nothing over a wild huck. Just saying.

This year isn't looking like a banner huckleberry harvest in the North Cascades, but anything is better than last year. Last year the bears got into all kinds of trouble in town because the huckleberry crop failed so miserably. This year the bears should be a little more content. At least my go-to spot had ripe berries on the bush the other day, if not good quantities. Last year the only reason to go huckleberrying was to find porcini under the bushes.

Per usual, I spread the hucks on cookie sheets and popped them into the freezer for a couple hours. Once the berries were frozen I scraped them into freezer bags. This way we can reach into a bag and grab a handful whenever the need strikes. This need strikes my daughter quite frequently. She's a huckleberry fiend, so I need to get back up into the mountains soon or she's liable to get ornery. You don't want an ornery huckleberry-hankering six-year-old at home. It's like having a bear loose in the house.

Pickled Kelp

Recently I camped out with the family at Deception Pass State Park, one of the true gems in Washington State's park system. While beach combing and fishing for humpies, we came across a six-foot long strand of bull whip kelp (Nereocyctis luetkeana) that had washed ashore. The kelp looked like it was still in good shape (it didn't have the white splotches characteristic of an over-the-hill specimen), so we bagged it up and took it home.

Healthy kelp forests are the old-growth stands of the ocean. A hundred feet or more in length from sea floor to surface, they support a diversity of life. I've seen this diversity first-hand while free-diving in Puget Sound. Lingcod, greenling, and rockfish forage among the kelp forests; sea otters, seals, and other critters seek refuge from predators; and countless invertebrates make their homes there.

Our find immediately put me in mind of Jennifer Hahn and her wonderfully useful and poetic Pacific Feast: A Cook's Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine. Hahn calls seaweeds the "most nutritious vegetables on Earth"—and the only vegetables that dance: "They jump and jerk to the bass thunder of waves. They shimmy and shake to the ebb and flood tide." I just knew she would have a good recipe for the kelp. Sure enough, when we got home I thumbed through my copy and found this recipe for pickled kelp.

I've eaten plenty of kelp pickles over the years but never actually made  them myself. For this recipe, imagine a typical bread-and-butter pickle, with its crunch and spicy sweetness, and add to it a subtle hint of the sea. After tasting these pickles, you'll look at a seaweed-strewn beach in a whole new way.

I cut Jennifer's recipe in half since my strand of kelp was on the small side, and I probably could have cut it in half again.

2 cups kelp rings
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 clove garlic, diced
1 1/2 tbsp pickling spice
2 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 red onion, cut in crescents

1. Make the brine. Mix vinegar, garlic, spices, and white sugar in a sauce pan. Set aside.
2. Cut the kelp into foot-long sections. Peel each section with a potato peeler.
3. Slice each peeled section into 1/4-inch rings.
4. Add the kelp rings into the brine and set aside for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
5. After brining for 2 hours, boil contents for 5 minutes.
6. Spoon kelp rings and juice into canning jars and process in hot water bath for 10 minutes.

The pickles cure in three weeks, although we couldn't wait; after just a week in the jar they tasted darn good and brought back fine memories of a sunny long weekend at the beach.

Note: check state and local regulations before harvesting seaweeds. In Washington it's only legal to harvest beached bull whip kelp; cutting a living kelp stipe is illegal.

High Tide Soup

Recently I had the pleasure of hanging out with a couple mad scientists of the kitchen in Washington's San Juan Islands. Eric (besides being an '80s pop aficionado and rapper-in-training) is a sous chef at Blueacre Seafood in Seattle and Scott is a software developer by day and the proprietor of the restlessly inventive Seattle Food Geek blog the rest of the time. It was my job to supply these two gastronomic alchemists with foraged wild foods so they could do their culinary magic.

If you're a regular reader, you know I'm mostly about comfort food, the kind you can make in your own kitchen without an arsenal of specialized tools and exotic ingredients. I don't pretend to be a trained chef or a molecular gastronaut. But I like to eat, and I'm open to all forms of eating. On Lopez Island Eric turned me on to a soup he likes to call High Tide because it evokes the sea with all its shifting flotsam and jetsam.

Despite the "high concept" appearance, this dish is right in my wheelhouse. First of all, it takes the principles of nose to tail eating, which we generally associate with landed livestock, to the oceans, where most of our prey is still wild yet diminishing. The backbone of the soup, so to speak, is the backbone of a salmon, the sort of leftover piece that usually gets chucked in the trash if not used for crab bait. Not in my house. It was the backbone of a silver salmon that supplied the meat for the risotto Hank Shaw made at my house, and my Salmon Head Soup distinguished itself enough to be included in the Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook.

