Today’s show explores terroir — the flavor of place. Discovering the wild flavors of your local bioregion is a smart and ecologically interactive way to intimately engage with your place and add context to the story of your food. Pascal Baudar — wild food researcher and a self-styled “culinary alchemist” — joins us to share his unique and inspiring niche in the wild food world: wildcrafted terroir.
Based in southern California with access to many different ecosystems (mountain, desert, chaparral, and seashore) and 700+ different wildcrafted ingredients, Pascal is a brazen wild food experimenter who combines his knowledge of plants and his local landscape with the innovative techniques of a master food preserver and chef. Pascal was named one of the 25 most influential tastemakers in L.A. by Los Angeles magazine, and his locally sourced wild ingredients and unique preserves have made their way into the kitchens of such star chefs as Ludo Lefebvre, Josiah Citrin, Ari Taymor, Michael Voltaggio, Chris Jacobson and Niki Nakayama. He is the author of The New Wildcrafted Cuisine, an incredible book of culinary concepts and ideas featuring recipes and preservation techniques using a local terroir.
Pascal is here to change how we think about wild food. He invites us to experiment with the wild ingredients in our own local bioregion and shares some examples of how he creatively crafts wild cuisine from the landscape he calls home. You’ll hear the wide variety of uses for wild sage, how he makes his own salt and how he uses insects in his wild ferments. Pascal’s work is rooted in love of place, and I hope he inspires you to infuse more local wild terroir into your own wild food plate.