I have published 21 books, with three more on the way, and many deal with my kitchen garden at Roughwood and the massive seed collection started by my grandfather in 1932. Many of my books have won awards and several of them, especially Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, have become “breakthrough” texts in that they have shifted the conversation in a new direction. In short, I have helped make mainstream heritage fruits and vegetables, and my books are intended to help my readers enrich their lives by giving them meaning and context. It’s a story about learning to live well from simple basics: about discovering the gold in your own backyard.
I wrote
Flavors from the Garden: Heirloom Vegetable Recipes from Roughwood
Schafer transports you into extraordinary gardens of the past, in this case, Tang Dynasty China (pre-900 AD), it’s a scientific travelogue revealing the magic of discovery and the way people react to exotic foods. In that sense it inspired me to seek out the unusual and to celebrate the cutting edge, which I certainly do in my own book. Also, as anyone can judge from the title, Schafer is keen on revealing inner “poetry” in the language of plants.
In the seventh century the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches, large as goose eggs and with a color like gold, to the Chinese court at Ch'ang-an. What kind of fruit these golden peaches really were cannot now be guessed, but they have the glamour of mystery, and they symbolize all the exotic things longed for, and unknown things hoped for, by the people of the T'ang empire. This book examines the exotics imported into China during the T'ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), and depicts their influence on Chinese life. Into the land during the three centuries…
The objective of Ross’s book was to teach the English how to cook vegetables the Italian way (as opposed to boiling them to shreds). But this is also a romantic fling with the Mediterranean way of life and moving through it at a more humanizing pace. Ross also includes recipes, the part I like most, and like her, I also include recipes because if you are going through the trouble of growing your own food as an experiment in living a better way, come harvest time, it is important to know what to do with them. That should be the spiritual and culinary reward because it all comes together at the table.
Excerpt from Leaves From Our Tuscan KitchenAbout the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. This text has been…
John Eveyln’s book is classic. He was the first person (in English anyway) to discuss exotic vegetables, even common weeds, in terms of healthy salads. The man was literary, very smart, and he knew how to cook. I have often used his recipes and surprising enough, he is as trendy today as he was in 1699. Furthermore, this book is a talisman for real foodies. My enthusiasm for Evelyn was shared by the late English author Jane Grigson, whose book is also on my list.
Acetaria: A Discourse Of Sallets, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.
I have all of Jane Grigson’s books and to me each one is special. Jane was a personal friend and while she lived in the UK and I lived in the US we often spent hours on the telephone discussing the finer points of pawpaws or persimmons. We also shared the same birthday. Jane discovered she had cancer and decided to meet it head-on by shifting to a plant-based diet. That is her overarching philosophy, and it pervades her books. And while her books reflect that personal journey toward healing, they are also useful because like me she was an epicure with hoe, her food writing was not an abstraction, she wrote from hands-on experience.
In Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book American readers, gardeners, and food lovers will find everything they've always wanted to know about the history and romance of seventy-five different vegetables, from artichokes to yams, and will learn how to use them in hundreds of different recipes, from the exquisitely simple ""Broccoli Salad"" to the engagingly esoteric ""Game with Tomato and Chocolate Sauce."" Jane Grigson gives basic preparation and cooking instructions for all the vegetables discussed and recipes for eating them in every style from least adulterated to most adorned. This is by no means a book intended for vegetarians alone, however. There…
Genders and Jane Grigson were kindred spirits, although Genders started out much earlier than Jane Grigson. I have all his books mainly because he deals with the unusual and enjoyed the challenge of trying something new (or in the case of rare heirlooms something old and forgotten). Genders’ books are practical guidebooks, so much so that they never go out of date. Serious cooks and gardeners keep his books close at hand because when you are stumped, just look it up in Genders: he will walk you through the problem. And not the least, he understood the meaning of freshness and flavor. He was a culinarian with a spade in hand.
This unique cookbook is woven together in a series of personal essays dealing with harvesting season by season, even gardening under the snow. The recipes focus on rare and unusual food plants like New Guinea Basil or Spaghetti Peppers in the Roughwood Seed Collection. Seeds are available from the Roughwood Center (a non-profit) otherwise I suggest working substitutes. This cutting-edge guide to eating well introduces American readers to many new flavor sensations, like Japanese Chrysanthemum Melons, Paraguayan flour corn, sorghum chapatis, and even pickled dahlias. The book is illustrated with award-winning photography all taken in natural light at Roughwood with garden-fresh ingredients.