This time around the salmon was a pink, or humpy, as it's also known, and its backbone was the key ingredient in a satisfyingly complex salmon broth. A quick word on pinks: at one time, when the rivers of the Northwest teemed with salmon, the pink was reviled in comparison to its more toothsome cousins, the chinook, sockeye, and silver. Now it's the most plentiful wild salmon species in Puget Sound and demands our gustatory attention. Though not as versatile as its fattier relatives, pinks are still worthy with the right preparation.

The "meat" of the soup was entirely vegetarian—and terrestrial at that. Looking like weird sea creatures washed in by the tide, the leek bottoms and carrot tops, like the salmon backbone, are the sort of things that usually get tossed away. Shaved red cabbage completed the picture. I butter-poached these vegetables in clarified butter for a good 20 minutes or so, until the carrots were tender and the leeks and cabbage slightly caramelized with hints of brown.

It's impossible to overstate how impressed I was by this soup. The tidal broth was a hit of umami—not too fishy, with an earthy balance of leek flavor—while the sea creatures within absolutely bursted with flavor from the butter-poaching. The carrots tasted like the best sort of stewed carrot and the leek bottoms had a toastiness that was almost as unexpected as the chewy texture of the tentacles...err...roots.

This will be a dish that I serve at the next dinner party.

The Tide

2 small to medium salmon backbones (or 1 large)
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
1 tbsp olive oil
3 leeks, just green tops, chopped
1 handful parsley, chopped
1 quart water
salt and pepper, to taste

Saute the onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil until softened. Add water and heat to a low simmer. Add the salmon backbones, leeks, and parsley. Do not allow to boil. Cook at least 2 hours. Adjust seasoning. Strain soup through colander and again through fine mesh and cheesecloth, until clear. Return to pot. Add thinly sliced rounds of leek bulb and keep warm until ready to serve. Cooking the broth at low heat will prevent it from being too fishy, while the leeks—both the green tops and white slices—will balance the flavor, amplifying the wonderfully comfortable umami.

The Sea Creatures

1 stick butter
3 leek bottoms, with roots, rinsed
4-5 carrot tops, with green nub
1 handful shaved red cabbage

Clarify the butter, then in a small sauce pan butter-poach the leek bottoms, carrot tops, and red cabbage for 20 minutes or so, until the cabbage is starting to brown at the edges and the carrots and leeks are tender. Use tongs to turn the vegetables periodically.

Plate the butter-poached vegetables in bowls and ladle broth. Serves 2.

This was just one of 10 courses that Eric prepared with Scott's help in the islands. I'll be posting more on this extraordinary feast in the future, when the video treatment is edited.

Mountain Morels

Morel season is over, but at the Perennial Plate my new friends Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine have captured on video the thrill of the hunt and the lip-smacking toast of success that is a fruitful morel foray in a truly beautiful place. Check it out!


The Perennial Plate Episode 69: Mountain Morels from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

Dept. of Horn-blowing

Here at FOTL headquarters we're pleased to announce a couple profile-raising media events of late. First, check out the September issue of Sunset magazine: "Digging for Dinner," page 80. The eight-page spread will tell you all you need to know to embark on a West Coast clamming adventure.

Second, take a peek at Daniel Klein's latest webisode (#68) of Perrenial Plate, featuring seaside foragers Hank Shaw and yours truly, oyster farmer John Adams, and Herbfarm chef Chris Weber. Here's what you don't see in the video. Earlier in the morning John, Daniel, and I dug for a truly stupendous geoduck near the low tide line only to be thwarted by its depth, the seriously vacuum-sealed nature of its lair, and the inexorable force of the rising tide. This was a bummer because it was a BIG clam and I think we all had visions of grandeur before the harsh reality of a failed dig set in. So we regrouped farther up the beach and ran into a whole new host of problems, including a nasty substrate of broken oyster shells and then the coup de grace captured on film... Really, I thought the miserable sound of crunching wood—a broken shovel—was the death knell. Tune in to find out what happens.


The Perennial Plate Episode 68: A Tale of Three Seasides from Daniel Klein on Vimeo.

Red Huckleberries with Chef Donald Link

New Orleans chef Donald Link (Herbsaint, Cochon) came to town last month to see what was happening in the Seattle food scene and film a few segments for his webcast Taste of Place on the Delish Channel. The chef wanted to spend a day foraging while he was here. Mid-July is actually an in-between time for the Northwest forager. Many of the spring greens have gone to seed and most berries are not yet ripe.

