Let me preface this by saying that I normally don’t cook like this:). It just so happens that we have a guest coming over and I had signed up for the Eat Local Challenge. What excited me about this month’s Paper Chef Challenge (from Owen at Tomatilla.com) was the opportunity to make a dish with flowers. While I have been growing flowers and herbs, I don’t make it a habit of using them for cooking. They are mostly enjoyed by my family in the garden, every now and then pressed into books, sniffed just because it feels good to do that, and occasionally cut for a vase indoors. Except for my German Chamomile (matricaria recutita) which I love as tea, I have not really harvested any other flowers for the kitchen due to allergies of family members…. this was a first — and the flowers eaten only by the non-allergy sufferers:D.

The #1 rule for using flowers in cooking is to make sure they have not been sprayed. This is why you should only use flowers that are homegrown or from organic farmers, not from florists — and if you’re not sure, ask!

Helps for your own flower-pepper concoctions:

The Scoville scale, which tells you how hot your peppers are
Edible Flowers

So, without further ado, here was our menu Saturday night:

For starters,

Peach Chutney with Calendula

Red Heart Calendula, grown from seed, from Fedco

To make the chutney:

2 cups peeled, pitted and chopped up peaches
1/4 cup minced yellow onions
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic (homegrown — can’t get any more local than that!)
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup thompson raisins
1/3 cup muscovado or brown sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons minced ginger
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red chili peppers, or to taste
petals from 2-3 calendulas (calendula officinalis) –depends on how big they are — white tips (the part that connects to the pistil/carpels) cut off
marigolds (tagetes tenuifolia)or additional calendula petals for garnishing

Combine all of the above in a saucepan except for flowers. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, for 1 hour or so, or until thickened. Transfer to a bowl and chill until serving time.

This recipe can also be quadrupled and canned (canning information here) — makes a great holiday gift, presented in a gift basket with some chevre or other cheese and a baguette or a box of crackers.

For serving:

Cream cheese or goat cheese, softened (I used Organic Valley’s)
Crackers (I used stone ground wheat) or toasted pita bread cut into wedges, or toast points, or a baguette cut into thin slices and toasted

Before serving, fold in calendula petals into chutney. Smear softened cream cheese on cracker and top with a teaspoonful of chutney. Garnish with a marigold or more calendula petals.

---

Then we had

Pulled Pork with Peach Barbecue Sauce

For the flowers I decided to use my garlic bulbils. Garlic bulbils are the tiny little garlic “seeds” that form in garlic scapes. Garlic scapes are the shoots/flowers that grow at the top of hardneck (allium sativum ophioscorodon) garlic, usually grown in colder regions. I planted my garlic — a sampler pack from The Garlic Store, last fall. It includes Chesnok Red, German Porcelain, Spanish Roja, and Siberian and I just harvested the last week of July, but I did allow a few to develop scapes/flowers. Most farmers believe that if you allow the scapes to develop you end up with a smaller bulb, but since it was my first year growing garlic I wanted to see for myself — and it’s true! If you want to increase your stock, this is a great way to do it, because you get a lot of bulbils that you can plant just like you would the regular-sized cloves. The disadvantage is that they take a couple of years to develop into regular sized bulbs. I wrapped the scapes/bulbils in foil and grill-roasted them along with pork roast, for about 20 minutes — be careful, they can burn easily, my first one did:(…. it also quickly became a nuisance to squeeze out the roast garlic (but did they ever smell gooood!) to put in the sauce, as they are so small and my fingers began to cramp after squeezing out the 10th bulbil or so…. next year, no bulbils for me.

Making the pulled pork is a long but easy process.

The dry rub (based on one from The Best Recipe: Mix the following in a bowl:

4 tablespoons sweet Hungarian Paprika — I used my dried Papris from last year’s harvest — run through a coffee grinder until powdery — careful about sniffing this! —
2 tablespoons chili powder (I used a mix of dried anchos + Penzey’s)
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon dried oregano (my own harvest — seeds received from trade at Gardenweb — yay!)
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon freshly ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (another homegrown variety from last year, plants from The Chile Woman) — original recipe calls for 1-2 teaspoons but I can’t do that because of the kids

[To dry peppers for grinding: wait until the peppers are ripe/red, harvest, then string the stems and hang in a dry place where the air can circulate around them — wait until they’re COMPLETELY dry, otherwise you’ll get mold! — you’ll know they’re dry when you shake them and you hear the seeds. Store whole in jars and run through grinder as needed, with or without the seeds. More seeds=more heat, or you can use the seeds to grow your next year’s peppers!)

Apply the dry rub to a 6-8 pound pork butt roast — coat all over, then wrap in plastic and let sit in the fridge for 3 hours. Grill/smoke in a foil pan set over indirect heat (and some mesquite/hickory chips soaked in water then wrapped in foil poked with holes so the smoke goes through) for 3 hours, then finish off for 2 hours in the oven at 325 degrees F. Since my new range doesn’t get hooked up ’til Thursday, we did all 5 hours in our Weber charcoal grill, adding a few pieces of charcoal every hour or so. After cooking, wrap the roast in foil, then in a brown paper bag, for 1 hour. The heat steams and cooks the roast more and allows the juices to get back into the meat. Then you pull the meat off and shred it, using two forks — my 14-yo was glad to help with the somewhat tedious job of doing this, then the pork is mixed with the barbecue sauce and heaped into burger buns or hotdog buns.

