BN FAVES: EXQUISITE FLOWER FEASTS
Here’s one of our BN team’s Favorite Food Drink Daily Fix posts!
We already eat plenty of flowers -- broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and artichokes are the usual. The more blossomy types, like rose petals, geraniums, calendula, squash blossoms, nasturtiums and daylilies, have prettied up dishes here and there, going in and out of culinary style.
We found some exceptional chefs and photographers who take edible flowers to a whole new level of beautiful. Check them out.
DITTE ISAGER & RENEÉ REDZEPI
Photographer, Ditte Isager, captured every reason why one would ever want to eat a Dessert of Flowers, in her photograph of a floral confection from Noma, a masterpiece-level restaurant in Copenhagen.
Head chef René Redzepi and his team played the soft petal texture, against creams and nougats, and composed an edible floral still-life.
Read more about Redzepi’s artistry with flowers and foraged edibles in his brilliant, award-winning book, A Work in Progress: Journal. Recipes and Snapshots. It includes his personal journal written over a full year, 100 brand new recipes from Noma, and more gorgeous Isager photos.
Check out this totally cool recipe from Redzepi that redefines the idea of edible flowers.
BLACK CURRANT AND ROSES
Ingredients:
For the Black Currant Leather:
1. 500 g. frozen black currants
2. 50 g. brun farin (brown sugar)
3. 2 g. neutral oil
4. Four fingers cut from latex gloves, used as balloons (inflated size of 2.5 cm)
For the Filling:
- 16 g. thickened milk kombucha
- 0.8 g. chopped lemon verbena
- 1.2 g. chopped black currant shoots
- 0.6 g. rose oil
- 4.8 g. fresh rose pollen from a beekeeper
- Thickened milk kombucha
- 75 g. refreshed kombucha tea
- 150 g. hung (strained) yogurt
- Refreshed kombucha tea
- 100 g. kombucha sugar starter
- 2.5 sugar
- 3 g. lemon thyme leaves
- 3.5 g. lemon verbena leaves
Directions:
1. For the Black Currant Leather:
2. Defrost the berries. Blend for two minutes and strain the pulp through a fine sieve.
3. Mix the puree with the brun farin; divide and blend half the mixture with the oil.
4. Dip each balloon in the mixture containing the oil, then leave to air-dry for 12 hours, or until the water evaporates and the texture feels leathery.
5. Dip two more times in the oil-free mixture and let dry for another 12 hours.
6. Puncture the balloons and carefully remove the black currant "berry" in the manner of papier-mâché.
7.Leave to air dry until the leather is crispy.
For the Filling:
1. Heat kombucha starter and sugar to 167°F and pour over herbs.
2. Infuse for five minutes and strain.
3. When cool, add strained yogurt. Transfer mixture to a small piping bag.
To Assemble:
1. Carefully pipe the "berries" full of the completed filling and dress, using 12 pickled wild rose petals and 12 pickled, dried elderflower sprigs on a bed of mixed herbs.
SERGIO COIMBRA
Sergio Coimbra, photographer and founder of Studio SC in Sao Paulo, has created an environment that enables chefs to create exquisite food artistry and enables him to take incredible photographs.
Coimbra’s passion for food photography developed alongside his love for food and travel. For almost twenty years, Sergio Coimbra traveled the world, dining with the some of the world’s most noted master-chefs – dreaming of one day building an experimental food-photography studio.
Coimbra was featured in the recent “The World’s 50 Best Restaurants,” exhibition in Guildhall London. Some of the most beautiful works are floral edibles, including those from El Celer de Can Roca’s Joan Roca, andLes Créations de Narisawa’s Yoshihiro Narisawa.
Roca’s “Flower Bomb,” was a floral culinary fantasy of flavors, including rose water and violet candy floss. Flowers were not merely decorations, they were the stars of this magnificent dish.
Yoshihiro Narisawa, chef and owner of Japan’s Les Creations de Narisawa restaurant, was also featured among Coimbra’s favorite pieces of 2014. Narisawa’s dish “Fermentation” is fantastic in its floral employment of the viola flower, mesclun leaf, and garden nasturtium.
MICHE BACHER
We plucked a few particularly beautiful recipes from Cooking with Flowers: Sweet and Savory Recipes with Rose Petals, Lilacs, Lavender, and Other Edible Flowers
HIBISCUS CLAFOUTIS
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 4 eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- Pinch salt
- 2 cups cherries
- 1 cup hollyhock petals (from about 4 to 6 flowers)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch glass or ceramic baking dish or an 8-inch square ceramic baking dish.
2. Combine everything except cherries and hollyhock petals in a blender and process until fairly smooth. Make sure you scrape down the sides of the blender, so the flour doesn’t stick to the sides.
3. Pour half the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle with cherries and half the hollyhock petals. Cover with the remaining batter. Top with the remaining hollyhock petals.
4. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until puffed and brown; a tester inserted in the center should come out clean.
Read more about Beautiful Favorites, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact. BN Faves: New Pages of Beautiful Green and BN Faves: Mind-Blowing Recyclers.
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IMAGE CREDITS:
- Image: by Ditte Isager, Courtesy of Phaidon Press. Dessert of Flowers from A Work in Progress.
- Image: by Ditte Isager. Floral Poetry from Noma.
- Image: by Ditte Isager. Noma floral salad.
- Image: Courtesy of Phaidon. A Work in Progress.
- Image: Courtesy of Noma. Black Currant and Roses.
- Image: by Sergio Coimbra. Fermentation.
- Image: by Sergio Coimbra. Smoked Sturgeon from Eleven Madison Park.
- Image: by Sergio Coimbra. Flower bomb at El Celler De Can Roca.
- Image: by Miana Jun. Hollyhock Clafoutis from Cooking With Flowers.
- Image: by Miana Jun. Hollyhock Clafoutis from Cooking With Flowers.
- Image: Courtesy of Phaidon. A Work in Progress.
- Image: by BN App - Download now!
- Image: by Miana Jun, courtesy of Quirk Books. Floral Cupcakes.
