"edible flowers" news and stories

Photo: Pink Sherbet Photography, Flickr

• Edible flowers proffer a delicious, colorful boost to summer cocktails.
• The Minimalist makes a corn and tomato salad.
• The joy of a BLP, with plums subbed for blight-stricken tomatoes.
  
• Alluring Italian white wines are giving their red counterparts a run for their money.
• The Temporary Vegetarian goes fungal with Mushrooms in Lettuce Wraps.
• Brooklyn's Creative Cooks Culinary Center teaches tykes the art of culinary creations.
• Hudson Valley farmers' markets offer foodie thrills and a distinct sense of community.
• I scream, you scream, parents scream about ice cream.
• How to go retro with a 1951 recipe for Brandied Peaches.

With Mother's Day on for tomorrow, flowers will be popping up all over the place, but 99% of them will be cut fresh flowers to be placed in vases on a table to look at. Don't forget, though, that many flowers are just as good to eat.

Beyond Blossoms has a blog dedicated to flowers, and a recent post covers edible flowers. While the nasturtium certainly gets its fair share of the spotlight as an edible flower in salads, Beyond Blossoms also goes into some of the lesser known varieties like marigolds, lavender, thyme and other herb flowers. The post has some useful information about how to prep and use flowers. The recipes in this specific post are for Nasturtium and Avocado Tagliatelle, and Carrot Cake with Thyme Flowers, taken from Sue Lawrence of Scotsman.com.

Whenever someone mentioned edible flowers to me, whether as part of a dish or used as a garnish, I nodded politely and did not think much of it. I considered edible flowers to be among the items that one can only find at a store with hard-to-find specialty ingredients - ingredients that I would probably never use, let alone actually need. This week, however, I spotted bags of hibiscus flowers at Trader Joe's.

Sold alongside the other dried fruits, the hibiscus flowers are dried and lightly sweetened. Apart from their beautiful dark fuchsiacolor, they taste pretty good. Slightly sweet and chewy, like fruit leather, they have a bit of a vegetal undertone that is not present in most dried fruits. I think that they'd make an attractive garnish for cakes and even a nice, unusual addition to a spring-time salad. They are not, however, something that I would eat by the handful.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]