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Dandelion and Quince: Exploring the Wide World of Unusual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs
Dandelion and Quince "features plant profiles--from dandelion to quince--for over 35 uncommon vegetables, fruits, and herbs available in today's markets--with over 150 recipes that explore their flavors.
This illustrated cookbook celebrates the abundance at farmers' market and local grocery store yet to be discovered by the everyday cook. From mustard and kumquats to nettles, fava leaves, sunchokes and more, the blossoms, berries, leaves, and roots featured in "Dandelion & Quince" are simple foods that satisfy our need for a diversity of plant life in our diets, grown with care and prepared by our own hands for our families and communities. This book:
Explores more than thirty-five uncommon vegetables, fruits, and herbs
Offers over 150 recipes to satisfy curious palates
Provides enough guidance, tips, and advice that by following recipes, tasting constantly, and making mistakes, you ll gain newly skilled hands and a knowing palate
Discover new ingredients and open up a fresh culinary adventure in your kitchen.
This illustrated cookbook celebrates the abundance at farmers' market and local grocery store yet to be discovered by the everyday cook. From mustard and kumquats to nettles, fava leaves, sunchokes and more, the blossoms, berries, leaves, and roots featured in "Dandelion & Quince" are simple foods that satisfy our need for a diversity of plant life in our diets, grown with care and prepared by our own hands for our families and communities. This book:
Explores more than thirty-five uncommon vegetables, fruits, and herbs
Offers over 150 recipes to satisfy curious palates
Provides enough guidance, tips, and advice that by following recipes, tasting constantly, and making mistakes, you ll gain newly skilled hands and a knowing palate
Discover new ingredients and open up a fresh culinary adventure in your kitchen.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published June 21, 2016
2 people are currently reading
146 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
September 26, 2016
An easy cookbook but ingredients most will never eat. Made the Asian pear pickles recipe but I have a tree in my backyard .
January 8, 2017
Pretty pictures, but definitely not focused on veggies as over a third of the recipes are meat centric. Feels like a bit of false advertising?
February 13, 2017
I really, REALLY wanted to like this book. The writing is like eloquent, romantic prose; it's beautiful to read, truly. Several featured foods were new to me, which is also delightful. However,
1) most of the recipes I would never in a million years make. Maybe I'm just some unrefined heathen, idk. They look nice, but that's about it.
2) Several recipes are centered around other food groups--not around the featured food. That's confusing to me. I don't want to use these weird kinds of produce as a sidekick to other food groups! I want to use them as the main character! I want them featured!
3) For a book about vegetables/fruits/herbs, there's an awful lot of meats and animal products in these recipes. I guess I was expecting a book about produce to be much more veggie-centric than it actually is. That's probably why I'm so disappointed.
Anyways, the pictures are pretty and this book gives an opportunity to learn about weird food. Try it out.
1) most of the recipes I would never in a million years make. Maybe I'm just some unrefined heathen, idk. They look nice, but that's about it.
2) Several recipes are centered around other food groups--not around the featured food. That's confusing to me. I don't want to use these weird kinds of produce as a sidekick to other food groups! I want to use them as the main character! I want them featured!
3) For a book about vegetables/fruits/herbs, there's an awful lot of meats and animal products in these recipes. I guess I was expecting a book about produce to be much more veggie-centric than it actually is. That's probably why I'm so disappointed.
Anyways, the pictures are pretty and this book gives an opportunity to learn about weird food. Try it out.
February 1, 2023
I really liked the idea of this book, but it's just not well done.
If you're introducing an unusual vegetable, fruit or herb to an audience, you need to start by showing them very basic ideas of how they're prepared, preferably with pictures. Instead, this book had a flowery description of finding them in various markets, a bulleted list of ways to use them, and then some elaborate recipe which used the food as an ingredient, but honestly rarely as the star ingredient. Many of the recipes also didn't have pictures, which again, seems like a major oversight when you're trying to show us how to use unusual ingredients.
I could forgive a lot of this and probably give this 2 or 3 stars, except for the fact that the author has seen fit to tell us about all the health benefits of these ingredients. And like, I'm fine with you occasionally saying like "some people find this helps with digestion" but the health claims are honestly much more explicit and less supportable than that.
Of particular concern to me was the red clover tea, which is cited in the book as helpful for menstrual cramps, among other various maladies. What the author does not say is that pregnant and breastfeeding women are advised by health regulators not to ingest any red clover. This feels like a massive oversight that makes me wonder about the safety of other ingredients she cites.
Overall really disappointing.
If you're introducing an unusual vegetable, fruit or herb to an audience, you need to start by showing them very basic ideas of how they're prepared, preferably with pictures. Instead, this book had a flowery description of finding them in various markets, a bulleted list of ways to use them, and then some elaborate recipe which used the food as an ingredient, but honestly rarely as the star ingredient. Many of the recipes also didn't have pictures, which again, seems like a major oversight when you're trying to show us how to use unusual ingredients.
