So far this year we've worked with wild violet blossoms and fennel blossoms. I like using flowers when a dish needs a fragrant lift, especially with salads and desserts. Salads can often be overly vegetal and desserts based on nuts or chocolate can usually use some floral notes to lighten them. The violet blossoms go on our sea island benne cake, I also love them with lillet. Last year we used them with Lillet to make a sorbet and I may do that again this year. As the season progresses, I like chive blossoms, rose petals, snapdragons, and especially borage flowers. They taste like cucumbers and are thus great in gin cocktails and also in salads or with rich fish dishes such as salmon. When I can get bee balm flowers mid-summer I like pairing them with melons, fish, and smoked meats because of their citrusy notes and hint of woody herbs. Finally, squash blossoms. I like stuffing them and frying them, pureeing them for vinaigrettes, and, if I can get a sufficient quantity and have enough help in the kitchen that day, pulling the stamens to make a bouillon with their saffron-like colors and scents. The same works with day lilies. As far as on the menu goes, I tend to be much more fleeting with flowers, as I like to show them off at their peak. This means they appear within a day or two of harvest, so they tend to be specials or lagniappes, not something I put on our menu, even as often as it changes.

Our new book 'The New Old Bar' is in editing right now for a fall release. One of Steve's original recipes is a spring spin on the White Russian using floral Old Tom Gin and Creme Yvette. We garnish it with edible nasturtiums.

Our Bar Director Jenny Kessler loves using edible microflowers in cocktails! Her cocktail called "The Gypsy" uses Don Modesto blanco tequila, Luxardo Maraschino, Leopold Bros Orange Liqueur, limonada, and edible microflowers. She will be serving this cocktail next week at a 500 guest gala at the Hilton Chicago!

Even though i get a bunch or crap from some other chef friends of mine for being to "fru-fru" we still use a lot of edible flowers. We use a lot of Chef's Garden botanicals in our dishes. Everything from coriander blooms, violas, johnny jump ups, red sorrel, and frilled dianthalus flowers. I love the way florals can not only add color pop to the dishes but they also are very flavorful if you get the right ones. We are currently using red sorrel on our snapper sashimi dish, and frilled dianthalus flowers on our Skuna Bay Salmon dish.

I am currently using turnip blossoms, cress blossoms and violets from
Spence Farm. I love the way they look in the Market salad. The turnip
blossoms are a brilliant yellow and have such an intense turnip flavor that
I break them apart. The cress has a spicy kick and the violets are a
beautiful dark and light purple. I put them in a simple salad with Genesis
Growers' baby mesclun, red wine vinaigrette and smoked trout rillette on
crostini. I know that before this I had never tried turnip & cress
blossoms, so, leaving the flowers as they are will allow the customer to
try it in it's natural form (as I had tried it). I am also growing
nasturtuim in my backyard and will harvest the edible flowers for use at
the restaurant. :)


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While pansies, violas and other spring flowers are pretty-I don’t much care to eat them. What I do like are marigolds and nasturtiums. These are more summer flowers so I will be patient and wait for the first nasturtiums to come out so I can use the spicy flwers and leaves in a salad with poppy seed dressing. But marigolds! Especially the Little Gem marigolds are crushed and steeped with orange zest and cream for my favorite autumn dessert: Cornmeal Poundcake with Marigold Ice Cream. Guests can’t figure out what they are tasting and guess everything from grapefruit to bitter orange to saffron.