Pacific Feast: a cook's guide to west coast foraging and cuisine

An intimate guide to the food at our feet, Pacific Feast shares expert advice on how to identify the good eats, harvest responsibly, and create delicious meals. Author Jennifer Hahn provides detailed field notes on 40 species—wood sorrel, salal berries, big leaf maple, oyster mushrooms, clams, sea beans, several varieties of kelp, and more—including where to find them, which parts are edible, and their best culinary uses. Her evocative stories of foraging adventures will inspire and educate home cooks and nature lovers alike.

"Since the great Ice Age," Hahn writes, "this 3,000-mile-long table is where Northwest Coast indigenous people traversed rain forests, clam-squirting beaches, wildflower meadows, muskegs and river estuaries to gather all the food, medicine and supplies needed to live. From alder-smoked salmon to dwarf blueberries, Dungeness crab to fern crosiers, the flavors, textures, colors and aromas of ocean and earth filled their canoes, cedar storage boxes and communal feast dishes."

Many of today's best Pacific Coast chefs agree that wild food can provide the basis of superb, healthy recipes. Ocer 60 of their delectable recipes are shared here, including Point Loma Sea Urchin Bisque, Roasted Dandelion Root Ice Cream, Salmon with Sweet Pepper-Birch-Basil Sauce, Bull Kelp Chutney, and Nettle Martini. Lush, full-color identification photographs are provided by by ethnobotanist and photographer Mac Smith.

Writer, naturalist, and adventurous cook Jennnifer Hahn has over 25 years of wilderness travel under her boots and kayak hull—including through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from northern California to Canada and kayaking solo from Ketchikan, Alaska, to Washington—a journey described in her award-winning book Spirited Waters: Soloing South Through the Inside Passage. Currently an adjunct professor at Western Washington University, Jennifer relies on wild harvesting to keep her pack and kayak light.

Buy a SIGNED copy of Pacific Feast: a cook's guide to west coast foraging and cuisine - $21.95