Full English Cassoulet

Richard Mabey began experimenting with cooking as soon as he was big enough to clamber to the cupboard where the powdered chocolate was kept. At scout camp he learned how to cook a Sussex Pond Pudding in a billy-can, and thirty years ago he permanently broadened the nation's palate with his guide to edible wild plants, Food For Free. His new book is a joyous exploration of local ingredients, broadening your horizons by travelling, vernacular heritage, and making use of everything except, as the saying goes, 'the pig's squeal'. It includes: Collecting Corsican chestnut receipes and American mushroom ideas, and meditating on what a forest-food culture would have been like; Cooking eggs in nothing but the sun; Making bread the prehistoric way - with old beer; Exploring the outer limits of apple cusine (i.e. the outer limit is making leather out of apples); 'Cooking against the grain' - if we didn't have access to wheat, what could we make with nuts? How to deal with gluts - those autumn mountains of beans and courgettes; Making-do the wartime way - canny tricks his mother taught him; re-introducing his father's passion for offals.