There is one berry, though, that begins to ripen in early July, the first of the many species of huckleberry native to the Pacific Northwest: Vaccinium parvifolium, the red huckleberry. With this in mind, I brought Donald to the huckleberry patch to forage some berries for the dinner he would cook later that week at Kurtwood Farms.

There are 13 varieties of huckleberry in Washington State. All are edible, and I've never found one that wasn't delicious. Some are tart, some are sweet. Some, like the red huckleberry, are early fruiters, while others, like the evergreen huckleberry, fruit late into fall. This is why it's good to know many different species of huckleberry: you can find them in different habitats at different times of year. Red huckleberries are found in low-elevation mixed forests, most commonly on the West Coast from California to Alaska, though they can be found as far east as Idaho.

Picking huckleberries is an exercise in carpal tunnel syndrome but it's worth remembering that a little can go a long way, especially with red hucks. They have a beautiful, almost unworldly red hue, and a very distinctive taste. Donald would make expert use of these two qualities—the color and flavor—by adding them sparingly to an appetizer and a dessert.

By the time I arrived at Kurtwood Farms on Vashon Island, Donald had already put in a full day harvesting fresh vegetables, breaking down a pig, and sampling cheeses with owner (and author) Kurt Timmermeister. He even got to play with a geoduck. Donald used the red hucks to top a crostini of melted camembert (click here for video recipe) and with Kurt's raspberries in an egg custard.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he looked at the camera and said, "Cooking is my vacation." I believed him.

To watch the entire 6-minute webisode of Chef Donald Link's visit to Seattle, click here.

Telluride ShroomFest 31

The mushroom people came out in full force this weekend in Telluride, Colorado, to celebrate fungal magic in its many-splendored glory. This was my first trip to ShroomFest, now in its thirty-first year and one of the biggest mushroom gatherings in the country. As I've said before, the mushroom people, with their appreciation of the outdoors and nature, fondness for good food and wine, and generally impish sense of humor, are my kind of people.

But while many mushroom-related fairs and exhibits try to downplay the more eccentric sideshows in mushroom culture, in Telluride the weirdness was on full display. Noted mycologists gave talks with titles such as "Magic Mushrooms, The Merry Pranksters and Medicinal Mushrooms for the Soul"; "Mushrooms, Monks & Mystical Experiences"; and "Hallucinogenic Mushrooms of North America." During his closing remarks for Saturday night's keynote lecture, Paul Stamets reminded the audience of the importance of freedom of thought, noting that mushroom-induced mind expansion has the potential to promote imagination and creativity.

In many ways this openness about the psychoactive properties of mushrooms is refreshing. Psilocybin mushrooms in particular have been used by human beings for centuries for ritualistic, shamanistic, and religious purposes, and just because our current government has decided to make these natural substances Class 1 controlled drugs doesn't change our perpetual desire to seek altered perspectives, larger truths, and good old fashioned intoxication.

Maybe this is why certain academics aren't afraid to don silly hats and wave their freak flags high. It would be impossible to act more clownish than hypocritical public officials who endeavor to contain humanity's ongoing search for higher consciousness.

Mycological luminaries in town for the fun included the aforementioned Stamets, whose work in applied mycology is helping to solve world problems from oil spills to hunger; Gary Lincoff, an original founder of the festival and author of the Audubon Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America; Michael Beug, retired professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and den leader of sorts for his mentoring of leading mycologists and myconauts through the years; and Larry Evans of Know Your Mushrooms fame.

Telluride is an appropriate venue. Known for its dramatic scenery and a summer schedule choked with festivals, so much so that the locals look to the Nothing Festival for a breather, this old mining village turned ski resort has a history of attracting seekers, nonconformists, and iconoclasts. Did I mention the scenery? While the talks and slideshows at ShroomFest 31 had me circling my schedule with ballpoint ink until it ripped from the abuse, the pull of the San Juans was strong. On Saturday the mountains lured me away from the lecture hall for a foray up to Dunton Meadows.

Truth be told, my expectations weren't high. Monsoons came early to southern Colorado this summer—and then left. August has been dry. The mushrooms responded with an initial flush a few weeks ago that petered out with the lack of more recent rain. On Saturday's foray I followed a long convoy led by Larry Evans to the far side of Lizard Head Pass, which boasts heart-stopping views of some of the most beautiful vistas in the Rockies. Here, where high meadows mingled with seams of spruce and fir, we worked hard to find a few lingering king boletes not yet infested with worms and the season's first chanterelles, still small yet firm and aromatic.

