Whence?

There's' no obligation for cookbook authors to tell you where you can get ingredients that you can't find in your supermarket, but it sure is nice.

The information might be found in a recipe's ingredient list but more often appears in a headnote, a sidenote, or an endnote.

headnote … Heidi Swanson calls for nigella (seeds) in her recipe for amaranth biscuits (Super Natural Cooking, pages 36-37). Nigella seeds are hard black specks with a subtle vegetal flavor. Swanson tells us in a sidenote that the seeds are also known as black onion seeds and can be found in Indian and Middle Eastern markets. (They're also called kalongi and can be found under any of those three names at kalustians.com.)

sidenote … endnote …

Sometimes sourcing information will be in a special section at the front or the back of a book. Teach yourself to thumb through the whole book lightly before setting in to work on a specific recipe.

Rick Bayless starts his book Mexican Everyday right after the introduction with a chapter on Pantry Basics. His recipe for Fresh Tomatillo Salsa calls, naturally, for tomatillos, small tart vegetables whose shape and distribution of flesh and seeds do indeed resemble miniature tomatoes (hence the name). Unlike tomatoes they grow in papery husks and have a stick substance on their shin that needs to be rinsed off. There's no pointer from the salsa recipe to the description of tomatillos at the front of the book, but you'll know to turn there from your preliminary reconnoiter. Typical Bayless generosity (he's one of the most open-hearted cookbook writers on the planet) gives you not only sourcing information for tomatillos but tips on choosing and storing them as well.

Don't forget to check the index when you're looking for sourcing information. Joyce Goldstein gives us a recipe for farro with butternut squash and chestnuts on pages 77-78 of her Solo Suppers. Farro is a grain in the wheat-spelt-Kamut family. Goldstein doesn't give us sourcing information in the recipe, although she teaches us the difference between Azbruzzo and Garfagnana farro. (Farro from Abruzzo is less refined and thus takes longer to cook.) She doesn't give us sourcing information in her introductory chapter on Stocking the Basic Pantry, although she does recommend storing farro in glass jars lest weevils escape from farro to other grains, or from other grains to farro. If we look for farro in the index, we find it listed in three recipes plus two blind entries:

farro, 77, 87

Farro Salad, 57

Farro with Butternut Squash, 77-78

Lentil and Farro Soup

(Blind entries are what indexers call those page numbers, 77 and 87, that come immediately after the headword, "farro," without any explanatory text.) Page 77 is the explanation at the beginning of the recipe for Farro with Butternut Squash and Chestnuts. I say "at the beginning" rather than "in a headnote" because Goldstein doesn't differentiate headnote from method in this book. The other two farro recipes are on pages 44-45 and page 57. So what's with page 87? Bingo. After telling us how she first encountered farro and grew to like it, she tells us that it's available at Italian markets and online at agferrari.com.