Food Heroes

Book excerpt: From chef, author, and host of Modern Pioneering, a cookbook featuring essays about food artisans committed to local, wild and non-processed cuisine. In Food Heroes, Georgia Pellegrini introduces readers to the lively stories of artisanal food devotees such as New York mushroom forager Marion Burroughs, French fig collector Francis Honore, fish missionary Jon Rowley in Washington State, and Ugo Buzzio in New York City, one of the last makers of traditional dry-cured sausages in the United States. Filled with colorful anecdotes, photographs, and recipes, this book offers an accessible introduction to the artisanal food movement, and vicarious living for armchair travelers, food lovers, and others who might won­der what it would be like to drop everything and start an olive farm, or who yearn to make and sell their own clotted cream butter. Thirty-two fantastic recipes follow the profiles, and encourage readers to find their own local suppliers.