Hunt, gather, cook Finding the forgotten feast

THE lamb shakes rain from his wool, pea tendrils rise from the earth and a new yield of cookbooks arrives on bookstore shelves, ready for the fire. I worked with more than a dozen this spring, cooking like a summertime madman and considering sentences beautiful and lame. I read fantasy and prepared truth, imagined myself cooking in England and France, Mumbai and California, Italy, Spain, North Carolina, Georgia, Vancouver, Seoul. I made beautiful meals and terrible ones, found myself well instructed, poorly instructed, often coddled, sometimes lied to, perpetually amused. Cookbooks aren't really about cooking, and haven't been since the advent of color photography and food stylists. They're mostly lifestyle catalogs, aspirational instruction manuals for lives we'd like to live. Prose used to have to do the heavy lifting in this regard. No more. Now images implore us to cook, and it can take a toll on the reading. This is true even if the prose is excellent, as in the case of AT ELIZABETH DAVID'S TABLE: Classic Recipes and Timeless Kitchen Wisdom (Ecco/HarperCollins, $37.50). A collection of dozens and dozens of David's simple, beautiful and bullet-proof recipes, tied together with a few essays and top-notes, it was compiled by Jill Norman and photographed by David Loftus. Anyone who has spent time thumbing through the thin, smudged pages of a paperback edition of one of David's books, looking for instruction and finding joy, will be shocked by the result. Absent are the spare pages gone yellow with age, the words ticking by beneath covers showing only a watercolor image, solid advice from this sensible, writerly woman, who died in 1992 at the age of 78. Gone is the experience of reading a description of a dish and then creating it yourself, with no physical model, no expectation that it must look like this or that: her marvelous pork in milk, for instance, or shoulder of lamb. Here instead is the food rendered in blooming center-focus color, the images as soft at the edges as a dream, instantly recognizable to all those who have seen Loftus's photographs before, in Jamie Oliver's cookbooks. It is weird, and disconcerting, for those who know the source material. The feeling is similar to the one that can arise when lush movies are made from favorite books. But for those who have never heard of David, who have never experienced the joy of her chicken baked with green pepper and cinnamon butter? This title serves as a good introduction - to be followed by trips to the used-book store for the originals, best consumed with an omelet and a glass of wine. Oliver's influence can be found up and down the cookbook piles this season. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the puckish seasonal-cooking advocate and champion of British food television, has turned directly toward Oliver's aesthetic in his RIVER COTTAGE EVERY DAY (Ten Speed Press, $32.50). With marvelous (Loftus-like!) photographs by Simon Wheeler, and a layout that owes something to 2008's "Jamie at Home," this book is more readerfriendly and useful than some of Fearnley-Whittingstall's past River Cottage offerings, and the food is ace. Start with the chicken and mushroom casserole with cider for dinner, or a celery root Waldorf salad for lunch. There aren't many days that can't be served by the rest. A reissue of Richard Olney's 1970 classic, THE FRENCH MENU COOKBOOK (Ten Speed Press, paper, $22), is emphatically not for everyday use, as its Dickensian subtitle may attest: "The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season - in Beautifully Composed Menus for American Dining and Entertaining by an American Living in Paris and Provence." But there are some excellent recipes in here all the same, for poached eggs and beef stew, stuffed artichoke bottoms and roast saddle of lamb, saffron rice with tomatoes, a pure and simple sauce ivoire. From the simple (peaches in red wine!) to the complex business of stuffing calves' ears for service with béarnaise sauce, this is a project book, best for cooks seeking intermediate badges or ju=nior-pilot wings. More accessible for the new cook and the exhausted, overworked experienced one alike is FRENCH CLASSICS MADE EASY (Workman, paper, $16.95), by Richard Grausman. Also a reissue, from a 1988 original, it combines smart advice for streamlined versions of timeless French dishes with a simple, reader-friendly and Workman-specific layout and type style that will be familiar to anyone who has cooked from the Silver Palate cookbooks. Here's a top-notch blanquette de veau darkened (to the good!) with morels, as well as fine instruction on making a truffled roast chicken, fast soufflés, aU the great French egg-yolk sauces, an onion tart