Border markets. Ferry kitchens. Wedding fires. Pantry jars whose labels have peeled away. In this roving cookbook, Eleanor MacIntyre tracks the recipes that slip between maps and memory, gathering dishes nearly erased by motorways, modernization, and the last-mile logistics of global taste. Who isn't a flavor person these days? Yet some flavors have been pushed to the edge of the plate. Here, the author brings them back to the center with an irreverent curiosity and a fieldworker's care, showing how technique, season, and place still shape what we eat even in an age of two-hour delivery.
From peat-reeked coastlines to mountain terraces, each chapter marries story and stove. In the Outer Hebrides, a kettle-smoked haddock and oat broth is stirred with a birch whisk beside a blackhouse hearth. In Samegrelo, western Georgia, green adjika is pounded on a stone and folded through beans, while in Sardinia, a hand-drawn sheet of filindeu is coaxed across a loom for mutton broth. There is Karelian barley pie brushed with egg and milk in Joensuu; a clay-tonir lavash roll with foraged fennel fronds on the road to Gyumri; sea-buckthorn curd tartlets from Ventspils; fermented teff injera with cloudberry butter notes for long northern nights; rice-crusted tahdig learned in Gorgan; and a Mapuche merkén rub that wakes up lake trout on a cold Chilean morning. Objects anchor the work as much as ingredients: metate, donabe, saj, kampot pepper mill, willow-proofed basket, cast-iron girdle.
Structured around six methods the author argues are vanishing or ignored in urban kitchens (Smoke, Salt, Ferment, Forage, Grain, Ritual), the book offers 100 precise, home-scaled recipes with step-by-step photo cues, pressure-cooker and oven alternatives, and thoughtful substitutions when buckwheat or wild greens are out of reach. Field notes unpack the labor behind each dish, shopping lists map both market stalls and supermarket aisles, and credits foreground the cooks who taught the techniques. This is not nostalgia for a museum of meals, but a living pantry you can cook from tonight, one pot and one story at a time.
Gorgeous stories, but too many hard-to-source ingredients and laborious techniques make it more armchair travel than kitchen companion for me.
The promise that "flavors pushed to the edge of the plate" can be centered again powers the book, and the six method frame gives that idea real teeth. I felt the stakes in the field notes about motorways and last mile logistics, and I appreciated how credits foreground the cooks behind the techniques.
Where it wobbles is the tension between preservation and substitution. The author is admirably clear when Sardinian filindeu or sea buckthorn are out of reach, yet the urban workarounds sometimes thin the ritual the book champions. Still, as a map of Smoke, Salt, Ferment, Forage, Grain, and Ritual that you can cook from tonight, it remains a thoughtful compass.
Think of it as a field journal stitched to a community heritage cookbook; the result is both usable and atmospheric. The author balances story with instruction, letting peat reek, ferry kitchens, and wedding fires set a mood while measurements stay tight and the pressure cooker tips keep everything weeknight possible. If you love regional foodways and also want dinner at 7, this earns a permanent spot on the counter.
A beautiful book that sometimes fights the realities of a city kitchen.
I am incandescent about this book. It is a cookbook that smells like rain on slate and hot barley, and I do not say that lightly. The Outer Hebrides chapter alone, with the kettle smoked haddock and oats whisked with birch beside a blackhouse hearth, had me pulling up a chair to the page.
Every place opens like a larder door. Samegrelo's green adjika gets pounded on stone until the kitchen hums, Sardinia stretches filindeu across a loom for mutton broth, and Joensuu's Karelian barley pies glow with egg and milk. I kept stopping to touch the paper as if I could feel the metate, the donabe, the cast iron girdle.
The techniques feel alive. Smoke and Salt are not aesthetic here, they are decisions made because of wind, fuel, and time. Ferment turns into a chorus of tiny clocks. Forage is generous rather than gatekeeping, naming what to use when the willow proofed basket is a tote bag and the hill is a city park.
I tried the Mapuche merkén rub on lake trout and wanted to shout to my neighbors. The rice crust of the Gorgan style tahdig, the clay tonir lavash with fennel fronds, the injera with a quiet echo of cloudberry butter for long nights, all of it sings and still lands on a Tuesday table.
Most of all, the field notes and credits lift the cooks who taught these moves. It is not nostalgia, it is stewardship with heat and salt. I finished the book and felt like I had traveled without trespassing, and then I cooked dinner.
MacIntyre builds the book around six methods (Smoke, Salt, Ferment, Forage, Grain, Ritual) and the structure actually cooks. Each chapter moves from field notes to mise en place, then into technique with clear timing and step-by-step photos, so the stories never crowd the stove.
I loved the pressure-cooker and oven alternatives and the thoughtful substitutions when buckwheat or sea buckthorn are nowhere to be found. A few headnotes run long and the index could be deeper on ingredients, but the credits to the cooks and the market maps make this both teachable and humane.
