Ashley Rodriguez

Deepen your relationship with the natural world through more than 80 delightfully inventive recipes featuring seasonal ingredients, plus thoughtful essays, tips, and basic techniques for foraging, preserving, and cooking over an open fire.

At a time when we urgently need to connect with the Earth, Rooted Kitchen offers a fresh way to appreciate nature and the treasures it provides. The cookbook is organized seasonally, which makes it easy to find recipes for your neighborhood foraging or farmers’ market haul, such as a comforting Nettle Orecchiette with Sausage and Mint in spring (and how to use the leaves to make a nutritious and soothing cup of tea on chilly mornings); Nectarine Salad with Cucumber, Fennel, Feta and Herbs in summer; and Fire-Roasted Pumpkin Fondue with Chanterelles in fall.

You’ll also find tips for harvesting ingredients from mushrooms to nettles to edible flowers, along with preserving, basic foraging techniques, and mindfulness activities. Seasonal ingredients are spotlighted so you can make the most of whatever nature is available nearby. It can be as simple as pairing salmon with the distinct flavor of spruce tips snipped from a tree or plucking lilac blossoms and making Rhubarb-Lilac Jam to dollop on a pavlova. From small urban backyards to nearby parks to forests and beyond, when we become more connected to the outdoors through our food, it also sparks a deeper connection to ourselves.