A Taste of the Unexpected - Hardcover

Mark Diacono shows us how to grow and cook unusual and utterly delicious food
--Gardens Illustrated, October 2010

Packed with advice and recipes --BBC Good Food Magazine, November 2010

The top priority present for most gardeners this year is surely Mark Diacono's A TASTE OF THE UNEXPECTED. A handbook for trying something a bit different on the veg patch... Really a treat!
--The Independent on Sunday; 5th December, 2010

This is a gently inspirational book. If a reader starts growing just one of these unusual plants, the book will surely have done its job.
--Daily Telegraph; December 4th, 2010

'As well as leading the garden team at River Cottage, Mark runs Otter Farm, the UK's only climate-change farm, so he's ideally placed to investigate the more exotic fruits and vegetables we can now grow in the UK.' --Independent i, 18th September 2012

'Anyone with a desire to grow more unusual edibles can learn a great deal from his book, A Taste of the Unexpected.' --WEM (The Environment Magazine), October 2012

'Mark Diacono grows unusual an forgotten food at his smallholding, Otter Farm. He leads the River Cottage gardening team and is the author of three award winning books. Mark's latest title, A Taste of the Unexpected, is packed with practical growing advice and recipes for unusual, delicious crops.' --Grow Your Own, November 2012

'Mark Diacono grows unusual an forgotten food at his smallholding, Otter Farm. He leads the River Cottage gardening team and is the author of three award winning books. Mark's latest title, A Taste of the Unexpected, is packed with practical growing advice and recipes for unusual, delicious crops.' --Grow Your Own, November 2012

Winner of the Guild of Food Writers Food Book of the Year Award 2011. Life is too short to grow ordinary food. Why bother spending time, effort and money growing the typical varieties of fruit and vegetables that you can easily buy locally and cheaply and which, crucially, taste pretty much the same whether home grown or shop bought? In A Taste of the Unexpected, River Cottage head gardener Mark Diacono reveals that it is no harder to grow the unusual and utterly delicious than it is the entirely ordinary. On his farm in Devon, Mark grows virtually nothing that you can buy in the supermarkets. There, instead of potatoes, onions and carrots you'll find gourmet delights such as kai lan, salsify, Chilean guava, day lilies and Szechuan pepper. Filled with practical growing advice and mouthwatering recipes, this inspirational book will encourage you to share Mark's sense of culinary adventure - introducing you to the finest forgotten flavours, fabulous lesser-known harvests, the tastiest varieties of familiar crops, and the exotic foreign fruit that our changing climate now allows us to grow for ourselves. None of these requires any extra effort to grow than the usual suspects and all of them will bring new flavours and experiences into your garden and kitchen. Exciting and inspirational, A Taste of the Unexpected will redefine your approach to growing your own for good.