Drawing directly from his experience as an acclaimed climate-change gardener, and of setting up a kitchen garden from scratch for River Cottage, Mark explains the practical aspects of organic growing, introduces us to a whole world of vegetables we may not have previously considered, and does away with alienating gardening jargon once and for all. Mark begins with a catalogue of vegetables that will grow in this country, explaining for each their benefits, what varieties to go for, dos and don'ts, and popular culinary uses. He then invites us to create a wish list of foods, and shows us his own list from his early gardening days. Next, he explains how to turn this wish list into a coherent kitchen garden plan appropriate for our space, whether it be a patch of acidic soil, a roof-top garden or an allotment, whether we put on our wellies in every free moment or are 'time-poor' gardeners. Then he puts all the theory into practice, showing us how to look after nutrients in the soil, how to resist pests and diseases, and how to make our garden sustainable and organic. In clear, concise sections we learn about seed trays, supporting plants with climbing structures, mulching, composting, companion planting, irrigation and promoting pollination, and there are additional tables showing sowing and harvesting times, plant sizes, and alternative varieties of plants for different sites.About thirty recipes and a directory of useful addresses finish the book, and the handbook is complemented by bright colour photography throughout. Practical and inspiring, with a textured hard cover and an introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, "Veg Patch" is destined to join Handbooks No. 1, 2 and 3 as an indispensible household reference.

The content of this book originally appeared in The New Kitchen Garden, published in 2015. 'An endless selection of delicious produce you can plant, grow and then cook with.' Raymond Blanc OBE Now you can create your own delicious edible garden at home! More and more people are being inspired to grow a little of what they eat at home. But while starting your own kitchen garden may seem like a daunting task at first, Grow & Cook makes it easy. Award-winning author and gardener, Mark Diacono, has distilled years of knowledge into this pocket-sized book. Whether you are new to gardening and only have a small window box or you are much more experienced with the space to experiment, this user-friendly handbook will inspire and help you. Mark is here to show you that there are plenty of options for everyone and lots of exciting new varieties to discover. Each variety in the book includes a wealth of information on when to sow, growing tips, potential problems, harvesting and plenty more. There are hundreds of varieties to pick from that can be grown and then used in your kitchen. Mark separates the growing guides into three groups: * Vegetables * Fruit & Nuts * Herbs & Spices Whatever you choose to grow should suit your lifestyle. You might prefer something tough and sturdy that doesn't need too much love or time commitment, or you might get pleasure from the steady graft of looking after your veg patch. Whichever your circumstances, your kitchen garden should bring you joy both in the growing process and then in the kitchen. Grow & Cook is the essential pocket guide for modern gardeners.

WINNER OF THE ANDRE SIMON FOOD BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2014 'Otter Farm is all about flavour. It starts and ends with the question: What do I really want to eat?' The taste of a perfectly ripe mulberry was Mark Diacono's inspiration for creating Otter Farm, a unique smallholding in Devon with every inch dedicated to extraordinary produce. Sprouting broccoli, asparagus, artichokes, borlotti beans and chard flourish in the vegetable patch; quince and Chilean guava grow in the edible forest; and pigs and chickens roam freely. Here Mark shares his colourful, beautiful recipes, all brimming with flavour and with fresh vegetables, herbs and fruit - including a warm salad of Padron peppers, cherries and halloumi, a stew made from chicken, pork and borlotti beans, a curried squash and mussel soup, and cucumber ice cream, quince doughnuts and fennel toffee apples. He charts the seasonal challenges and excitements of rural living, and offers practical advice for cultivating the best of the familiar, unusual and forgotten varieties at home. With luminous photography that captures life in the kitchen and outdoors, this ground-breaking book reveals how even the most exotic and exciting tastes can have their roots in British soil.

Chickens are a fantastic addition to a garden or outdoors space - you don't have to live in the back of beyond to have a few clucking around and giving you fresh eggs. They come in all shapes and sizes: some are layers, some are just born to strut. Mark Diacono begins at the basics, showing how you can raise chickens from eggs, and look after them once they start laying their own. The first part of Chicken & Eggs explains how to think ahead about what kind of chickens you want and how many to get, whether you are going for a breed that lays eggs regularly, or that you might eventually use for eating, or that simply looks decorative. You can choose from Orpingtons, Derbyshire redcaps, Muffed Old English Game, Leghorns and many more. Mark then goes on to show how you can breed chickens, encourage them to lay, work out what kind of eggs you have (are they destined for the eggcup, or will they hatch into baby chicks?), and take care of them day to day, as well as how you can go about getting the birds on the table. The final part of the book is a recipe section that goes far beyond the roast, with lots of delicious ideas for fresh eggs or home-reared chicken. With an introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, this is an essential guide for anyone who can't stop thinking about chicks.

'Ingredients are at the heart of everything we do at River Cottage. By gathering our all-time favourites together, I hope to inspire you to look at them with fresh eyes and discover new ways of cooking them' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall The definitive River Cottage kitchen companion. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his team of experts have between them an unprecedented breadth of culinary expertise on subjects that range from fishing and foraging to bread-making, preserving, cheese-making and much more. In this volume they profile their best-loved and most-used ingredients. With more than three hundred entries covering vegetables, fruits, herbs, spices, meat, fish, fungi, foraged foods, pulses, grains, dairy, oils and vinegars, the River Cottage A to Z is a compendium of all the ingredients the resourceful modern cook might want to use in their kitchen. Each ingredient is accompanied by a delicious, simple recipe or two: there are new twists on old favourites, such as cockle and chard rarebit, North African shepherd's pie, pigeon breasts with sloe gin gravy, or damson ripple parfait, as well as inspiring ideas for less familiar ingredients, like dahl with crispy seaweed or rowan toffee. And there are recipes for all seasons: wild garlic fritters in spring; cherry, thyme and marzipan muffins for summer; an autumnal salad of venison, apple, celeriac and hazelnuts; a hearty winter warmer of ale-braised ox cheeks with parsnips. With more than 350 recipes, and brimming with advice on processes such as curing bacon and making yoghurt, the secret of perfect crackling and which apple varieties to choose for a stand-out crumble, as well as sourcing the most sustainable ingredients, this is an essential guide to cooking, eating and living well. More than anything, the River Cottage A to Z is a celebration of the amazing spectrum of produce that surrounds us - all brought to life by Simon Wheeler's atmospheric photography, and Michael Frith's evocative watercolour illustrations.