I could forgive a lot of this and probably give this 2 or 3 stars, except for the fact that the author has seen fit to tell us about all the health benefits of these ingredients. And like, I'm fine with you occasionally saying like "some people find this helps with digestion" but the health claims are honestly much more explicit and less supportable than that.
Of particular concern to me was the red clover tea, which is cited in the book as helpful for menstrual cramps, among other various maladies. What the author does not say is that pregnant and breastfeeding women are advised by health regulators not to ingest any red clover. This feels like a massive oversight that makes me wonder about the safety of other ingredients she cites.
Overall really disappointing.
October 20, 2021
I have given this four stars because it is a wonderful book in terms of reference in a niche category. It is exactly what it proclaims to be which is unusual vegetables, fruits and herbs. That said, these recipes will likely not make it into your every day repertoire, and that’s okay. Sure, the way to try a new vegetable is often in a salad or pickled, so I’m not very impressed with those inclusions. There are ingredients that many of us will simply not find. I can confidently say that I will never have a cup of red clover blossoms at the same time that I happen to have burdock and Angelica (one recipe). Nettles are a hard no from me (having squatted in a couple unfortunate places in Europe), and I can’t get fennel pollen, fava leaves, or mizuna….but I did experiment with dandelion and persimmons. If you love different types of foods and you are experimental you will learn something from this book.
June 6, 2022
This is a great book for what it is, which is absolutely described on the cover and in the description of it. I find it a bit odd that a lot of the lower star reviews are complaining about one of two things: 1. that there are recipes with meat and/or 2. that the recipes are for things that are out of the ordinary. Regarding the first: nowhere here does it pretend to be or claim to be a non-meat cookbook. Regarding the second, it's almost too ridiculous to address. The title contains the word "unusual" so I'm baffled why people would pick this up and rate it poorly based on, I guess, the expectation that all the ingredients would be waiting for you at your local walmart or something. This book claims to be and IS a cookbook for ingredients that are NOT the stuff you usually would cook with.
January 4, 2019
Beautiful, but not as inspiring as I had hoped. There are a lot of simple techniques appropriate for many of the ingredients that weren't mentioned at all, perhaps because the author thought they would be obvious, but I know a lot of novices who would benefit from a little more clarity. Photos were beautiful but simple, obvious photos of several ingredients would be more helpful than artsy shots. Truly I think part of me is soured on this solely because the author says garlic is overused and I find that culinarily offensive, so take this with a grain of salt ;) Worth grabbing from the library, probably not a book I would choose to buy.
July 2, 2017
This book was an eye opener for me in that I actually felt confident enough to try new ingredients and recipes. McKenzie clearly laid out the steps and covered quite a bit in the introduction alone as far as seasoning to taste and choosing/getting to know the ingredients/spices you like. She gave information when available about using alternate ingredients in recipes. I love everything about this book from cover-to-cover. (Grateful also to our local library which actively updates its collections.)
August 17, 2017
I live in a city with great farmer's market that gives me access to a wide variety of fresh produce, a great deal of which I look at and think, "What the hell do I do with this?" Sorrel? Sunchokes? Celeriac? Dandelion greens?
These are amazing and healthy recipes using these vegetables and more. The "baked eggs and cream on dandelion greens" is already a breakfast hit at our place, and if we can get our hands on some huckleberries I believe we'll try our hands at making the huckleberry hand-pies this weekend.
These are amazing and healthy recipes using these vegetables and more. The "baked eggs and cream on dandelion greens" is already a breakfast hit at our place, and if we can get our hands on some huckleberries I believe we'll try our hands at making the huckleberry hand-pies this weekend.
July 27, 2017
The title drew me in - I love growing unexpected edible plants and I'm still learning how to make the most of them. There were a few useful recipes for them. However, if you ever read Vegetable Literacy, this book is a mere shadow of information and recipes. While I appreciated some of the anecdotes, few had much personality. And while I like the concept of the book, I expected many more plant based recipes, not a meat heavy cookbook. It just fell a bit flat for me.
February 26, 2021
This cookbook is visually gorgeous. Yet, this is the gourmet cooking I probably will never try, mostly because I do not gather most of the ingredients and I do not plan to stock on them. But I plan to use some of the information and tips as an inspiration and spreading my tasting horizon to newer, less travelled places (dates, nuts and herbs, I am looking at you!).
September 3, 2017
I wouldn't use this as a recipe book but the most inspiring book for subtle flavor and texture pairing I remember having read. It lets the food shine in all of its complexity. A new way of approaching food for me at least.
September 27, 2017
Well written. I appreciate the review of each ingredient before the recipes are given. Some items I would not think to use. Extremely interesting and great addition to a cookbook collector and anyone wanting to try different flavors and techniques in cooking.