and crêpes suzette. For those interested in, if slightly intimidated by, the intricacies of French cuisine, this book will be a balm. Jonathan Waxman's ITALIAN, MY WAY (Simon & Schuster, $32), seeks to do something similar for Italian cuisine. The book is slightly slap-dash, with recipes that can at times seem padded (two pages on arugula salad with olive oil and shaved Parmesan!) and black-and-white printing that does no justice to the legendary Christopher Hirsheimer's photographs. But if you can overlook the filler (recipes for peas with pancetta and mint, or smashed new potatoes) and the steep price tag, Waxman does have some excellent ideas for pork ribs, chicken and a seven-hour braise of lamb. And the instruction on how to make his salsa verde is worth a peek. Better value, though, can be found in THE FOOD OF SPAIN (Ecco/HarperCollins, $39.99), by Claudia Roden, a sweeping and tightly edited overview of the varied cuisines of the Iberian Peninsula. After a series of fascinating essays on the historical forces that led to the creation of various Spanish cuisines (among others: Celts and Jews, Frenchmen, monks, peasants and royals), Roden slips into the kitchen to deliver the goods. Here are basic dressings and sauces, simple tapas, complicated empanadas, ways to cook fish. Start with baked rice with an egg crust: a casserole of browned spare ribs, chicken, sausages and chickpeas, bound by arborio rice, flavored with paprika and served below a duvet of scrambled egg. Then run with the bulls. Those who thrill to Roden's work are not the audience for MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness (Grand Central Life & Style, $30), by the actress, professional famous person and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow. This is a beginner's book, appropriate to first-apartment dwellers who have found sophistication in wardrobe and employment but not yet in the kitchen. But it isn't bad for that, if you can keep the snark about a stick-thin celebrity who used to be a vegan writing a book on what she learned about cooking from her wealthy television-producer father at bay (which is, let me tell you, difficult). Paltrow's recipe for rotisserie-style roast chicken, pulled in equal measure from the chef Joël Robuchon and the Brentwood Country Mart in Los Angeles, helps a great deal. If Paltrow's book is aimed squarely at a particular subset of the young female population, Esquire's EAT LIKE A MAN: The Only Cookbook a Man Will Ever Need (Chronicle, $30), edited by Ryan D'Agostino, shoots for the fellows who try to hook up with them at parties, and who are unlikely ever to read this far into a critical roundup of summer cookbooks. (It's a gift book, then!) The subtitle is of course a lie: there is not a single recipe for salad in the book, and only a few for vegetables, and a man is eventually going to need some of those. But this handsome, chef-ish collection still provides a decent foundation for dudes trying to better their kitchen game without being doctrinaire about it. An excellent roasted chicken from the Manhattan chef Jimmy Bradley makes an appearance, along with a fine Coca-Cola-brined fried one from John Currence in Oxford, Miss. Ted Allen, the television cooking-show host, offers a solid primer on how to entertain. I found a good treatment for potatoes fried in duck fat and another for Sunday gravy. That's not nothing, bro. James Oseland, the editor of Saveur, also has a magazine cookbook out: SAVEUR. THE NEW COMFORT FOOD: Home Cooking From Around the World (Chronicle, $35). Wide-ranging and beautifully photographed, it makes for marvelous visual grazing. Here is an amazing view of the smoked pork and sauerkraut stew known as bigos, made by a scion of the Bobak supermarket family in Chicago, and another of the spoonbread served at Boone Tavern in central Kentucky. A cook wok-fries Beijing noodles on one page, while on the next a fisherman stands by the shore in Tanzania, posing with a day's catch. "The New Comfort Food" is a book for dreaming, and for the ignition of appetite. The magazine's Achilles' heel remains exposed, however: the book's too-brief, too-simple recipes are not nearly as strong as the photographs. (Red food coloring for the chicken tikka masala? Corn starch in the filet mignon with mushroom sauce? Only a dozen sentences on how to make Korean fried chicken?) This is saddening. These are recipes that can leave home cooks far from home, in a rough position, with no cellphone service. Little such short-cutting is to be found in Sanjeev Kapoor's exhaustive and unillustrated 600-page manual, HOW TO COOK INDIAN: More Than 500 Classic Recipes for the Modern Kitchen (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $29.95). Kapoor, a huge