The Curious Kitchen Gardener

From your garden into your kitchen and onto your plate

The Curious Kitchen Gardener is for cooks and gardeners interested in bringing novelty and variety into their lives and homes. It follows each season of planting and harvesting—featuring nearly 35 often overlooked edibles, with illustrations, and a delicious recipe for each, encouraging us to see our gardens as an integrated whole and a year-round practice. Calling upon decades of Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver experience, Linda Ziedrich includes fascinating cultural context and personal connections to each plant. The result is the story of how and why an adventurous gardener cultivated a unique cuisine for herself and her family—and how you can too.

• "If you’ve never tried kale buds, citron melons, or green garbanzos, here’s your inspiration and roadmap. In The Curious Kitchen Gardener, Linda Ziedrich takes you from seed to table in her hands-on, unpretentious style. Her deep, practical knowledge of gardening and cooking abounds as she introduces you to more than 30 rare types of homegrown produce."

  Nadia Hassani, author of Spoonfuls of Germany

• "You rarely find a book as generous as The Curious Kitchen Gardener by Linda Ziedrich.  Both a gardening book and a cookbook, Ziedrich shares her stories about acquiring certain unusual plants and the development of the recipes she offers here, giving credit to other cookbook writers when the inspiration was the recipe for a different vegetable.  She makes sure to use all the edible parts of the plants she focuses on. The result is a fascinating read with plenty of fresh ideas for both new and experienced cooks and gardeners."

  Andrea Chesman, author of The Fat Kitchen, Recipes from the Root Cellar

• “This beautiful book is like a walk through the garden with Ziedrich by your side. She’ll gently guide you through plants that are rare, unusual, or perhaps just unfamiliar. But through her text you’ll be emboldened to grow these plants in your garden as well as bring them into your kitchen. And isn’t that the joy of a kitchen garden? The freedom to grow the produce inaccessible in the grocery store, and the excitement of experimenting with a new recipe.”

  Sarah Lohman, culinary historian and author of Endangered Eating