Elly McCausland’s tips on using botanicals in meals
LAVENDER AND ROSE... WITH MEAT? FOOD WRITER ELLY McCAUSLAND TELLS LAUREN TAYLOR HOW TO USE BOTANICALS IN MEALS
MANY of us probably eat ‘botanical’ ingredients all the time – in curries, stir-fries and takeouts from our local Thai – but how much attention do we really pay to them?
We’re talking flowers, seeds, leaves and fruit – and food writer Elly McCausland is on a mission to bring these small underrated ingredients to the forefront.
“They aren’t always centrestage but they’re the backbone of the dish and provide really important flavour accents – we don’t always give these ingredients as much attention as they deserve,” she says.
“A lot of the time, we think about the protein first, or the carbohydrate, and then we build a dish from there, whereas I’m thinking, ‘OK I have a pear, what can I do with that?’”
Her first cookbook, The Botanical Kitchen, is packed with recipes celebrating fruits (like orchard fruit or berries), leaves (banana leaves, kaffir lime leaves and herbs), flowers (lavender, saffron and elderflower) and seeds (cardamom or poppy). But some might feel a bit alien to many home cooks.
“When I was describing the book to someone and said there was a chapter on flowers, they looked at me like I was a bit mad,” Elly admits.
“I discovered lamb goes really well with lavender – just enough to get a slightly resinous, grassy taste, it really brings out the natural herbiness [of the meat]. Ditto with chicken and rose!”
But she knows these ingredients can seem daunting.
“My advice would be to use sparingly, they are quite powerful, like rose and lavender, you don’t want to end up with a dish tasting like soap.
“But the other thing I’d say is to be open-minded. We tend to associate floral flavours with sweets – Turkish delight, sugared violets – but actually a little bit of floral can have a really powerful and wonderful effect on savoury food.”
Think lavender, lemon and goats cheese focaccia, or chamomile rice with teriyaki pork and picked apple salad.
Are people she cooks for surprised by her (sometimes) unusual flavour combinations? “Yes I think so – I hope pleasantly surprised! One of the recipes, the blue cheese risotto with caramelised balsamic pears... pears with risotto sounds very strange and I’ve definitely had some sceptical reactions, but people end up loving it. It’s just not something you initially think goes together. It’s the same with duck and lychee or anything with tea in it – people are surprised by how versatile tea leaves are to cook with.”
British but based in Oslo for her (other) job as a university lecturer, Elly has taken inspiration from her travels around the world. There’s North African and Middle Eastern notes in her cauliflower, date and preserved lemon dumplings with pomegranate and tahini dipping sauce, and Japanese influence in her soba noddles with crab, pomelo, yuzu and avocado.
“There are cuisines that are a lot more complex than ours in their use of botanicals. Thai, Indian and Southeast Asian food in general – if you think of the number of botanicals that go into a simple soup, or for a Thai curry paste, you’re looking at probably 15 different ingredients, most of which are botanicals.
“The way they layer flavours, that’s something we’re working on in our cooking [in Europe] but it’s something certain countries have been doing for thousands of years.”
In the book, she talks about the disappearance of British and local apple varieties and the strong history the UK has with saffron. “A tiny part of me hopes I can get people to try and take food for granted a bit less and enjoy local [produce],” she says. ■ The Botanical Kitchen by Elly McCausland, photography by Polly Webster, is published by Bloomsbury Absolute, priced £26. Available now.