television star in Asia, where his cooking show, "Khana Khazana," has run for almost two decades, is relatively unknown in the United States. "How to Cook Indian" marks an attempt to change that state of affairs. To a large degree, the book works. Clarity of instruction is paramount to the recipes, which range all over the subcontinent in taste and technique while remaining rooted in simple, declarative sentences. I found a wild though uncomplicated recipe for clam curry from the Malvanis of western India, and another for Tamil fried chicken, sour, peppery and addictive. Roasted eggplant with mustard seeds? Parsi vegetable stew? These are worth making more than once. Those interested in expanding upon their collection of (brilliant, essential, important) books from Madhur Jaffrey, or of adding a reference work to accompany Suvir Saran's terrific "Indian Home Cooking," may do well to make Kapoor's acquaintance. That said, it would be hard to imagine a warmer, more easygoing introduction to Indian cuisine in North America than the one put together by the Vancouver restaurateurs Meeru Dhalwala and Vikfam Vij in their VIJ'S AT HOME: Relax, Honey (Douglas & Mclntyre, paper, $35). "Ours is a whimsical, loud and very social cuisine that practically begs for you to share it with as many people as possible," the couple write. "Its aromas will go through your entire home, the floor of your apartment building or your entire neighborhood block." True, as it happens! The book is hardly encyclopedic or even authentic to anything other than Dhalwala and Vij's heartfelt desire for families to eat together from the larder they use at their excellent restaurant on Vancouver's West Side. But they will eat well for that: spicy cauliflower "steaks" with rice; mung beans in coconut curry; the restaurant's justly celebrated fiery lamb "popsicles." No such exoticism will be found in SARA FOSTER'S SOUTHERN KITCHEN (Random House, $35). Foster, the proprietor of the Foster's Market cafes and prepared-food stores in Durham and Chapel Hill, N.C., offers a paean to her Tennessee roots and a love letter to the matter-of-fact cooking of her forebears: "Fresh, local ingredients, simple preparations, and a deep appreciation for pork." Lavishly illustrated and approximately the weight of a small country ham, as befits something very likely destined for kitchen shelves in coastal weekend homes and rentals from Montauk to Hilton Head, the book (written with Tema Larter) mostly succeeds, if sleepily. The recipes are neither surprising nor problematic - "Crispy Chicken Cutlets With a Heap of Spring Salad" is exactly that - but they're good enough for holiday work and, just as important, can all be made with some combination of farm-stand produce and standard supermarket ingrethents. They're not going to change your life. HUNT, GATHER, COOK: Finding the Forgotten Feast (Rodale, $25.99), by Hank Shaw, very well could, and is worth reading even if you suspect that it won't. Shaw, a self-described omnivore who has solved his dilemma, is a former newspaperman who has become a blogger, a hunter, a fisherman, a gardener, a forager and a cook. In "Hunt, Gather, Cook," he makes a powerful argument for joining him in a few of those pursuits, if only to become aware of the great bounty that surrounds us in the natural world, even when we live in urban environments - and perhaps particularly then. So here is a splendid introduction to the world of wild greens - dandelions and chicories; lamb's quarters; nettles; wild mustards - all of it generally more nutritious than anything available for retail sale, and just as delicious as when Euell Gibbons first started hustling this line during the hippie years. There are suggestions about where to find and what to do with wild berries and fruits, with the fat hips that come off the rugosa roses you see in the sandy dunes of Rockaway Beach, with black walnuts and acorns and sassafras root. There are good fishing tips and better fish recipes, and a long treatise on the (few) joys of eating oyster toads. And there is, too, a smart and level-headed primer on the hard and sometimes horrifying business of hunting animals for food - "the primary pursuit of humans," Shaw writes, "for more than a million years." Sensitive to the emotions and politics of those who might thrill to foraging mushrooms but express revulsion at the idea of taking the life of a deer or a duck or a bear, he writes clearly and with passion about what really happens when a person kills an animal to eat. The speechifying can get in the way of the recipes. (If you have 75 pounds of deer to cook next winter, Shaw's one recipe for venison medallions is going to get old.) But "Hunt, Gather, Cook" is not really meant for old-timers with elk in the freezer alongside the duck breasts and the whole pheasant, looking for something new to do with the meat. It is instead a book that provides a glimpse of the inevitable byproduct of life spent at the farmer's market railing at the evils of industrial agriculture while spending huge amounts on organic food. Eventually, some are going to take up arms. ONLINE Still hungry? Consult the capsule descriptions of 25 more new cookbooks at nytimes.com/books. Sam Sifton is the restaurant critic for The Times.

