Customer Reviews

The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook

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I'm not Euell Gibbons or Emeril, but if you were to cross those two together, it's as close as you'd be likely to come to finding someone who might be able to write a book as wonderful as "The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook" by "Wildman" Steve Brill. Wild food aficionados in particular have good reason to rejoyce, now that Mr. Brill's new cookbook is available. During the past two months, I've made nearly 20 of his recipies, and my experience has been that each one is better than the next. Fortunately, all of them seem to be easily adapted to suit available ingredients or taste preferences. Most of the sections utilizing "featured" ingredients have an interesting background about the particular plant (or in some cases, mushroom) that adds the appreciation of the dish, and the entire book is organized intelligently, in order to make cross-referencing easy. Furthermore, I've seen nothing even remotely like this book on the market today, or at any time, for that matter. Between my wife and I, we must own close to 50 cookbooks, and this is far and away our favorite. We happen to be vegetarians, but we've given the book as a gift to non-vegetarian friends on several different occasions, (As well as having entertained company using recipes from the book) and the reviews have been very favorable, to say the least.

"Happy Foraging"

WILDMAN STEVE BRILL
THE FORAGING GOURMET
author of
The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook:
A forager's Culinary Guide
(in the Field or in the Supermarket to Preparing and Savoring Wild (and Not So Wild) Natural Foods with more than 500 Recipes.
Published by The Harvard Common Press, Boston.
500 pages with five appendices:

The Wildman's mission is thus:

"The local environment has sources of foods that are delicious, healthful and organic, including herbs, greens, fruit, berries, nuts, seeds and even mushrooms."

Q. Who is Wildman?
A. Good-natured, with a sense of humor, Steve Brill has been guiding foraging tours in and around New York since 1982. He enjoys telling the story of how he was arrested and handcuffed by undercover park rangers for eating a dandelion in Central Park, a food resource area he highly supports. He's lectured in schools, for youth programs, museums, libraries and environmental groups for years. Brill is also a foraging and natural-cooking expert whose new cookbook teaches you to use nearly 150 of America's finest wild food plants to prepare tasty meals.

Brill does caution and wisely so:

"It is the reader's responsibility to identify and use the information in this book sensibly." He sums up the 29 pages of pre-foraging information with an admonishment to pay particular attention to correct identification of foods in the wild and recommends the additional use of his book, Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not so Wild) Places.

A TRIP THROUGH THE BOOK

The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook starts by introducing wild and purchased natural foods and basic methods for preparing them. He gets into seasonings, tips on adapting natural ingredients to traditional cooking methods and explains how to harvest wild foods safely.

Next he goes into recipes for "unwild foods." Tofu-based cheeses are basic to many of Brill's recipes, and he presents his recipes for Tofu Cream Cheese, Tofu Cottage Cheese, Tofu Sour Cream, and the like. While he employs a lot of in-book cross-references, he creates few, if any, unsolved mysteries.

The book is divided into seasonal sections featuring:

Winter and early spring: hearty wild greens and roots
Mid-to-Late Spring: best time to find wild vegetables
Summer with its plethora of fruits, flowers, greens and mushrooms.
Autumn: The further abundance of mushrooms, fruits also nuts.

His Table of Contents is a large, helpful, non-alphabetical, listing of recipe names grouped with the wild food it calls for, plus page numbers. His Index is an alphabetical index of types of foods and associated recipes. Here's an overview of just a few of his recipes:

WINTER WILD FOODS

Winter Cress Kimchi
To winter cress, he adds garlic, red onion, dill or coriander seed and chili paste to taste.

Chickweed Bean Spread
Brill combines adzuki beans, olive oil, vinegar,
bayberry leaves, herbs and dried epazote leaves, stems or flowers

EARLY SPRING WILD FOODS

Daylily Wine
Sugar, water, daylily shoots, lemon juice tarragon, dill, poppy seeds and a little champagne or wine yeast

Curried Dandelions
A small amount of oil, dandelion leaves,
garlic tofu, miso, fresh lime juice and
curry powder (recipe also in the book)

Stinging Nettles Indian Style
The Sauce: Chick pea flour, Garam Marsala
(recipe in book), seasoning,
tumeric, tofu, lime juice, water
The veggie: garlic, chilis and 8 cups
stinging nettle, chopped

Scalloped Fiddleheads
Spread fiddleheads in a casserole dish,
top with Tofu Cream Cheese and Bread Crumbs (recipe in book), bake

