Brett Laidlaw is a writer, cook, bread baker, trout bum, mushroom hound, and gardener. After spending most of his life in the Twin Cities area, he recently relocated (along with his wife, Mary Eckmeier, and two wire-haired pointing griffons, Annabel and Lily) to hilly northern Dunn County, Wisconsin. He’s the author of two novels, "Three Nights in the Heart of the Earth" and "Blue Bel Air", and his short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Star Tribune newspaper, Minneapolis Observer Quarterly and elsewhere. He has also recorded essays on northern foods for the “Wisconsin Life” series on Wisconsin Public Radio.
In 2008 he started an on-line journal (aka, a “blog”) titled Trout Caviar ( www.troutcaviar.blogspot.com ), celebrating local, seasonal eating and the distinctive foods of the upper Midwest. The blog led to a book of recipes, essays, and photographs, "Trout Caviar: Recipes from a Northern Forager", published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in September, 2011.
Speaking on Minnesota Public Radio, award-winning food writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl chose Trout Caviar… as her favorite book of the year, calling it “…an astonishing trove of recipes using the things that grow so well here. Laidlaw lives deeply in the land, and has a real sensitivity to food, a sense of what cuisine is — and his book is a revelation because of it. If it catches on it could transform northern cooking in our day.” Star Tribune food writer Rick Nelson called Trout Caviar… “the most original and beautifully written local cookbook of the year.”
Trout Caviar… was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award in general non-fiction, and Laidlaw was nominated for the Best Chef of 2011 for the “Silver Whisk Awards” of the Heavy Table website.
While Laidlaw tirelessly champions the glories of our regional cuisine, he detests the word locavore.