Here’s the recipe for the barbecue sauce:

1 1/2 cups peach puree (I pureed the flesh from 3 peaches and ended up with 2 cups, 1/2 cup of the puree went into the dressing in the following recipe)
1/4 cup maple syrup (I used Loch’s)
1/4 cup Silver Swan soy sauce (in the Philippine aisle in Asian stores)
1/2 cup roasted garlic bulbils, skins discarded (or substituted 1 /4 cup minced garlic mashed to a paste with several pinches of salt, in which case decrease soy sauce to 1/8 cup or to taste)
more dried peppers if you like
1/2 cup chopped or pureed tomatoes
1 tablespoon unsulphured molasses
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon liquid smoke (optional)
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cook 15-20 minutes or until mixture is smooth. Keep warm until serving time. This was then mixed into the pulled pork meat before using in sandwiches.

With that, we had fresh corn from Eckel’s Farm (see below), and

Green Bean, Scarlet Runner Bean Flowers and Walnut Saute, with Peach Dressing

Scarlet runner beans (phaseolus coccineus), grown by my 6-year-old, were the edible flowers used in this recipe. They are stunning both in the garden and on your plate. Seeds from Exchange at Gardenweb.

For the dressing:

1/2 cup peach puree (see also above recipe for Peach Barbecue Sauce)
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (I used organic expeller pressed from Hain)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
pinch of sugar if necessary

Whisk peach puree and balsamic vinegar together in a bowl. Whisk in olive oil in a slow stream, and season with salt and pepper (and sugar if necessary) to taste.

1 pound green beans, topped, tailed if necessary
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 cup walnuts, left whole or chopped roughly, toasted 3-4 minutes in a dry skillet (toss over medium-high heat until fragrant)
2-3 dried hot red peppers (available at Asian stores, I used my dried cayennes), broken up if you want the dish to be HOT
a handful of scarlet runner bean flowers

Boil water in a large saucepan. Drop in green beans and boil rapidly for 3 minutes. Refresh in ice water to stop cooking. Heat oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat. When hot but not smoking, add garlic and stir-fry 10 seconds. Add walnuts, green beans and red peppers, stir-fry 1 minute, then add flowers and stir-fry another minute or until green beans are crisp-tender. Remove from heat and toss with edible flowers in a large bowl. Transfer to serving platter/bowl and drizzle with peach dressing.

A 2000 Pinot Noir from Louis Jadot was a good accompaniment, but don’t ask me to go into describing fruity flavors and hints of oak, yada-yada-yada. I just drink the wine and enjoy it, none of that cerebral wine stuff for me please. Maybe one day:)

---

For dessert, we enjoyed

Peach-Strawberry-Ancho Marble Ice Cream

Ingredients and instructions for the peach ice cream can be found in my peach ice cream post.

Paper Chef Variation:

10 frozen strawberries, for about 1/2 cup puree (I used organic from Cascadian Farms as strawberry season here is over)
1 dried ancho chile
Crystallized Rose Petals and Pansies (recipe follows)

Soak ancho chile in hot water until soft, about 20 minutes. Discard peel and mash pulp with a fork, discarding seeds. In a food processor puree strawberries. Add 1 tablespoon mashed ancho pepper and 2 tablespoons sugar (or to taste) and continue to blend until you get a smooth puree. (If it’s too dry add 1-2 tablespoons water.) Chill until needed.

Make ice cream according to instructions. After adding peaches in, take ice cream out of the machine and transfer to a large shallow pan or container with a lid. Even out surface using an offset spatula. Pour strawberry-ancho chile mixture on top. Using a spatula or knife swirl in red mixture to mix with the white just until marbled. Cover and freeze until firm, about 3 hours. Serve garnished with crystallized rose petals or pansies.

Crystallized Edible Flowers

My roses are from free plants I got last year through Freecycle! Pansy names are utterly confusing and I confess I haven’t quite figured them out. Depending on where you look, people have referred to them as Johnny-jump-ups, viola cornuta, viola wittrockiana, viola tricolor, etc., etc. People agree and disagree on the names LOL. I just know they’re purple, cute, and that my 3-year old loves them.

To make crystallized flowers, you need:
edible flowers — see link at the beginning of this post — gently washed in water if needed and patted dry, white portions trimmed (the part that connects to the pistil/carpels — they can get bitter)
1 egg white beaten with 1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup superfine sugar (if you don’t have access to superfine sugar, run some regular granulated in a blender)

Using a brush, lightly coat each petal with the egg white mixture, letting excess drip. Dip carefully into superfine sugar. Let dry on wax paper. When fully dry, can be stored in airtight container in refrigerator until needed. (My 3-year old helped me make these and she got a bit heavy-handed with the sugar, but she was having so much fun I didn’t have the heart to “help her”.)

Peaches and other fresh materials were obtained from the following farmer vendors here in Northeast Pennsylvania:

Brace’s Orchard
Dallas-Luzerne county
570-333-4236
apples, peaches, pears, grapes

A complete listing of orchards can be found here.

Onions and other things from
E. Harry Hopkins
RR 1 Box 349
Falls PA 18615
717-388-2495
hhopkins@epix.net

Beans from
James Schirg
Jim’s Farm Produce
R.R.#3 Box 21
Dalton, PA 18508

Schirg’s farm along with several other businesses are listed here.

Corn from Eckel’s Farm
Schultzville, PA
570-587-1725

Whew! That’s it! If you’ve read this far, you have my sincere thanks and appreciation.