MID-TO-LATE SPRING WILD FOODS

Garlic Beans
Black or white beans, wild garlic bulbs, fresh chopped epazote leaves, cumin, olive oil and seasoning

Exotic Rice
Mixture of wild and sweet brown rice, currants, shredded coconut, raw cashews, red onion, Garam Masala, bayberry leaves and seasoning

SUMMER WILD FOODS

Mulberry Kiwi Ice Cream
Soy milk, tofu, glycerin, honey, barley malt, lecithin granules, lemon juice, vanilla, liquid stevia and mulberries

Blackberry Spiced Wine
Ala Brill: sugar, water, blackberries, spicebush berries, cloves, cinnamon sticks and champagne or wine yeast

AUTUMN

Hot Cheese Tacos
Tofu cream cheese, red chile sauce (in book), acorn tortillas (in book)

Acorn Noodles
Brown rice flour, acorn flour (in book) arrowroot or kudzu, nutmeg, marjoram, sage, seasoning, corn oil and water

Vegetarian Chicken Salad
Chicken mushrooms, celery, romaine lettuce, olives, almonds, Wild Mustard Seed Mayonaise (in book) and chopped field garlic leaves

Simply Oysters
Olive oil, oyster mushrooms, chiles, garlic, lemon juice, fresh dill, tamari soy sauce and White Oak Wine (in book)

If you, somehow, cannot roam the woods for your particular culinary adventure, this is a great book to deliver the adventure to you, also witness the sincere inventiveness of its enthusiastic author. ...

THE BOOK IS A DAILY DELIGHT. I pick it up go outside and say, "What's for supper." Whether you live in the city or country you can have fun with this cookbook! The Wild Vegetarian CookBook offers an excellent way to teach your children or grandchildren about exploring nature, plants, and ecology. It's also a wonderful book when you want to impress and amaze your dinner guests. "Just something I threw together from the yard" is a favorite quote now that I have this cookbook.
"Wildly" crazy about it!
Connie McCabe
Andrews, NC

A word of caution to vegetarian cooks everywhere: "The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook" by "Wildman" Steve Brill will thoroughly shake your culinary sensibilities to their very core. This is surely a cookbook like no other we have ever experienced. The book is a particular delight to wild foods foragers, and for those with an adventurous spirit, a new world of gastronomic delights awaits. To be sure, the book is written with the intention of having the cook utilize some of the many wild foods available in much of the United States, but as Mr. Brill points out, most of the recipes list commercially available substitutes, if their wild counterparts are not obtainable in your area..

The book is not only a cookbook, but also a wonderful reference book. Most of the "exotic" ingredients called for are explained in some detail, and the book is organized in a way that make it's use, as well as it's reading, an absolute pleasure. For example, plants listed in the Table of Contents are not only grouped by type, but are organized in the chronological order in which they are ready to be foraged during the year and during each season. There is a separate section entitled Herb and Spice User's Guide", which lists (and describes the use) of not only some of the commonly used spices, (cardamom, cayenne pepper, celery seed, etc.) but a wide variety of more unusual spices and herbs (goutweed, sassafras, wild carrot seed, etc.) as well. There's also a "quick guide" to making dairy-free cheeses, as well as a "quick guide" to wild wine! The recipes run the course from completely original, totally different dishes, to some of the more standard, time-tested recipes that have simply been enhanced by the use of non-traditional additions or substitutions for more familiar ingredients.

Another wonderful feature is that although the entire book is vegan, those with an ovo-lacto preference will find that dairy substitutions are always easy. Mind you, this book does not grant license to run out and begin tearing up wild plants wherever they may be found, in order to satisfy a desire for culinary adventure; Mr. Brill is a staunch advocate for the protection of the natural environment, and the preservation of the places in which many of the wild foods utilized in his book may be found.


To enjoy this book, two pre-requisites are necessary. First, you must have an interest in wild foods. Steve's recipes are not just made with wild foods, they taste wild - no namby-pamby flavors here, every dish is robust and intense. Second, you should be an experienced cook who is not afraid to follow fairly complex recipes with multiple ingredients. A new cook might be overwhelmed by these recipes, although if one were willing to try them and follow the recipes appropriately, success is assured.

Ramp season has come again, and we are currently inundated with huge quantities of this odiferous herb. Steve obviously knows how "rampantly" this vegetable grows as he has created not just one or two recipes for it, but thirty-two! The recipes range from salads, sauces and appetizers, to pickles and even wine. As we write this article, a ramp risotto casserole is baking in the oven, smelling wildly appetizing. We've already tried the tasty Ramp Pesto, and were delighted with the Bernaise Sauce a la Brill we've previously made from Steve's cookbook.


