In recent years, Canadians have been planting more and more edible flowers in their gardens. This recent trend motivated me to do some research on Floral Cuisine.
Do you enjoy entertaining outdoors on a summer evening when the fragrance of blossoms from the flower garden drifts across the evening breeze? When dinner music is provided by nature, courtesy of crickets, frogs and cicadas and the trickle of water from the garden pump in the lily pond sings a lullaby that erases the stress of the day?
Good friends, good conversation and laughter make for an enjoyable time. Now, you can make the evening unforgettable. Delight your guests by using your garden's bountiful blossoms to flavor and garnish dinner dishes.
Many flowers are edible. The Chinese have used steamed and dried daylilies and tiger lilies to flavor their food for centuries. In Ancient Rome, marigolds, violets and roses were incorporated into the cuisine.
It is vital that you know which flowers are toxic and which are edible. Poisonous flowers include rhododendron, wisteria, crocus, azalea, oleander, lily-of-the-valley, iris, buttercups, narcissus, foxglove, clematis, calla lily, periwinkle, bleeding heart, lupine, petunia, monkshood, delphinium and sweetpeas. You must also ensure that flowers used in food dishes have not been sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. Therefore, you must purchase flowers for food preparation from a nursery or garden center.
Taste the flowers that you add to dishes to be sure that they appeal to your tastebuds. When using lilies, remove stamens, anther and pistil. Wild violets and johnny-jump-ups are especially tasty. Use these along with fresh strawberries to decorate a cake that is out of this world. You can also "candy" violets by using a camelhair brush to apply slightly beaten egg white and berry sugar. Dry these on wax paper and store in airtight containers. They are especially tasty on chocolate mousse or chocolate cake.
To make a delightful punch bowl, freeze pansies in a decorative ice cube tray. Use jelly moulds or small bowls to freeze water in layers. Add a variety of colored pansies to each layer. Add the ice to the punch bowl just before serving.
Calendula adds natural color to soup when heated. Also known as "pot marigold" it was once used to color cheese.
Herbs such as purple chives, basil flowers, fennel, dill and oregano blossoms add fantastic flavor to salads, mashed potatoes, soups, pasta sauces and flavored vinegars.
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