A Taste of the Unexpected [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

I wish I could award this book more than 5 stars because it is the work of genius. Mark Diacono has crafted a rare thing: a non-fiction book about food, growing and cooking that's a cracking page turner. I returned home yesterday evening after a 320-mile round trip to a day long seminar to find this long anticipated book had arrived. I opened the package, was instantly hooked and finished reading it in the early hours of this morning.

After writing the widely acclaimed Veg Patch: River Cottage Handbook No.4 last year, Diacono has turned his attention away from the standard grow your own fayre to his major love, the growing of the more unusual fruit and vegetables. His philosophy is simple: why waste so much time and effort on growing the usual (usually cheap to buy) suspects only to find they don't taste that much different to what's available at the shops? Instead we should turn our attention to the tastes and foods we savour the most and use these as our guides to drive out the list of things we really want to grow. If the list still contains potatoes or carrots then that's fine, but do make sure they're varieties that can't easily be found in the shops.

If flavours and what you like to eat are your guide, then Mark argues you'll also find that more of the unusual foods available for cultivation will then be added to your must-grow list. He's the ideal candidate to show us the possibilities this offers as this is exactly what he has been doing over the past few years at Otter Farm, his smallholding in Devon which is billed as Britain's first climate change farm. He's saved us hours of work by revealing nearly 40 of his best tried and tested more unusual crops.

Mark's a canny writer: in his introduction he guides us through the best way to come up with our own wishlist of what to grow. From lists of unbuyables and transformers (foods which turn the other ingredients into a sensational meal), through seasonal highlights, gambles, uncertainties and quick returns he maps out the possibilities for us. Each crop in then thoroughly introduced, bundled together under the headings of Tree Fruit, Nuts, Soft Fruit, Herbs & Spices, Beans & Greens, Leaves & Flowers and Buried Treasure. You'll already be familiar with some of them like almonds, asparagus and apricots, but I'm sure that only the most experimental amongst you will have tried oca or yacon.

This is another canny tack: by describing some of the more familiar options and how to grow them, the best varieties to choose etc. Mark builds up trust between himself and the reader which in turns gives you the confidence to not only to try to grow the more familiar foods which suit your garden's conditions, but to also try some or all of the other ones described. I have already radically altered the plans for my allotment next year.

The final masterstroke is to provide mouthwatering recipes for all of the crops featured. I can't wait to try Fesanjan (a rich chicken dish from Persia using the featured Carolina Allspice), Stir Fried Pork with Kai Lan (a perennial member of the brassica family) or Wineberry Trifle.

All of this is generously illustrated with photographs of both crops and recipes which will make you want to eat the page. The book is also well seasoned with warmth, wit and a treasure trove of anecdotes and experience.

My gardening AND foodie book of the year.

For those not familiar with the world of River Cottage and its bountiful kitchen garden at Park Farm near Uplyme in Dorset, then meet Mark Diacono, its Head Gardener. He is also the owner of Otter Farm, Britain's only climate change farm, where the staple diet of the day is peaches, gojiberries and Egyptian walking onions. His new book "A Taste of the Unexpected" (published by Quadrille this month) is telling in that there is not even one photo of the man himself within its colourful, exhuberant pages. In the frenzied publishing world, where new and unlikely celebrity chefs and gardeners are thrust into the media spotlight ever fifteen minutes, the author has chosen to let his style of horticulture and philosphy of what he grows, tends, eats and how, take centre stage. With some help from Laura Hynd (photographer of much of Rose Prince's acclaimed work), behold one of the most beautiful and enticing crossover cookery-gardening books of the year has arrived. Unexpected and unchartered, this is the new taste of climate change.

Expect the unexpected from this book, approach it with an open mind, and an understanding that the need for low carbon food production, increased water scarcity, higher levels of global warming and the urgency of sustainability and self-sufficiency are no longer news flashes, they now form part of the diurnal collective consciousness.

Mark's philosophy is that growing common plants in your allotment or vegetable garden is not really life-enhancing, as potatoes, carrots, salads, onions and apples can really be bought at your local farmer's market or green grocer shop and they taste just as delicious.

"Life is too short to grow unremarkable food. It's simply not worth the time or effort and - happily- it's no more tricky to grow the utterly delicious than it is the entirely ordinary."

It all makes sense to the thinking cook, and I am very inspired. By making a wishlist, letting flavour be your guide, growing more unexpected plants that are at their peak when you eat them, not growing plants that are cheap to buy, and focussing on those plants that can quite literally transform a dish, Mark Diacono is taking garden plotting into new and exciting areas.

With climate change, we can think diet change: apricots, mulberries, pecans, wineberries, chilean guavas, Szechuan pepper, cardoons and mizuna. Each chapter gives you fundamental advice on the conditions each plant thrives on, the varieties available, the growing methods and the process of harvesting. There are beautifully photographed recipes that will make you as jealous as the day is long, your eyes lingering covetously on that curvy plate of "Scallops with sweet cicely" and those puffy, billowing "Chocolate souffles with apricot sauce". An Italian living in England, for so long I have wanted to make better use of my vegetable patch and this book has sent my imagination spinning: autumn olive jam, cream of Jerusalem onion soup, lamb and quince tagine, spectacular strawberry scones. My seed buying plans are revised and rethought.

Like Jane Grigson, Michael Pollan and Jecca McVicar before him, Mark is a natural writer, who writes confidently and authoritatively about a subject he is both passionate and technically skilled at. His work is on show every day, and it is the everyday meal that is the focus of his energies. A list of "Sources and Suppliers" is the first port of call after finishing this book. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was right: "...I believe that this is a book that will, if you let it, if you really use it, change how and what you grow, what you cook and how you eat, forever and for the better."

I found my nine year-old at the breakfast table this morning reading 'A Taste of the Unexpected'. Bearing in mind she is a great consumer of beautiful photography, I wasn't surprised, until I then watched her get, go to the back door, have a think, and then ask where in our tiny and as yet bare garden we could plant our very own pecan tree.

This is what this book does. It gets you. It explains how to make the most of a small space, or what do to do with a larger area, all without the slightest hint of patronising or assuming that we know when a medlar is ready to pick - I hadn't a clue. It's a book for grown-ups, but I saw this morning that if you write it right, you can hook the children too.

Mark Diacono's great idea is that perhaps we should give over to something more interesting those pots in which we'd half-heartedly grown carrots last year, only to see them for sale at 2p/lb down the road. Instead of carrots, grow sweet cecily: but first of all read all about it: fabulous facts and with a healthy dose of humour thrown in. I'm easily bored by the fare, both edible and literary, of self-conscious 'lifestyle cookery' writers, but it is evident from the first page of this book that Mark Diacono really really does, in real life, the things he says he does in his writing. He researches the plant, he shares his own experiments in growing, he suggests varities that will work for us in our small plot, frost pocket or raised bed, and he provides us with a sensible recipe or two with each fruit, vegetable, nut, herb, spice and flower. 'Make your garden unbuyable', he says. 'Food is at its finest when it slows down a little, when we give it a chance to be enjoyed for the journey as much as the result'

I stood with my daughter this morning and showed her where we could plant the quince. She referred to the helpful 'making a wishlist' and 'planning your space' sections: I referred her to the 'turning your wishlist into reality' section. We were incredibly late for school, but I felt the lesson we'd both shared in that time was going to spark something that will stay with us for a long, long time.