EDIBLE FLOWERS ADD POP, COLOR TO DISHES
Flowers add color and pop to dishes, drinks, cheeses and desserts
Flowers are a feast for the senses of sight and smell, obviously, but also, increasingly, the taste buds. Blooms are enjoying a boom as ingredients in soups, salads and cheeses and as garnishes for cocktails and confections. Rose petal lemonade and hibiscus tea, herb blossom butters and dainty violets dipped in dark chocolate have found their way onto trendy menus. And edible flowers have gone mainstream to the degree that the dining hall at Colorado State University serves lavender ice cream.
But take care: many flowers are toxic, even deadly. Never bite into a blossom without knowing for certain that the bloom is known to be edible, is culinary grade and has been grown without hazardous herbicides or pesticides.
Teri Rippeto, who recently sold her Denver restaurant Potager after 22 years, is a fan of flowers as food. She stressed the importance of using only organic blooms. Rippeto, who was featured in the documentary series “Hot Spots,” cited Red Wagon Farm and Living Local Microgreens as her favorite sources for edible flowers. But she also grows her own.
“I use broccoli and cauliflower flowers if I don’t get the veggies out before they flower,” she said. “I’ll also let some go on purpose and toss flowers into salads or sprinkle over a very simple pasta or ravioli.”
She also uses flowers from borage, chives and nasturtiums.
“Again, in the simplest ways. They are delicate and get drowned out very easily,” she said. “Sprinkle flowers over goat cheese, burrata, or a cheese tart and in a salad for a splash of color. Edible flowers are perfect for garnishing cakes and pastries, but keep it simple. Honor what you’re using rather than making it about your own complicated ideas.”
Mondo Market’s two locations in Denver and Aurora sell an imported cheese called Alp Bloom. The Austrian cheese’s rind is dusted with an eye-appealing confetti of multi-colored dried flowers: rose petals, cornflowers, lavender, marjoram, chervil and lovage.
Nic Farrell, owner of Mondo Market, said, “It’s the not only beautiful, but also edible flowers that make this a very dynamic cheese. They took an everyday, boring cheese that the cheesemongers weren’t selling fast enough and enrobed it with alpine flora: wildflowers and herbs. It was a new marketing spin on very traditional cheese.”
Farrell, a former chef, said Alp Bloom works best as a table cheese. “For snacking, pair it with a stronger red wine. It sits very well on the palate and is also beautiful.”
Gourmets and gourmands now can more readily pick edible flowers.
“When I started out, edible flowers were a California thing. Now with growing and freezing and drying techniques, there’s easier access to edible flowers. They’re not just fresh but also freeze-dried,” he said.
“They have been super expensive and have come down in price. Tech and marketing demand played into it,” Farrell said. “People look at food differently these days, always asking ‘what else can we do? What’s next?’ Edible flowers add awesome color and vibrancy.”
The plant kingdom includes a bouquet of edible flowers that are delicious, oftentimes impressively nutritious, sometimes even medicinal, as well. Try adding these blossoms to add to your diet:
Chives: In addition to their popular green leaves, chives produce a lovely pinkish-purple flower. Globular in shape, chive flowers
can be used as an edible garnish for any dish that would welcome the flavor of onion, but milder and more delicate.
Zucchini: Bright orange-yellow in color, the flowers can be stuffed and fried, baked or steamed. Tear zucchini flowers to scatter atop soups, pastas or other savory dishes. In Mexico, where squash blossoms grow abundantly, the flowers are known as flores de calabaza and are added to quesadillas.
Dianthus: Cousins to carnations, dianthus flowers have a pleasantly spicy scent and flavor akin to cloves. Shop for dianthus blossoms at farmers markets or upscale grocers. Or add dianthus to beds, borders and container gardens and pluck flowers straight from organically grown plants.
Violets: Sweet both in fragrance and flavor, violet flowers are tiny, but pack a big punch as eye candy. Bakers use sugared violets to decorate cakes, cupcakes and other confections. Like pansies, the cousin of violets, the delicate purple flowers add a wow factor to any salad.
Nasturtiums: These plants grow easily, spread exuberantly and bloom in a variety of eyecatching colors. Nasturtium leaves add peppery zest to salads, soups or sandwiches. But the flowers are the real showstoppers. Add blossoms to dress up your potato salad or a green garden salad.
Lavender: The buds figure into fine herbes — a mainstay of French cuisine. Savory recipes include lavender as a seasoning for roasted potatoes, turkey or fried chicken. Lavender desserts are more common. For a sweet tooth, bake lavender shortbread or add lavender buds to granulated sugar and use the lavender sugar as a subtly different sweetener. Lavender lemonade is a summer thirst quencher with a quirky twist, and the flowers flavor spritzers and even wine.
Roses: Herbalists use rose petal tea or syrup to restore the nervous system, relieve insomnia, dispel depression, sooth irritability and promote health in many other ways. Fresh rose petals add sweetness to jams, honeys, and confections. Wedding cakes increasingly incorporate fresh roses as a romantic flourish. Rose water is another way to ingest the flowers. Add rose water to flavor teas or lemonades, cakes, cookies, yogurts or custards.