By Aillinn Brennan • Special to The Current
Culinary flowers are feast for the eyes and on the palate they offer, peppery, grassy, and herbaceous notes. Using them in salads, cocktails and garnish with imbue the glories of the season into whatever you do!
Garden to Table
Flowers from herbs such as chamomile, lavender, rosemary, cilantro, chives, sage, and dill all offer flower power on your plate. Delicate blooming cilantro flowers a top a smoked salmon and cream cheese cracker will look fabulous and impart a mild coriander flavor. How lovely would vibrant lavender flowers be encircling a fresh summer fruit and cheese plate? And grab those sunshine yellow dill flowers and put them in your homemade pickle jars.
Pansy, dandelion, rose, geranium, nasturtium, and viola petals are the common edible flowers growing in your garden. Before using flowers do a quick google search that your flower is the flower you think it is!
Stick with using just the petals as stems and leaves may be inedible. Pick and serve right away, will not keep great in the fridge. Do you have mixed feelings about the ubiquitous dandelion “weed?” Stand corrected, it’s a mighty power flower!
The cheerful yellow “weed” which you exhaustedly fork out of the earth can be eaten in its entirety, even the root. It is extremely nutritious with tons of vitamins, iron, magnesium, calcium and antioxidants galore.
Cook the leaves like you would any greens or pick the tender new ones to create a beautiful polychromatic salad. Pour a light, maybe citrus-ie, dressing on the bottom of a salad bowl. Top with greens and festoon with flowers. Toss at the last minute and serve.
A Blooming Good Cocktail
When the hill sides of honeysuckle start blooming and you catch the perfume on the soft breeze…go and pick them! What could be more perfectly floral than a honeysuckle adorning a honeysuckle infused vodka & lemonade? Do it.
Fill a mason jar with honeysuckle flowers, then vodka, let sit for about 5 days and shake every now and then. Using a few layers of cheese cloth, strain the vodka off the flowers and your infusion is ready for infusing. Get your lemonade and pick a few more honeysuckles to garnish.
Floating Flowers in a cocktail by creating ice cubes with suspended flowers will delight your guest’s weather in a cocktail or in a bubbly glass of mineral water. Silicone trays are the trick. The ice will be easy to remove and the cubes will have nice crisp edges. Fill the tray evenly a quarter way up and let freeze. Pick and pose your petals and just cover with water and freeze again. Finally, top it off with water and pop pack in the freezer. Your guest is ready to impress!
Is flower your power? Gather ye rosebuds while ye may and drink to the day. Bibere Ad Diem!
Aillinn Brennan is proprietor of The Marion Hose Bar located at 16 W. Broadway in Jim Thorpe.
For more visit www.marionhosebar.com
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