LIST 89

7 Edible Flowers

 

Cathy Wilkinson Barash's colorful, lavishly illustrated 1993 cookbook looks in many ways like a lot of other coffee-table cookbooks. Except that it's titled Edible Flowers. In it, the lifelong flower-eater gives recipes, complete with scrumptious photos, for dishes you can prepare with 66 types of flower. Among them:

1

Tulips often taste like peas or beans, Barash tells us from experience, “occasionally with a green apple overtone.” They make great salad dressing and tuna salad.

2

Pansy petals taste mildly sweet, while the entire flower has “a wintergreen overtone.” Grinding them with granulated sugar in water makes pansy syrup.

3

As for roses, Barash recommends old varieties and fragrant hybrids. In general, roses have varying flavors, “all on the sweet side, with overtones ranging from apple to cinnamon to minty.”

4

Chrysanthemums are tangy and go well with lamb.

5

When young, dandelions “have a sweet, honeylike flavor.” Combine them with sugar, yeast, and juice from freshly-squeezed lemons and oranges to make the fabled dandelion wine.

6

Honeysuckle is especially yummy; Barash lavishes praise on this “floral, nectarous delectation.” Like all flowers, it can be candied, jellied, or used to infuse vodka.

7

Sunflower buds taste like artichoke, while the petals of the flower are bittersweet.