With spring the desire for nature, color, light-heartedness and well-being blossoms. In the wake of this trend, floriculture and agriculture seem to have recently found a meeting point in conceiving flowers as a kind of new vegetable.
THE edible flowers they appear as a food novelty that satisfies new tastes, embellishes a dish and makes the taste buds dance.
This is how the flowers appear on the tables of starred chefs and not just in the middle of the table.
Salads decorated with edible flowers (more simply called edible) are also offered on supermarket shelves at introductory price. It cannot be taken for granted that the plants that produce these flowers must be organically grown, completely free of pesticides or chemical additives.
What are the flowers that can be eaten? And which is better to stay away from?
Some are suitable to enhance salads, others it is better to put them in soups, others are very sweet, some frizzantini, others are poisonous and therefore? … it is better to know how to recognize them !!!
For this reason it is important that the species used are certified by the producer or that one is fully aware of the flowers collected, we must know them perfectly and know how to classify them with certainty.
Antea is a community project that aims to support the expansion of the market for edible flowers through scientific knowledge and cataloging; on their website you will find the list of 40 flowers declared edible.
It must be said that decorating foods with colorful flowers and then eating them is not a modern-day invention, think that the ancient Romans went mad about roses and filled every banquet with these flowers to then peel off the petals, eat them or put them in wine; they believed that the consumption of flowers stimulated the imagination.
Among the edible species therefore we find the ROSE with a sweet and delicate taste, very fragrant species are often used such as Centifoglia, Bourbon, Damascena. You can make candies, jellies, the syrup jam perhaps to prepare unusual aperitifs.
The flowers of LAVENDER they are blue-violet and are on top of an ear-shaped inflorescence; the aroma is very intense and the flowers, if carefully dried, retain the same taste they had when they were fresh.
Even the VIOLE they are edible, also used above all for sweet preparations; the flowers can be white, pink, lilac or dark purple.
The are highly appreciated NASTURTIUM with its spicy taste reminiscent of the rapanello and the BEGONIA which can have a sweet or bitter taste depending on when it is harvested.
Where can edible flowers be found?
In some supermarkets, in the refrigerated counter of the fruit and vegetable department, there are salads with some edible flowers inside.
Online, the flowers are sold in transparent polyethylene trays, the storage temperature must remain around 2-5 degrees, for this we must turn to experienced producers who are able to market the flowers correctly.
(for edible flowers cut in the tub www.ifioridihortives.it)
in nurseries, petal-like trays of small plants with edible flowers are found more and more frequently.
Own production, the latest trend is to start from the seeds and produce the flowers in your own home for your own recipes, here are born lines of seeds dedicated to flowers for wellness, health and for the kitchen.
Smart garden, there are design appliances in which the seeds are contained in pods like those of the famous coffee and through a hydroponic cultivation, they succeed in accelerating the growth times even intensifying the organoleptic properties.
text and photos by
Raffaella Damonte *
March 2019
* The writer has become so passionate that a few months ago he opened a Floral cooking blog where flowers are the protagonists of the recipes.
The blog aims to true gourmands who want to discover the flavors that our land gives us every day, FIORDICUCINA.COM is made of perfumes, petals and seeds, a place to discover that flowers are not just a nice finishing touch but they can become, with their taste, protagonists of the dish.
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