Joined by my old friends Cowboy and Betty, we wandered the meadows and forests. Our boys, sharp-eyed and close to the ground, uncovered hidden stashes of mushrooms despite the challenging conditions. The joyful tune of "I've got one!" rang out through the woods as they raced from tree to tree. When the thunder and lightning started, as it inevitably does on summer afternoons in the Rockies, we packed it in and drove back down the mountain, coming across one poor soul, shirtless and wild-eyed, who had spent most of the day lost in the territory. "Call Search and Rescue and tell them I'm found," he said sheepishly.

Back in town the annual parade kicked off, rallying the mushroom people for a counter culturally-tinged procession down main street.

Young and old strutted their fungal stuff, some holding signs in case you didn't know where they stood on the issues.

At one point the pace car, painted a jaunty Amanita red and white, broke down. No worries. The mushroom people happily pushed it through the streets.

It was hard, at least for me, to not see this limping, shroomified jalopy as a metaphor. The mushroom people are intrigued by a little-known kingdom that's barely on the radar of the average citizen. Just the same, this kingdom may be more crucial to human existence than we realize, and a dedicated band of adherents will continue to plumb its mysteries.

Resident Silvers

Over the years I've caught most of my salmon while standing either in a river or on a beach—I'm just too much of a cheapskate to hire a charter. Last week, though, with Hank and Holly in town, I took a rare opportunity to fish for salmon while standing on a boat. Here's the funny thing: I was standing on a boat within sight of a public beach where I sometimes stand with rod in hand for free.

But don't get me wrong: the action was all offshore. The boat was a charter out of Shilshole Marina in Seattle operated by Captain Nick Kester of All Star Fishing Charters and the beach was Golden Gardens. Though I didn't actually get a chance to hoist a rod myself, I watched my boy reel in the first of two silver salmon, which was even better.

Just a week before, Riley was building sand castles with his sister a few hundred yards to the east from where we were now trolling flashers and cut-plugged herring. Most of the year the parking lot at Golden Gardens is near empty, but on sun-splashed summer days the park's sandy waterfront overflows with Seattlites determined to experience the novelty of a day at the beach. I guess I was a little surprised to find out that more than a few salmon charters work the rips right off that beach, too.

The upside of a charter is that your chances of catching fish are about as good as they get; the downside is that you'll be catching those fish with the aid of down-riggers, which means you're mostly reeling. At first Riley was baffled by this unfamiliar setup. After the first rod popped and he was called to duty, he saw the plus side. It's a fact that a guided charter using down-riggers and fishfinders takes a lot of guesswork out of fishing—and it's also a fact that the live-wire excitement of having a salmon on the line increases exponentially on most days with such advantages.

Resident silvers (aka coho, Oncorhynchus kisutch) are fish that never leave Puget Sound. They hatch in local rivers, rear in the Sound, and return to those same rivers to spawn. While in the Sound they dine on a diet of amphipods and small bait fish, rarely attaining the size of silvers that leave the Sound altogether for the wilderness of the North Pacific. Those silvers, sometimes called "ocean hooknoses," can be much larger, with the males displaying deeply kyped jaws.

A devoted band of saltwater fly-fishermen pesters the resident silvers for most of the year. Just about any point of land sticking into the Sound can be a possible fly-fishing spot when a combination of tides and currents brings the feeding fish close to shore. The Tacoma Narrows in particular, with its fast-moving currents, is a place where anglers gather to cast from the beach. In spring the resident silvers are trout-sized; as the summer wears on they put on weight and look more like salmon fit for a barbecue, albeit on the small side; by early fall the fish are in a feeding frenzy, a last-ditch effort to fatten up before the spawn. This is when most beach fishermen seek them out. By then the resident silvers are about as big as they'll get, usually in the four or five-pound range, and the ocean silvers are just arriving, giving the angler a shot at a 12-pounder.

To be honest, fishing for resident silvers with all the advantages of boat, down-rigger, and bait felt a little dirty. In retrospect we probably should have asked the captain to motor a dozen extra miles out to the chinook grounds, where the fish and tackle are more suitably matched. But like a good captain, his first concern was getting his clients—which numbered two Californians prohibited by law in their own state from fishing depleted stocks of silvers—into fish.