March 12, 2022
Loved this collection of unusual vegetables, some that I am familiar with and others that I have not tried or in limited ways. I loved the variety - foraged and cultivated. Would have loved more recipies for each one but there is only so long a book can be. I loved the pictures
March 7, 2017
Now I know what to do with that odd vegetable Buddha's Hand....
November 9, 2017
Fun to look at, but not likely to use much from it.
February 16, 2020
not as useful as i'd hoped
October 11, 2020
I really loved the ideas in this cookbook. It definitely was useful for making a plan for the oh-no-I-have-no-idea-what-this-thing in my CSA veggie box is...
October 27, 2022
Interesting, but not practicle for me!
December 15, 2023
So you're interested in foraging but have no idea of what to do with the things you find. This book will help you out with a wide range of recipes for all those tasty things.
August 19, 2024
Incredible book. I had the pleasure of taking many classes with Michelle, and she taught me so much about cooking. I appreciate her approach and book more and more with time. Highly recommended.
November 4, 2016
As a young child my eating, though varied, wasn’t as eclectic as it is today, mostly because I didn’t have access to the range of fruits and vegetables I do now. I’ve been lucky to find recipes and information about all of these items scattered across cookbooks and cultures. Dandelion and Quince is a useful resource for those unfamiliar with the unique seasonal bounty available at farmer’s markets and the vast options in many of today’s grocery stores and specialty retailers. McKenzie steps through 35 profiles and includes a few recipes for each.
The recipes are not daunting and include simple flavours, such as butter braised kohlrabi (yum) but also combinations I’d not thought to try, such as Carmelized Kobocha with Seeds and Shallot. What seeds you might ask? Pomegranate, sesame, nigella, and cumin. It sounds really good and I’m looking forward to autumn truly arriving so I can roast some of my favorite squash and try this dish. I see this cookbook as helpful to get out of my “it’s just easy to roast everything in olive oil” rut, I think Sunchoke and Chestnut Soup with Carmelized Chestnuts and Pumpkin Seed Oil (or Brown Butter) sounds really good for a grey autumn day.
Don’t despair, it is a seasonal cookbook; I’m reviewing it in the autumn so those flavours are appealing the most to me right now. There are ideas for bolting herbs, spring flower and lavender jelly, a watermelon salad with buckwheat sprouts and feta, and more. While I think any cook would appreciate the recipes in this cookbook, I think it is best suited for newer cooks who are beginning to branch out and discover new fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
This review also appeared penguingirl.com.
I received an eARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for a review. The FTC wants you to know.
The recipes are not daunting and include simple flavours, such as butter braised kohlrabi (yum) but also combinations I’d not thought to try, such as Carmelized Kobocha with Seeds and Shallot. What seeds you might ask? Pomegranate, sesame, nigella, and cumin. It sounds really good and I’m looking forward to autumn truly arriving so I can roast some of my favorite squash and try this dish. I see this cookbook as helpful to get out of my “it’s just easy to roast everything in olive oil” rut, I think Sunchoke and Chestnut Soup with Carmelized Chestnuts and Pumpkin Seed Oil (or Brown Butter) sounds really good for a grey autumn day.
Don’t despair, it is a seasonal cookbook; I’m reviewing it in the autumn so those flavours are appealing the most to me right now. There are ideas for bolting herbs, spring flower and lavender jelly, a watermelon salad with buckwheat sprouts and feta, and more. While I think any cook would appreciate the recipes in this cookbook, I think it is best suited for newer cooks who are beginning to branch out and discover new fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
This review also appeared penguingirl.com.
I received an eARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for a review. The FTC wants you to know.
August 8, 2016
Dandelion and Quince is a beautifully designed cookbook that is especially helpful for those of us getting unusual fruits and vegetables through our local CSAs. Many of these I was familiar with, though some not. While I love Cardoons, and frequently end up with more Purslane than I know what to do with, it is nice to have a few more tricks up my sleeve. I would never have thought to do anything with Fava Leaves (though I don't currently have access to them.) I believe this book will be useful as the summer goes on.
September 3, 2016
Michelle McKenzie’s Dandelion and Quince is a great book for adventurous cooks—or for cooks aspiring to adventure who have access to a good farmers’ market. Working your way through the 150+ recipes in Dandelion and Quince will introduce you to all sorts of new flavors. Not just figs, but fig leaves. And gooseberries, nettles, sunchokes, and burdock. McKenzie’s recipes are detailed, but she also urges experimentation: learn the different flavor profiles of these new ingredients, then have fun seeing what combinations you can come up with. You’ll find many new kinds of delicious.
January 4, 2017
This is a pretty book, and I do find some of the more unique ingredients interesting. But few of the recipes caught my eye.
January 29, 2017
A cookbook for those people who beleive in "natural tinctures" and don't shave their armpits and wear birkenstocks with socks.
August 30, 2018
Pretty photos
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews