Cooking with flowers
Trudy Turrell offers an occasional insight into foraging, cooking with flowers and using wild edible plants
Long summer days give us the chance to be outside more- and to take time to appreciate being in nature. I love seeing the hedgerows frothing with blossoms-not least because I forage some to cook with- in teas, cordials, on salads and fried!
Wild and cultivated roses, elderflowers, clover flowers, and meadowsweet are all edible- and make a beautiful addition to any salad. I’m gathering some to dry for flowery teas that will remind me of summer; simply making small bunches, covering with a paper bag and hanging them in my airing cupboard until crisp and dry, to be blended and stored in jars.
I make cordial of course, but not just with elderflowers; the meadowsweet that lines hedges and river banks right now and smells of honey makes a wonderful cordial- use a generic elderflower cordial recipe- and don’t waste the leftover lemons when you bottle your cordial. I chop and boil mine, softening the rind, then make them into a flower flavoured lemon marmalade.
Edible flowers are fabulous hot- in a crispy tempura batter- try elderflower heads, clover heads or rose petals in the recipe below. Amazing dipped in castor sugar as a dessert, they can also make a starter with a runny mango chutney dipping sauce- or my foraged alternative- rosehip ketchup- a recipe I’ll share with you in the autumn.
Wildflower Tempura-
Using elderflowers, rose petals and clover. Meadowsweet is delicious too.
For the batter-
50g cornflour
50g plain flour
80ml fizzy water (cold from the fridge)
Vegetable/ rapeseed oil
Caster sugar or runny mango chutney
Mix the above to make a tempura batter. This batter needs to be made immediately before being used, unlike pancake batter. Heat a wok or deep frying pan with 2-3cm of oil until smoking hot. You can test the heat by dropping a spoonful of batter mix in and seeing if it sizzles. Dip flowers into the batter and drop in the oil. Let them fry golden but not brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and dry off excess oil on kitchen roll or tea towels. Dip in castor sugar/ chutney and eat hot off the stems!
I lead Forage and Feast events around South Devon. Follow me on instagram trudyturrell_forager for seasonal foraging tips and recipes or contact me at trudyturrell1@gmail.com
For more about foraging and cooking with flowers, join me at Carswell Farm, near Holbeton for a Seashore Forage and Feast, on 23rd July, foraging for seaweed on Carswell’s wild beach, cooking and sharing a meal together. There’s just a few places left at this link.