Honey from a Weed

by Patience Gray

Original publisher: Prospect

Date of publication: 1986

ISBN: 190301820x

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Recommended by

Caroline Conran

Food writer

This is the beautiful story of finding that less is more, of an extreme existence as near to the essential as possible. Patience Gray and her sculptor husband are doing what so many of us have fantasized about, living off the land, close to the soil (or in their case Tuscan rocks), surrounded by wild herbs, free of all the things we complain about in modern life - Water with chemicals! Traffic! Pollution! Out of season tomatoes! It is a beguiling read and it has a strong flow that pulls you in. The recipes are usually for the most meagre of treats, but we are convinced of their excellence, and of the author’s integrity.

Annabel Langbein

Author and celebrity cook

I got this book when it first came out in 1986 and fell in love with the subsistence life that Gray documented so passionately as she journeyed around wild remote places in the southern Mediterranean with her sculptor partner. Her writing took me into a peasant life and culture that (at the time of publication) remained largely unchanged for centuries, with simple recipes that capture the heart of a traditional Mediterranean life.

Jason Goodwin

Author and historian

Perhaps my favourite cookery book ever: discursive, erudite, amusing, delicious - it's a reflection on a near-vanished Mediterranean culture of poverty and community, fast and feast, without once becoming cloying or sentimental. As she follows her stonemason around quarries from Carrara to Naxos, she teaches you more about cuisine than fifty plump illustrated cookbooks together, and connects food to place, perfectly.

Tamasin Day-Lewis

Writer, film maker

Like MFK Fisher, Gray is interested in everything that is tangential to food, life, the place of the table in our lives, context, friendships and, most importantly, good prose. I want to read the best writing in a food book or there is simply no point, food-writing is not an ancillary thing.

Barbara Sweeney

Food writer

An adventure such as this, roughing it in small rural communities in Italy, Greece and Spain in the 60s and 70s, wouldn't be possible in the same way today. This is a book of courage, curiosity and thoughtfulness – and damn fine writing.

Anna Thomas

Screenwriter, filmmaker and author

This is a book I open at random and find delight -- and then after a while realize that I’ve been reading for an hour. It is transporting. Patience Gray is such a beautiful writer; in the genre of food memoir there is no one better.

Annabel Abbs

Novelist, cook and food blogger

I often turn to this book when I can’t sleep. Gray’s foraging escapades, her erudite writing, the stories of sun, sea and wild weeds, are both exotic and soothing. And who knew what you could do with a few dandelion leaves?

Tom Norrington-Davies

Chef

As much a journal as a cookbook, I like the slightly random way in which the recipes are gathered. Mediterranean food is so often glamorised and dolled up. This is the real thing.

Robin Harford

Ethnobotanist, forager and creator of Eat Weeds

I just like the way this book is written, like a gentle journey through the Italian countryside dotted with lovely recipes, many of them using wild edibles.