Green Mountains - Walking the Caucasus with Recipes, by Caroline Eden

Background notes and sample recipes for April's cookbook club pick

“Cooking and walking can be reliable methods for gathering up enough strength and sanity to keep going during troubled times, And what troubled times these are”

Caroline Eden - Green Mountains

Let’s be clear: that there’s not another food writer around doing the kind of work Caroline Eden does. (If you think I’m wrong, please send them my way.) Most of us work from the relatively cosy confines of our kitchen with perhaps a research trip here and there to spice things up. We might think we’re sometimes being culinarily adventurous, but we are seldom actually adventurers. Caroline Eden is - she’s like a cooking Kate Adie. And like no-one else she can get to the heart of a place and tell its stories through its food.

Her latest book, Green Mountains, (published last week) is the last in her colour trilogy. First there was Red Sands and then came Black Sea. Two glorious, evocative, delicious books that stretched across the land and food scapes from eastern Europe to Central Asia, telling stories of countries and communities that have since been much-changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The region covered by Green Mountains sees Caroline connect the theme of her first book with the Caspian Sea where her second began. But this time she’s not traveling overland by train, bus or car as would, frankly, seem sensible. This time her journey is on foot, through the lands of Armenia and Georgia.

Read on for more background to this book, three sample recipes to try - and head here for details on how to join in with our digital discussion group to share thoughts and food from April’s cookbook club pick: Green Mountains by Caroline Eden.