Blooming Delicious
When it comes to summer entertaining, you want to impress your guests with eats that look as good as they taste. Why not up your culinary game with edible flowers?
While flowers have been used by cultures throughout the world for thousands of years, it seems these beautiful blooms have now gone upmarket, adorning the plates of high-end restaurants globally.
Edible flowers not only make colourful and tasty additions to your cooking, they can also transform your summer drinks into talking points. Just freeze your flowers in ice cubes and add to your summer tipples.
We look at 10 blooming delicious examples:
All in for alliums: Alliums include the cultivated onion, garlic, scallion, shallot, leek and chives, all which make for delicious additions to green salads, potato and pasta salads and dips.
Never forget nasturtiums: Nasturtium blossoms have a peppur like watercress. All colours and varieties are tasty in salads or as garnishes, with their leaves able to be eaten too.
Must-have marigolds: With a mildly citrus taste, marigold petals can be sprinkled into salads. With colours ranging from pure yellow to orange and red, they are as much a feast for the eyes as they are for the belly.
Pretty as a pansy: Pansies have a wintergreen flavour and are pretty on cakes and other desserts.
Sweet as honeysuckle: Although its berries are poisonous, honeysuckle blossoms make a pretty, and safe, addition to salads.
Forage some borage: The fuzzy-leaved herb borage has sky-blue flowers with a light cucumber taste. Add to fruit salads, green salads or freeze in ice cubes for cold drinks.
Cute little chamomile: A pretty plant that graces the herb garden with masses of small flowers, chamomile offers a tasty apple-like flavour.
Newly minted: All flowers of the mint family make for tasty additions to your cooking. Try lemon balm or spearmint in iced tea.
Game of squash: Squash blossoms can be used as a garnish, made into fritters or chucked into a stir-fry.
Stop and eat the roses: All roses are edible, with miniature varieties ideal to garnish ice cream and desserts, while larger petals can be sprinkled on desserts or salads.
