Making ingredients sing

“When I create recipes for Burdock (restaurant), I’m trying to find the best expression of that ingredient, in that moment. It’s very spontaneous. I literally come up with an idea for a new recipe and work through it on the day it debuts on the menu,” says Andrea Carlson.

Whoa. That’s the mark of a confident and talented chef with a muse working overtime in her head. Carlson now shares her culinary artistry in her just-released cookbook, Burdock & Co: Poetic Recipes Inspired by

Ocean, Land & Air (Appetite by Random House, $35).

Her recipes are from a purely open and instinctive mind; they veer off the path of familiarity and cliché while walking the walk of sustainably. She’s one of the first to champion Pacific Northwest farmers and producers.

This is a cookbook for beginner cooks to realize what’s possible and for seasoned cooks to relish trying new ingredients, worldly techniques, as well as daring and heavenly combinations (bone marrow butter popcorn; cherry leaf cured scallops with cherry blossom gel and shiso cracker; salt halibut congee with cured yolk and wood sorrel; housedried persimmon cake with Sauternes custard and pine-mushroom ice cream are typical).

Turns out Carlson is a compelling writer as well and sweeps you up with stories and cooking wisdom. As in: “When we use botanicals, the key is to keep the integrity of their essential fleeting nature and combine them with other foods that won’t overpower them or destroy the dish. In this way, botanicals can become grounding elements for the recipes, with flavours that are unlike anything else we are familiar with. This is the fun stuff.”

And you will find a lot of them in her recipes — roots, leaves, flowers, seed heads.

“I have to respond to nature in the moment because some botanical ingredients may be in peak season only a day or two, or be fresh enough for only a few hours after picking,” Carlson says.

And, as celeb Chef Yotam Ottolenghi says in the book blurb: “She knows her ingredients and she certainly knows how to make them sing in harmony.”