1 WILD GREENS ARE EVERYWHERE The wonderful thing about wild greens is that they're all around us. Everywhere. Look out the window. I bet you're looking at some now. Even in a big city or a desert. And even in winter. That's why your first forays into foraging ought to begin at home, with something like dandelions or other wild greens. No treks through the uncharted wilderness, no danger. Not yet. When I say "wild greens," I mean the leaves or stalk of a plant that is best eaten cooked. This separates it in my mental calculus from salad greens both wild and domestic. Some plants, such as dandelions, fit into both camps, depending on the time of year. Why bother gathering greens when you can just buy them? First off, it's fun. 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. Wild greens taste better, too. They tend to be more substantial, stronger in flavor, and more vibrant. The reason, I think, is nutrition. If Popeye had eaten amaranth or lamb's- quarters instead of spinach, he'd have been even tougher. Spinach is reasonably high in iron, vitamin A, and several other nutrients. But amaranth and lamb's-quarters blow it out of the water, and the vitamin content of nettles is legendary. Many of these greens have traditionally been eaten as a "tonic" in early spring, before new crops are ready and after the winter's storage food has become wan and sad. You'd be amazed at how many edible plants are out there. Many hundreds, just in North America alone. Edible, yes, but worth gathering? Worth getting into your car, driving somewhere, and searching for them? That's a tall order for a plate of greens. But you rarely need to leave your yard when you want wild greens, and when you do gather greens when you're out and about, it can come as a bonus to go with whatever else you are hunting, fishing, or foraging. Case in point: Not long ago, my girlfriend, Holly, and I were wandering along the California coast looking for good places to dig clams and catch Dungeness crabs and maybe a few fish. We were having a rough day, walking a lot and finding little, when a lurid green bushy thing caught the corner of my eye. It was a rambling, succulent plant, about 2 feet tall, draping itself over an ice plant. "I know this plant!" I told Holly. I thought I'd seen it in my guidebooks, and it just looked edible. Once you learn what larger plant families look like--everything in the mint family has a square stem, for example--you can get a ballpark idea about whether a plant is edible. This plant looked to be in the spinach family. It had large, roughly triangular leaves that were a little fleshy and brittle. I did a test bite: salty (we were in the dunes) but otherwise good. It tasted like spinach. I did not eat any more of it until I got home and went to my books. This is just common sense. Although there are not too many lethal plants around, it is better to be safe than dashing to the emergency room to get your stomach pumped. When I found the mystery plant in my guidebooks, sure enough, it was New Zealand spinach. (I write more about this particular green in Chapter 4.) That find helped make a tough day worthwhile. Even if your main interest is looking for meat or fish or fruit, I highly recommend learning your area's wild greens, if only so you can salvage a potentially bad day of foraging with a plate of tasty lamb's-quarters or dandelions or orache. What follows are some of my favorite wild greens. All are more than edible. They are delicious, pretty, and highly nutritious, and, in some cases, can cost more than $10 a £d in fancy markets. In most places, I will use the Latin names for the plants I describe, because many have all sorts of local or colloquial names; amaranth and lamb's-quarters are both called pigweed by some. Latin makes sure we're all talking about the same plant. LAMB'S-QUARTERS, AMARANTH, AND ORACHE Think of these three as wild spinach, which, in the case of lamb's- quarters, is biologically accurate. Their leaves are smaller than domestic spinach, usually no longer than the palm of your hand. All three are annuals, and all put out lots of little seeds, which some Native Americans ground into flour. You might know one domestic species: It's called quinoa. The leaves of each plant are