That night we ate grilled salmon over risotto in nose-to-tail fashion. Meat from the salmon cheeks went into the risotto, as did the roe. The carcasses made a wonderful broth, some of which we used for the risotto while the rest went into the freezer. Hank had some very nice saffron on hand to tart up the risotto along with white wine, Walla Walla sweet onion, English shelling peas, and lemon zest. A fitting feast after a good afternoon on the water.

Photo at top and second from top by Holly Heyser.

Honest Food

I'm sure I don't have to introduce readers of this blog to Hank Shaw. Shaw is the proprietor of the Hunter Angler Gardener Cook blog, which has been nominated for numerous awards and garnered two IACP medals. He's also—full disclosure—a friend of mine. Now Shaw has a new book out which is taking the foraging community by storm. It's called Hunt, Gather, Cook, which is a pretty good description of how he lives his life. You might add Write in there too, since he's been a reporter for two decades and understands how to bring the intricacies of the forager's metier to the general public—no small feat.

On its face, Hunt, Gather, Cook is an introduction to wild foods with recipes, but it's also a clarion call. Hank's web address is HonestFood.net, and that's what his main aim is: to show you how to eat well in way that stimulates mind and body, in an age dominated by watching rather than participating. Shaw answers an essential question—why bother?—at the very beginning of Chapter One. "First off, it's fun," he writes. "There's a certain 'wow' factor when you serve guests an elegant dish of, say, nettle pasta, or empanadas filled with cheese and lamb's-quarters, or dolmades made with mallow leaves instead of grape leaves." If you're happy pushing a grocery cart through fluorescent-lit aisles and choosing between the most colorful boxes of pre-fab food, then this book isn't for you (or maybe it's especially for you); finding your own food is about more than nourishment—it's about an activity that's good for the soul. There is satisfaction in growing a tomato that actually tastes like a tomato; in digging a clam and eating it on the same beach; in stacking your freezer with venison from a deer that died so that you can live.

Growing, foraging, or hunting your own food is a reminder that, no matter what the cynics say, you are still a part of the natural world and the food chain. At one time, these pursuits constituted humanity's main job. Now we have other work to occupy us (like trying to monetize web sites), but food finding is still a basic need that satisfies an ancient desire.

Enough proselytizing. So what's in the book?

It's divided into three main sections: foraging plants, nuts, and berries; fishing and shellfish; and hunting. In the plant section Shaw covers stalwarts such as stinging nettles and dandelions but also more intensive aspects of foraging such as harvesting and processing acorns, not to mention fringe-like pursuits such as brewing madrone bark tea. In the fishing section Shaw shows his stripes as a former commercial clammer ("The sea is one of God's great cathedrals, and it is the one that most stirs me within," he writes in the chapter head). Entire books have been written just about fly-fishing with sub-surface flies, so a few chapters devoted to the sea can only be a starting point, but even so there is good advice here for beginners, for instance on deep sea fishing: "Ocean fishing is one of the few areas where being a do-it-yourselfer isn't always the best idea." Charter a boat, he recommends. There are chapters on crabs, panfish, and even "misfits" such as eels, blowfish, and oyster toads, whatever those are (Shaw fries them).

The last section, on hunting, perhaps best encapsulates Shaw's notions of honest food. He came to hunting late in life, though he's learned enough to stock his freezer mostly with game meats and he's lost his taste for store-bought beef. This is also the section in which Shaw feels a need to explain himself, because, let's face it, the world is full of people opposed to hunting. "I've learned more about how and why nature does what she does in a morning spent hunting in the marsh or forest than most could in a year," he writes. This section is aimed squarely at that emerging demographic of urban weekend warrior thinking about purchasing his or her first hunting rifle. Shaw covers the basics on small mammals, large mammals, upland game-birds, and waterfowl. There is also a chapter on wild boar and charcuterie.

Hunt, Gather, Cook is not so much a field guide as it is a primer to whet the would-be forager's appetite. Those looking for color photos and point-by-point identification are advised to look elsewhere (and it should be mentioned that there is no such thing as a single reference guide to foraging in North America; even regional guides cannot be entirely comprehensive, to the dismay of some book buyers who expect all this information between two covers). Instead, Shaw's book provides the raison-d'être to go out and get your own food as well as a healthy dose of inspiration in the form of anecdotes and asides. The recipes are a diverse mixture of down home, far-flung, and cheffy. The overall effect is that of a friendly mentor taking you by the hand to reveal the hidden splendors of nature's pantry.

Shaw will be in Seattle to promote Hunt, Gather, Cook for the next few days, with an action-packed itinerary of dinners, talks, and other events. You can read more about his book tour here.