COOKING WITH FLOWERS
Celebrate spring with flowers in your plate. Create surprise, impress your guests with flowered recipes. Fragrant freshness and colours, for a range of peppered, sweet or tangy flavours.
A language of poetry known for centuries in the Mediterranean, like oriental cuisine with its unusual sweet and sour combinations.
Our grandmothers already knew how to candy rose petals, make delicious acacia-flower fritters, flavour stews with marjoram flowers.
Flowers can be wild or cultivated, but all are not edible, some are eaten at the start of the flowering season, when they are still in the bud.
They must always be used advisedly; some are toxic like laburnum and yellow iris.
Combine them with other ingredients to reveal unexpected flavours, sharp or bitter.
When cooked, like all fresh produce, they lose part of their flavour. But they're especially delicious when eaten very fresh. If you have no garden or balcony, buy them from a horticulturist.
If they have been treated, wait 8 days before using.
Some supermarkets also sell some flowers in over-wrapped trays. Do not pick them from the roadside; the flowers might have suffered from pollution.
Nasturtium has a peppered taste and is delicious in salads.
Courgette flowers have to be handled with care, and come into their full flavour when stuffed.
In China, magnolia flowers are eaten dipped in flour and cooked as fritters. Rose-scented jams and jellies have a velvety sweetness.
Liqueurs and oils can be rose, violet, lime and even daisy scented. Try lavender cordial over fruit salad.
For cocktails, pastries, ice-creams and sorbets: rose, lavender or violet cordial. Scatter a few petals of violet over a lemon or banana tart.
Enjoy the sweet fragrance of violet and poppy flavoured boiled sweets. Spring and summer is the time to pick flowers and make the most of their flavour. |