good simply sauteed with olive oil, salt, and maybe some white wine and grated cheese. If you are in North America, one of these species grows nearby. I guarantee it. All appear in late spring and last through autumn. You should be able to find these plants with little trouble between May and September. All three plants start as compact seedlings with soft leaves that can be eaten raw, then grow into rather large sprawly bushes, with tougher leaves that bear a passing resemblance to spinach. If you are looking them up in a field guide, lamb's-quarters are in the Chenopodium genus, amaranth are Amaranthus, and orache is Atriplex patula. Lamb's-quarters, amaranth, and orache all love to grow in disturbed places like roadsides. However, I don't recommend that you forage for them there, unless it is a quiet, largely untraveled road. Plants near highways and heavily trafficked areas can pick up heavy metals, and as a forager you run the risk of gathering a plant some road crew sprayed with pesticides yesterday. That could be deadly. But fear not, this trio loves your garden, too. I get volunteer amaranth plants in my garden all the time, and I know a swath of lamb's-quarters that grows on the grounds of a nearby park. It's in an out-of-the-way spot, so I know it does not get sprayed. The edges of farm fields are an ideal spot to search for them. Here are some tips on identifying them: ORACHE. Orache is the easiest to recognize. It tends to like seaside areas or alkaline soil and has leaves about 3 inches long that are dramatically triangular--they look like a medieval weapon called a halberd or one of those wedge-shaped cheese knives. In some places, it's called mountain spinach; in others, saltbush. Its leaves often taste salty, which is pretty cool when you consider how bland most greens taste. It grows to about 3 1/2 feet tall and becomes a slightly woody shrub. Its seed stalks are weedy and sparse, not dense like those of amaranth. Incidentally, you can grow domestic oraches in your garden. I grow a red variety that is striking in a mixed greens saute. AMARANTH. Amaranth is easily identified by a red tinge in the stalk and in the veins of the leaves. Be careful: Don't mistake it for pokeweed in the East, as eating the older leaves of pokeweed will send you to the hospital (although pokeweed's young shoots are delicious). You can identify pokeweed stems by their rich, dark purple; it's the color of blueberries. Amaranth (or pigweed) stems are a more strawberry red, like rhubarb. Amaranth leaves are less triangular than either lamb's-quarters or orache. They are a gentle spear shape, with prominent alternate veins at regular intervals. It is most people's mental image of what a generic leaf looks like. The plant will grow to 5 feet, and once it sets seeds you can't miss it. The reddish brown seed clusters are dense and long, and often weigh so much they bend the whole plant over. They look a little like sumac. Amaranth seeds are best in mid-autumn, when the plant is dying and the seedpods are dry. LAMB'S-QUARTERS. Lamb's-quarters share the same general look as amaranth and orache: tall, weedy, with clusters of little seeds and triangular leaves. But there is a telltale way to spot the plant. Look at the underside of the leaves: They should be silvery and ever-so-slightly fuzzy. Another tip? Water beads on their surface. If you drip water on the underside, it looks like a drop of mercury. In all cases, pick the leaves and young shoots of the plants. I've cut a lamb's-quarters plant down by half, and it seemed unharmed; within a few weeks, it was growing new sprouts everywhere. The simplest, best way to eat any wild greens is to wash them well, get a few tablespoons of olive oil hot in a large saute pan, then saute the greens in a covered pan while they are still wet. The resulting steam helps the greens wilt quickly. Add salt as soon as they wilt, maybe some minced garlic, maybe some chile pepper, definitely black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon or lime right when you serve it. It is simplicity itself. It takes less than 5 minutes and keeps most of the nutrients in the greens. WILD SALAD GREENS: DANDELIONS, WILD CHICORIES, AND LETTUCES Dandelions and their cousins the chicories and wild lettuces are the "gateway drug" to serious foraging. They probably grow in your lawn, you probably know what they look like, and you're aware they can be eaten. Picked young, dandelion greens are great in salads, and by mid-spring become a stewing green par excellence. When I see dandelion greens for $1.49 a bunch at the produce section of the supermarket, I smile. How about free, suckers? You will likely have several dozen dandelions growing in your yard at any given time--more than enough