Grow and Cook promises to be the gift book of the season for all kitchen gardeners. Growing your own food is exciting, but figuring out how to make the most of your produce can be daunting. In Grow and Cook, bestselling author Darina Allen takes you through an extensive list of vegetables, herbs, and fruits with each entry including explanations of different varieties, practical information on cultivation, growing, and maintenance, and instructions for the best ways to cook the produce as well as preserve it in times of a glut. Recipes accompany each ingredient so you can use your harvest to its full potential. Ingredients included range from annual vegetables such as chicory, radishes, and kohlrabi to perennial vegetables like asparagus, fennel, and spinach. Fruits cover apples, currants, and peaches plus more the more unusual and interesting myrtle berries, loquats, and medlar. The book also features a comprehensive selection of herbs, edible flowers, and foraged foods such as sea beans, wild garlic, and blackberries. Based on decades of real-life observation and experimentation on the 100-acre farm attached to her cooking school, this represents the culmination of all Darina Allen's knowledge about growing the food you cook and cooking the food you grow.

Author Biography

Darina Allen, called The Julia Child of Ireland" by the San Francisco Chronicle, runs the world-renowned cooking school at Ballymaloe in County Cork, Ireland, which she founded with her husband. Among her many books are Forgotten Skills of Cooking and Irish Traditional Cooking. She has been a lifelong campaigner for local produce, having set up Ireland's first farmers' market. She has won many awards including the Guild of Food Writers' Lifetime Achievement award, the IACP Cooking Teacher of the Year award, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Conservation Leadership award.