And for all of you who may lament not having the option of a truly excellent vegan Vichyssoise, cry no more! The ramp version of this traditional French potato & leek soup is surely cause for celebration. C'est magnifique!

Last fall, hen of the woods mushrooms were growing out of the woodwork in our area. Steve has over twenty recipes for these natural treasures. While every recipe was reliably excellent, Cajun Hen and Sesame Hen quickly became our favorites. Cajun Hen produces a spicy dish very reminiscent of chicken and a wonderful base for many more recipes. After preparing our bounty with Steve's recipe, we froze it and used it all winter. Sesame Hen was at least as good, and we found that we could vary it by using almond butter or even peanut butter instead of tahini, with equally excellent effect.

There seems to be nothing in this book that is anything other than straightforward, and each section is brimming with fresh ideas, sound advice, a wonderful sense of adventure and even humor. "The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook" has certainly become one of the crown jewels in our collection of cookbooks, and easily garnishes the coveted Five Star rating (Extraordinary) from these reviewers.


Joe & Kathy Brandt

Redding, CT

Foragers who enjoy using wild ingredients will appreciate Steve Brill's Wild Vegetarian Cookbook, a unique vegetarian cookbook which focuses on natural foods available in field and in market. From ramp leaf pesto and milkweed rice Indian style to purslanepotato salad, Wild Vegetarian Cookbook is packed with unusual dishes which need only access to wild ingredients to prove successful.

THIS BOOK HAS SOME PRETTY NEAT RECIPES. "WILDMAN" STEVE BRILL WRITES A NICE DESCRIPTION OF EACH PLANT AND FUNGI BEFORE GIVING YOU THE RECIPES WHICH I THINK IS GREAT CONSIDERING IT'S A COOKBOOK. ALSO, THE PLANTS ARE ORGANIZED ACCORDING TO THE SEASON IN WHICH THEY ARE BEST CULTIVATED. IF YOU WANT AN EXCELLENT BOOK ON FORAGING, GET HIS Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants by Steve Brill.

I got this as a gift for my sister who has a meat eating dilemma. She only want to eat that which she herself hunts or what someone raises organically & humanely - that she knows. Otherwise she eats vegetarian. Considering her meat views, she finds herself going meatless more than not. She loves to trek off into remote places looking for flora, fauna, and critters. She is a female version of Jeff Corwin. This book is right up her nature loving ally! Wonderful colorful recipes for cooking with all the many plants she treks around in and adds even more adventure to her explorers soul!
The book is well made. Big, glossy & hard cover. I'm so happy this book exists so I could give such a great gift!
Highly recommend for any adventurous spirit!

I am very happy to see this type of book come out. Mother earth is offering to us so many foods and medicinal plants to nourish our bodies, our mind and soul. It's the best you could ever eat to be healthy and it's FREE. She is our teacher, we must listen to her guidance. I am opening a healing sanctuary with my property and will have wild food foraging workshops and now GREAT recipes to share with people. I will also teach about medicinal plants and how to heal ourselves with them. It's about time we take our power back and return to our roots. It's the best recipe book I've seen.

I was disappointed with the contents of the book. I was hoping it would also serve as a field guide for finding the ingredients. The descriptions of the wild foods are not descriptive enough to help you actually find them. Also, there are no pictures of any of the plants. I found most of the recipes to be very complex in flavors. (Mostly Asian and Indian) Not that I mind complex flavors. My fear is the spices would cover up the taste of the wild ingredient to much. The first time I try a new food, I want a simple recipe so I better understand its taste.

This is a great book that explains how to recognize use, and harvest wild natural foods. He also gives suggestions on some substitutes for some of the wild foods with domestic ones, like leeks for wild leeks, garlic for wild garlic and current with wild currents. He also has recipes that use more uncommon wild foods like Pookweed, common MilkWeed, or Cattails, which are recipes I have not tried yet until I can learn to identify them. What interested me the most that this book is a vegan cookbook not a vegetarian cookbook as the title suggests. There are not animal products used in any of the recipes at all. The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook is the hardback and out of print copy of the recently printed The wild Vegan Cookbook By the same author. It is the same book except for the title. I love to cook and am going Vegan, the recipes I have tried are delicious and not hard to cook. It is a great book for a Vegan. I also collect cookbook and the copy I purchased was in great condition. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cooking, wishes to explore cooking with wild foods, and is interested learning how to recognize them, and wants to learn to cook with them.