for a few meals. SOME TIPS ON USING GREENS Variety is the spice of life. I rarely make a dish of sauteed greens from just one type of plant. Instead, I approach a hot saute the same way I would a mixed green salad: You want something zingy, like mustard or chicory; something substantial, like lamb's-quarters, nettles, or amaranth; and you can spice things up by adding herbs like mint, oregano, basil, parsley, pea or bean shoots, chard, spinach, kale, green onions--you get the point. Experiment, and find your own favorite combinations. Wild mustard too spicy for you? Look for mallows or dandelions or amaranth instead. Maybe you have lots of chard in your garden, but want something to jazz it up. Add mustard or chicory leaves. Mixing and matching makes for a better saute. Blanch your greens before sauteing to set the bright color, although this is not strictly necessary. Blanching is, however, a vital step if you plan to freeze your greens. I blanch lamb's-quarters, amaranth, mallow, and orache for 1 to 2 minutes. Most nettles get 3 to 4 minutes (although smaller, more tender varieties need only 1 to 2 minutes), and mustard, dandelions, wild lettuces, and chicories need 2 to 3 minutes. Curly dock needs a full 5 minutes. Once your greens are blanched, you're ready to use them in other recipes. Dandelions, wild lettuces, and chicories are to winter and early spring what lamb's-quarters, orache, and amaranth are to summer and early fall. In many places, you can get a second crop of dandelions and wild lettuces in late autumn. Look for them just before the snows fly or, in the West, right around Christmas. Nights should still be cool and days not above 70°F. The ideal time to collect yard greens is after a series of cool rains followed by some sunshine. The roots and flowers of both dandelions and chicories are edible, but I will deal with them in another chapter. One of the best parts about picking these plants is that dandelion greens can often be found growing side by side with young chicory or wild lettuces. A general rule when identifying wild salad greens is that if it looks more or less like a dandelion or escarole leaf, and it is growing in a rosette in your yard, it's probably edible. Pick a leaf and take a bite. It should be a little bitter but not overpoweringly so. Pull the whole plant, if you can--that way, you get your weeding done at the same time you are preserving the leaves. Chicories and dandelions have a thick taproot, while lettuces have root webs much like grass. Eat young dandelions, chicories, and wild lettuces as a salad, or saute them briefly the way you would lamb's-quarters, amaranth, or orache. Fun fact: Most typical yard weeds are European migrants that arrived with settlers and are still eaten back in the Old Country. NETTLES One of the hallmarks of nettles is that they are among the first of the fresh green things to sprout each spring. In warm climates, nettles can emerge in winter. The first time I ever ate them was in mid-January, when the nettles near my home in Northern California are about 8 inches high-- prime time for picking. Nettles don't emerge until March in most of the country. Nettles are easy to spot. They grow straight up in large patches, with thin, 4-inch leaves that look a little like lemon balm or mint, only covered with fine stinging hairs. Nettles like wet places and dappled shade. They can emerge as early as late December in Northern California and as late as April in the far north. There are several varieties, some taller, some shorter, some with nastier stings than others. But they are all nettles. And they are all good. Never grab nettles with your bare hands, or you will be stung. Wear a glove, or use a thick bag as a shield. If the nettles are longer than about 10 inches, use only the top 6 to 8 inches. To eat nettles, you must first defeat those stinging silica hairs, which will inject you with formic acid--the same acid employed by fire ants. Blanching them will do this and also set and brighten the nettles' striking blue-green color. To blanch nettles, fill your biggest stockpot with water and bring it to a boil, then get the water good and salty. How salty? It should taste like the sea. Grab a bunch of nettles with tongs and dunk them in the boiling water. Let them cook for 1 to 4 minutes, depending on the species of nettle. Regular nettles (Urtica dioica) are more substantial than their daintier cousins, the dwarf nettle (Urtica urens), and will need longer cooking. Once cooked, transfer the nettles to a bowl of ice water, cool, then drain. Bye-bye, formic acid; hello, delicious wild green. Excerpted from Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast by Hank Shaw All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.