Guild of Food Writer’s Awards, Highly Commended in ‘Specialist Subject Cookbook’ category (2022) André Simon Awards shortlisted (2022) "A beautiful book, and one which makes me want to cultivate my garden just as much as scurry to the kitchen." — Nigella Lawson "At its core this book is about cooking, but it's an essential and valuable resource for folk who love to grow their own herbs and cook. Sorted by individual herbs with detailed notes on how to grow and use them, it's going to be a book I will turn to a lot over the years." — Nik Sharma Herb is a plot-to-plate exploration of herbs that majors on the kitchen, with just enough of the simple art of growing to allow the reader to welcome a wealth of home-grown flavours into their kitchen. Author Mark Diacono is a gardener as well as a cook. Packed with ideas for enjoying and using herbs, Herb is much more than your average recipe book. Mark shares the techniques at the heart of sourcing, preparing and using herbs well, enabling you to make delicious food that is as rewarding in the process as it is in the end result. The book explores how to use herbs, when to deploy them, and how to capture those flavours to use when they might not be seasonally available. The reader will become familiar with the differences in flavour intensity, provenance, nutritional benefits and more. Focusing on the familiars including thyme, rosemary, basil, chives and bay, Herb also opens the door to a few lesser-known flavours. The recipes build on bringing your herbs alive – whether that’s a quickly swizzed parsley pesto when short of time on a weekday evening, or in wrapping a crumbly Lancashire cheese in lovage for a few weeks to infuse it with bitter earthiness. With a guide to sowing, planting, feeding and propagating herbs, there are also full plant descriptions and their main culinary affinities. Mark then looks at various ways to preserve herbs including making oils, drying, vinegars, syrups and freezing, before offering over 100 innovative recipes that make the most of your new herb knowledge.

'The perfect capsule guide to the hows and whys of fermentation. Mark Diacono is an excellent teacher.' - Diana Henry From Scratch: Ferment is the no-nonsense guide to fermenting at home. From homemade kimchi to kombucha, shrub cocktails, and making your own pickles, award-winning food writer Mark Diacono tells the story of fermentation, and offers recipes that maximise the transformative power of this amazing process. From Scratch: Ferment offers a gentle guiding hand on a natural process that would happen without you, encouraging largely invisible activity of bacteria to work to your advantage. These skills take little of your time, they are particular yet simple, and the results are extraordinary. Packed with useful, accessible information and focussing on back-to-basics skills, the From Scratch series is designed to inspire you to slow down and create. Titles include: Sourdough, Brew, Charcuterie. Text is extracted and updated from Sour, with new recipes, by Mark Diacono.

"Mark Diacono... has such a friendly, self-deprecating and comfortable voice you want to follow him into the kitchen." - Diana Henry's Autumn 2022 Best Cookbooks, The Telegraph Spice is a vibrant exploration of flavour, fragrance and heat that majors on the kitchen, with a celebration of over 50 spices that will fill your kitchen with a wealth of heady aromas and tastes. Packed with ideas for enjoying and using spices, Spice is much more than your average recipe book. Mark Diacono shares the techniques at the heart of sourcing, blending and using spices well, enabling you to make delicious food that is as rewarding in the process as it is in the end result. Focusing on the familiars including cumin, turmeric, vanilla, pepper and cinnamon, Spice will also open the door to some lesser-known spices such as grains of paradise, asafoetida, tonka beans and passion berries. The recipes build on bringing your spices alive - whether that's creating blends to easily enhance your food when short of time on a weekday evening, or in infusing and blooming spices to bring out the very best of these treasured ingredients. The reader will become familiar with the differences in flavour intensity and provenance and discover how, through the use of spice, we can applaud and appreciate cuisines from around the globe. Beginning with a guide to 50 of Mark's much-loved spices and blends, the book then offers over 100 innovative recipes that make the most of your new spice knowledge. With additions throughout from chefs and food writers of whom spices are an integral part of their cooking identity, including Jose Pizarro, Honey and Co, Maunika Gowardhan and Yuki Gomi, Spice is sure to inspire and uplift.

Sour is the definitive book on this unique taste. From cheese to vinegar, throughout the centuries we have deliberately let - and even encouraged - food to go sour to enhance its flavour.

Sour foods have never been more fashionable, with the spotlight falling on foodstuffs as disparate as Belgian sour beer and Korean kimchi. But what is it that makes sourness such an enticing, complex element of the eating experience? And what are the best ways to harness sour flavours in your own kitchen?

Mark Diacono sets out to demystify the sour world, and explore why everyone's extolling the virtues of kombucha and fermenting for their digestive health. By grappling with gooseberries and turning his hand to sourdough, experimenting with ultra-cool shrub cocktails, and making his own yoghurt, keffir and pickles, Mark tells the story of what makes things sour, and offers recipes that maximise the transformative power of this amazing taste.