Picking Rosehips with Fat of The Land Author Langdon Cook

Langdon Cook, former senior book editor at Amazon and author of Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, does most of his foraging in the mountains and along the shore, picking porcini mushrooms, digging the elusive razor clams. It's one way to stay connected to the best year of his life, the year he and his wife and their young son lived off the grid and, like the title of the book says, on the fat of the land.

But he sometimes finds unusual edibles in the city, too. And on a sunny Sunday, he met me on the shores of Lake Union in Seattle to pick rosehips. Those brilliant berries are about the size of a hazelnut this season. They're absolutely loaded with Vitamin C and Cook plans to turn his small bucket full into syrup, though he might play around with making rosehip jelly, too.

"The conventional wisdom is that you pick them after harvest, then they're a little sweeter," he said.

As joggers and in-line skaters whiz past on the path, we did our best to find smooth, firm rosehips and avoid the thorns. On one of Cook's more entertaining passages in the book, his efforts to pluck first-of-the-spring dandelion greens becomes a thorny situation when a couple of guys who obviously were encamped where he was picking demanded to know what he was doing in their space.

"You loco, boy," one of them concluded when they found out what he was doing.

It might sound a bit crazy, this notion of a 21st century forager. Until, that is, you take a look at some of the recipes Cook creates to showcase his bounty. There's Dandy Bread and Muffins made with the aforementioned weeds, Shad cooked Carolina-style, Oyster Po' Boys, Huckleberry Cobbler and many more.

As further evidence, foraged food is hardly humble fare, James Beard award-winning chef Jonathan Sundstrom is featuring a feast of plenty tonight during a "Cooks and Books" event at his lovely restaurant, Lark. Cook went on an all-day forage with the chef to gather ingredients. Highlights include Geoduck Ceviche, Lobster Mushroom Tartine, Shellfish Stew and Huckleberry Cobbler. There are still a few seats available. But even if you can't make it to what looks like a memorable meal, be sure and check out Cooks' book. It's a well-written, entertaining romp around the Pacific Northwest like nothing I've read before. Since I started reading it, I'm constantly looking at the landscape in a whole new way.

-- Leslie Kelly

Comments

[dvd vierge on September 16, 2009 at 12:17 AM]

I haven't bought a cookbook in years and years. I've been excitedly waiting for this one for months. I'm going to see if I can get it tomorrow, or at least get my little local bookstore to order it for me.