Blooming tasty

Some garden flowers are safe to eat, so why not use them to add flavour and colour to summer salads, desserts and cocktails? Hazel Sillver reveals which ones to pick

- Hazel Sillver

A SUMMER garden is a rich pantry for a cook who knows which flowers to pick. Peppery orange nasturtiums to give salads fiery taste and colour; aromatic lavender to bake in shortbread; crystallised rose petals to decorate cupcakes; and frozen borage blooms - one per ice cube - floating in a glass of Pimm's.

"Rose and orange blossoms have been distilled for centuries in the Middle East to flavour sweets and coffee," says Monica Nelson, author of the new book Edible Flowers (£20, Monacelli). "The Aztecs used marigolds to flavour cacao. Daylily is an important element in Chinese cooking... The practice of eating flowers has ebbed and flowed with the tides of culinary custom, but is today a growing force among restaurants."

Seasonal ingredients

Edible blooms are particularly favoured by restaurants that use seasonal ingredients, such as Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, which has three Michelin stars. Owner and head chef René Redzepi includes flowers in more than 90 of the recipes in his cookbook.

The idea of using flowers in the kitchen might seem alien, but many of us have drunk elderflower water, enjoyed baklava pastries flavoured with orange blossom, and eaten deep-fried squash flowers. Using fresh flowers in the kitchen is a quick and easy way to make food look good and add great flavour.

Eating flowers can be very simple. For example, a few bright-orange calendula petals can be tossed into a salad or a scattering of thyme flowers can be added to the top of a pasta dish. It can also be a lot more involved, from cornflower petals added to pasta dough to lollipops made with violas. At parties, cucumber-flavoured borage flowers can be set into ice cubes and rose syrup is delicious stirred into cocktails.

Transform your salads